FICCA: A Festival of African Cinema in Medellín

by Will Furtado

Wed 9 Mar, 2022

The Kunta Kinte International Afro-Descendant Community Film Festival (FICCA) was launched in 2016 in Medellín by the Afro-Colombian Corporation for Social and Cultural Development (Carabantú). It is an ethno-educational tool that seeks to preserve the values, richness, and diversity of Afro-descendent peoples. “The name of the festival is in honor of two people,” says its director Ramón Perea. “The first is Euclides Blandon Kunta Kinte, a social leader gone missing from the department of Chocó, who said that that blackness is political, and the other is the character Kunta Kinte from the miniseries Roots“.

Each edition addresses a different theme. For the year 2022, “land” was chosen as the theme, whereas in previous years the issues were “migrations” or “identities and peace.” “Land is like the body. It is the ancestral lands that people have been deprived of,” explains Perea. “We want to explore the diversity of our urban and rural lands,” he adds.

Tres Caminos de Vida" (Three Life Paths) directed by Mayra Alejandra Moya and Dayana Urrutia, 2021.

From those workshops, in which 160 youth participated, short films were also produced. One of them, Tres Historias (Three Stories), produced in 2021, will be included in the 7th edition of the festival in 2022. The documentary narrates how three Afro-descendent social leaders improved the Nuevo Amanecer neighborhood in Medellín. 10-minutes long and produced by youth between the ages of 12 and 17, the short film is for them a way of maintaining their Afro identity in the neighborhood. Beginning in March of this year, eight films are expected to be produced at workshops which will focus on script development and attention to sound and image.

40 films from across the world will be shown at the festival, including Sementes: mulheres pretas no poder (Seeds: Black Women in Politics, 2020), a film that tells the story of Marielle Franco, a Black lesbian city councilwoman from Río de Janeiro who was assassinated in 2018 for her political work. “Her legacy has influenced other women who, in turn, have been an example,” says Pereas.

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Beyond the exhibition program, there will also be a master class on public policies with actors, social leaders and film directors. Topics will include the representation of Afro-descendants on television, specifically in animation. Carabantú’s other activities include The Ana Fabricia Córdoba Cátedra, a Training Workshop Series on understanding critical discourses around Afro-descendant peoples, which brings together Afro-descendant activists from Colombia, Brazil, the U.S. and other countries one Thursday a month in four Colombian cities. It is an international conversation space, which has already inspired a book. “In it, we talk about the history of Black people adopting a critical perspective on cinema,” explains Ramon Perea. “We screen non-stereotypical films that talk about the contributions and the acknowledgement of the Black worldview, with broad approaches by Afro-descendants, which include political, economic, social and environmental issues.”

The 7th edition of Kunta Kinte FICCA will be held from September 1st-5th, 2022 in Medellín, Colombia, and the call will open in March 2022.

Will Furtado is deputy editor for Contemporary And América Latina.

Translation: Sara Hanaburgh