Global Cinema

A French woman returns to her childhood home in Cameroon - formerly a colonial outpost - where she's flooded by memories, particularly of Protée, her servant.

Two booksellers search for diamonds in Africa, along the way meeting a visually-impaired gunner, a hungry lion, and a tribe of cannibals.

A life of Nigerien immigrants in Abidjan, Ivory Coast within a week.

A black girl from Senegal becomes a servant in France.

A corrupt politician is cursed with impotence on the night of his third wedding after embezzling 100 tons of rice.

A young man with magical powers journeys to his uncle to request help in fighting his sorcerer father.

A storyteller named Djeliba comes to the town of a young boy named Mabo with promises that he will reveal the origin of the boy's ancestry.

Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.

Dramaan is the most popular man in Colobane, but when a woman from his past, now exorbitantly wealthy, returns to the town, things begin to change.

Bamako. Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights...

In Jean-Pierre Bekolo's barbed political satire, an infectious hybrid of horror and science fiction, vampiric femmes fatales emasculate high-ranking Cameroonian officials through ancient rituals of Mevoungou.

Riva returns to his home town of Kinshasa to sell fuel, however the people whom he stole it from are close behind and when Riva tries to get with a girl her crime boss boyfriend isn't too happy about this.

Thunderbolt: Magun centers around the life of a young, married woman who is struck with an unorthodox African illness and has to find a cure before it claims her life.

Nigeria's film industry, Nollywood, is the third-largest in the world--an unstoppable economic and cultural force that has taken the continent by storm and is now bursting beyond the borders of Africa. "Nollywood Babylon" is a feature documentary detailing the industry's phenomenal success. Propelled by a booming 1970s soundtrack of African underground music, the movie presents an electric vision of a modern African metropolis and a revealing look at the powerhouse that is Nigerian cinema.

The Nigerian film industry, known as Nollywood, has exploded in the last ten years. Now the most popular cinema in all of west Africa--even more popular than imports of Hollywood or Bollywood films--the Nigerian film industry has distinguished itself by shooting all films (called video films) on digital video. This has allowed production schedules to be compressed (films are shot in several days) and immediately brought to market (distribution consists of bringing films to Idumota electronics market in Lagos and selling them for home viewing). The sheer volume of Nigerian video films is staggering: one estimate has a film being produced for each day of the year. Nollywood is now the third-largest film industry in the world, generating US$286 million a year for the Nigerian economy. And yet this vibrant, profitable industry is virtually unknown outside of Africa. Jamie Meltzer, director of "Off the Charts: The Song Poem Story," which premiered on PBS' prestigious Independent Lens series has created a fascinating look into this newly emerging film industry, exploring its peculiar inner workings, economic challenges, and diverse array of colorful films. Traveling to the country's chaotic capitol, Lagos, Meltzer spent six weeks following three of Nigeria's hottest directors, each different in personality and style, as they shot their films about love, betrayal, war, and the supernatural. "Welcome to Nollywood" tells the stories of these three directors and their latest productions, while also using interviews with scholars, actors, and journalists who celebrate the industry in insightful and often humorous ways, the Nigerian video-film industry as a whole, its unique character and genres, as well as its impact on the culture of west Africa and Africans at home and abroad.

'Osuofia in London' offers a variation on an old story: a country bumpkin comes to town, where city slickers try -- and ultimately fail -- to take advantage of him and steal his money. Osuofia lives in a village in south-eastern Nigeria where he talks a lot and drinks a lot of palm wine. His main occupation is as a hunter, at which he is spectacularly unsuccessful. He is hounded by his creditors, and henpecked by his massive wife and five grown-up daughters. Then one day a lawyer's letter arrives to tell him that a long-forgotten brother has died in Britain, leaving him all his money. Osuofia has to go to London to claim his inheritance. This allows the director to have a lot of fun as Osuofia comes face to face with modern plumbing, a full English breakfast, a butler called Jeeves and a park full of pigeons, which finally arouse his hunter's instincts. Meanwhile the crooked lawyer and his glamorous accomplice Samantha (a flame-haired temptress with a disconcerting resemblance to the young Rebecca Brooks) are working to get him to sign away his inheritance. But the thieves fall out and Osuofia makes it back to Nigeria with his fortune intact -- but accompanied by the predatory Samantha, her eyes still firmly on his chequebook. All of which sets things up nicely for a sequel, as Samantha battles with the challenges of life in an African village, and the implacable hostility of the the first Mrs Osuofia.

Come Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.

Mapantsula tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who inevitably becomes caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle and has to choose between individual gain and a united stand against the system.

In a future Earth in which aliens are isolated in a remote ghetto, a government agent finds himself banished there.