Coming a year after its first outing, the West African Documentary Forum has just opened Ghana's Real Life Documentary Film Festival for a second go-round. The festival opened Saturday, 2 June in Accra, Ghana and will run through Friday, 8 June. The festival repeats in Kumasi from 11 through 17 June.
The Forum's membership is drawn from around the world, and the current festival is designed to "encourage the emergence of new voices in documentary filmmaking," according to the Forum's web site, and to promote research and scholarship on the documentary form.
The Festival features dozens of film screenings, including works by John Akomfrah, St.Clair Bourne, Raquel Cepeda, and Cameroun's Pascale Obolo. The Festival has also scheduled a battery of workshops and discussions. We note in particular the National Black Programming Consortium's support of a workshop designed to help 20 young Ghanaian and US film students produce socially relevant, short form content geared toward distribution in the online environment.
This year's festival coincides with Ghana's celebration of 50 years of independence, and organizers say the context is an opportunity to showcase more documentaries on independence movements throughout Africa.
Real Life joins a growing parade of major African film events, such as Tanzania's ZIFF and Ouagadougou's FESPACO, not to mention the newcomer International Film Festival of Zambia.
