Africa Adventure (1954)

Aimé Césaire, un Nègre fondamental

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The White Diamond

This 2004 documentary by Werner Herzog diaries the struggle of a passionate English inventor to design and test a unique airship during its maiden flight above the jungle canopy.

Mariner of the Mountains

Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by the memory of his mother, Iracema, and his camera, Aïnouz gives a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland, interweaving present, past, and future.

Jane

Drawing from never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives, director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane Goodall, a woman whose chimpanzee research revolutionized our understanding of the natural world.

Liyana

A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.

Africa, Blood & Beauty

This film speaks of archaic peoples, their customs and mores, in an attempt to make the last snapshots of their traditional lifestyles before they are gone for good.

When We Were Kings

It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.

Silverback

Feature-length documentary following award-winning wildlife cameraman Vianet Djenguet as he documents a gruelling but vital mission to ‘habituate’ a notoriously protective 450lb silverback, in a last-ditch effort to save the critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas from extinction.

Algeria in Flames

These are the first images shot in the ALN maquis, camera in hand, at the end of 1956 and in 1957. These war images taken in the Aurès-Nementchas are intended to be the basis of a dialogue between French and Algerians for peace in Algeria, by demonstrating the existence of an armed organization close to the people. Three versions of Algeria in Flames are produced: French, German and Arabic. From the end of the editing, the film circulates without any cuts throughout the world, except in France where the first screening takes place in the occupied Sorbonne in 1968. Certain images of the film have circulated and are found in films, in particular Algerian films. Because of the excitement caused by this film, he was forced to go into hiding for 25 months. After the declaration of independence, he founded the first Algerian Audiovisual Center.

Mining for God

America has long been called a Christian nation. In fact, over 70% of adults in America identify themselves as Christian. Yet when filmmaker Brandon McGuire heads to the streets to ask a few clarifying questions about how Christianity is defined within our culture, he is shocked by the answers he finds. This provocative documentary takes us deep within the American mind and brings to the surface the big ideas that have influenced the way we think about ourselves and about God.

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Running With The Beest

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God Grew Tired of Us

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Iwájú: A Day Ahead

Filmed across three continents, this documentary shares the story of the founders of the Pan-African comic book company, Kugali, who made their dream a reality creating an original animation series with Walt Disney Animation Studios.

TUNAHAKI

Tunahaki is the extraordinary story of nine gifted orphans who are acrobats. We follow their journey as an American volunteer takes them from Africa to study with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. They end up touring the States and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than enough to build a permanent home. But how have the kids' experiences in America affected them? And how will it change things back home in Tanzania? Tunahaki's heartfelt journey gives us something new to ponder as we reach across the world to help those less fortunate—is it always the right thing to do?

The KFC

Five Kiwis take on a paragliding adventure in Tanzania, with the ultimate aim to fly from the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro.

Le Village De Bamboula

"Bamboula": this word was chosen in the 1980s for a chocolate cookie well known to children at the time. In 1994, he sponsored an Ivorian village set up in the Port-Saint-Père zoological park south of Nantes, where children and adults lived in a zoo to offer their folklore as a show to visitors. This documentary film, narrated by Jean-Pascal Zadi, gives a voice to those who lived in this African safari and to those who fought for their dignity

Africa Blood and Guts

A chronicle of the violence that occurred in much of the African continent throughout the 1960s. As many African countries were transitioning from colonial rule to other forms of government, violent political upheavals were frequent. Revolutions in Zanzibar and Kenya in which thousands were killed are shown, the violence not only political; there is also extensive footage of hunters and poachers slaughtering different types of wild animals.

Guerre aux images en Algérie

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Tears of Africa

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Prophecy - The Africa of Pasolini

Pasolini seeks in Africa the peasant and revolutionary authenticity he had sought in the Roman villages. This hope will end in a new disappointment: Africa is a reservoir of irremediable contradictions that will explode in the massacres of yesterday and today. It is an Africa that starts from the outskirts of Rome, but thousands of non-EU citizens flock to the sub-proletariat of the villages.

Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

This cinematic journey into the waters off East Africa chronicles the story behind artist Damien Hirst's massive exhibition of oceanic treasures.

Statues Also Die

Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.

A People on the March

In 1962, René Vautier, together with some Algerian friends, organised the audio-visual formation centre Ben Aknoun to encourage a "dialogue in images" between the two factions. Together with his students he made a film that shows the history of the Algerian War and of the ALN (National Liberation Army), and life during the reconstruction.

Bring 'Em Back Alive

American animal trapper Frank Buck travels with Ali, his "number one boy," on an expedition into the Malayan jungle. From their jungle headquarters just north of Singapore, Frank, Ali and a team of native helpers roam the area from Northern Johore to Perak in search of interesting wild animals, reptiles and birds. Hoping to find a tiger, Buck captures a monitor lizard and a black leopard, while another black leopard narrowly escapes an encounter with a giant python and then battles a bigger and stronger tiger. After trapping a spotted leopard, Frank adopts a baby honey bear and a baby elephant. The team catches an orangutan, but the tiger eludes their camouflaged pit. Meanwhile, Frank visits the "bathing festival" of a local tribe and watches as tribesmen kill an intruding spotted leopard with blow darts. The tiger then meets an enormous regal python, who has just crushed a crocodile, and fights to a draw with it.

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

Frantz Fanon, trajectoire d'un révolté

Frantz Fanon alone embodies all the issues of French colonial history. Martinican resistance fighter, he enlisted, like millions of colonial soldiers, in the Free Army out of loyalty to France and the idea of freedom that it embodies for him. A writer, he participated in the bubbling life of Saint-Germain with Césaire, Senghor and Sartre, debating tirelessly on the destiny of colonized peoples. As a doctor, he revolutionized the practice of psychiatry, seeking in the relations of domination of colonial societies the foundations of the pathologies of his patients in Blida. Activist, he brings together through his action and his history of him, the anger of peoples crushed by centuries of colonial oppression. But beyond this exceptional journey which makes sensitive the permanence of French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles at the gates of the Algerian desert, he leaves an incomparable body of work which has made him today one of the most studied French authors across the Atlantic.

Refuge(e)

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

A Female Cabby in Sidi Bel-Abbès

When her husband died Soumicha, mother of three, had to earn a living. She became the only woman taxi driver in Sidi Bel-Abbès, Algeria. This film accompanies Soumicha around a city where religious and political violence rages, and records her experiences in a job normally reserved for men.

Circus Baobab

French filmmaker Laurent Chevallier always wanted to make a documentary on an African circus, but there were no native circuses on the continent. So Chevallier decided to help found a circus in Guinea. 36 young people were chosen from the city of Conakry to participate in what would become Circus Baobab. A group of French circus artists were imported to train the participants for 2 years in acrobatics and trapeze. Then the group took their show on the road. This film is Chevallier's account of the troupe's inaugural tour in Guinea, from March 1 - April 11, 2000.

Island of the Hungry Ghosts

Christmas Island, Australia is home to one of the largest land migrations on earth—that of forty million crabs journeying from jungle to sea. But the jungle holds another secret: a high-security facility that indefinitely detains individuals seeking asylum.

Contrasts of Peru

Peru is a country of many contrasts. From the cold waters of the Coast over the 6000 m high Andes to the unique biodiversity of the Amazon Jungle. Peru isn't only Machu Picchu. It's much more.

Downstream to Kinshasa

For two decades, the victims of the Six-Day War have been fighting in Kisangani for the recognition of this bloody conflict and demanding compensation. Tired of unsuccessful pleas, they have finally decided to voice their claims in Kinshasa, after a long journey on the Congo River.

Gangbé!

The Gangbé Brass Band, a musical group from Benin, sets out to conquer Lagos, capital of Nigeria.