An exchange, debate and critical space between experts and the audience

The current edition of the Cordoba African Film Festival – FCAT 2015 —organized by the non-profit organization Al Tarab— will host different parallel activities that aims to reach a wider public, as the “Palaver Tree Forum” and the “Motion Picture Aperitif”. These two meetings pretend to generate a reflexion and exchange space between experts, students and general public. “With these activities, the Festival becomes an opportunity to know the African cinema and its directors and to share experiences and knowledge between the two continents”, says Carlos Domínguez, the “Palaver Tree Forum” co-ordinator.

This training and dissemination space will promote the intercultural dialogue from the social communication media, in order to overcome the simplistic, reductionist and paternalistic discourses about the African issues, that we are used to hear.

The Palaver Tree Forum

Under the motto “Africa’s cinemas and cinematographic journalism for dialogue”, the “Palaver Tree Forum” has planned a series of training sessions with the participation of African filmmakers and experts, followed by gatherings about cinema and critics. This Forum aims to deepen in the African contemporary cinematographic creations.

This is aimed to facilitate a reflexion and meeting single space for experts, journalists, critics, researchers and filmmakers that, moreover, will remain opened to the general public (free entrance until seating capacity is reached). Radio Nacional de España and Radio Exterior de España (The Spanish public radio) will relay the meetings. The “Palaver Tree Forum” is a training space promoted by Al Tarab and co-organized by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, through the ACERCA Training Programme for development in the Cultural Sector, with the collaboration of FIAPP.

“Motion Picture Aperitif”

The “Motion Picture Aperitif” is one of the most charismatic activities of the Cordoba African Film Festival – FCAT 2015 and is back yet another year. In this occasion, these informal meetings between guests’ filmmakers, film enthusiasts and journalists, will rely on the presence of Javier H as a moderator thanks to the special collaboration between the FCAT and Caimán (www.caimanediciones.es), a magazine devoted to film criticism.

These meetings will be accompanied by wine and “tapas” to improve the atmosphere and to satisfy the hunger of the public. They will take place the day after of the post-screening debate, leaving a space that allows the audience to think and to question what they have seen the day before. The aim is to bring together filmmakers to promote the debate around of cinema, not only talking about subjects but about the ethic, aesthetic and stylistic questions.

This will respond to one of our main objectives: to remember that the African cinemas are, first of all, cinemas and these films have to be inscribed in the contemporary tendencies of the global cinematographic narrative.