Films

2017-2019 was a very special period for the consortium of the five African Film Festivals in the UK, TANO (‘five’ in Swahili) and many other international partners on four continents - we screened films in Africa, America, Australia and Europe.

We worked with the Melbourne International Film Festival, Zanzibar International Film Festival, AFI Silver in Washington, the International Women’s Film Festival in Salé, Morocco, the London Feminist Film Festival, the RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, the BFI, and LA's Feminist Film Festival to organise, in total, 63 screenings of classic African films!

Together, we revisited the history of African cinema through a project led by Africa in Motion and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through a grant awarded to the University of Glasgow. With this project we brought (back) to global screens some of the greatest African films that were banned, censored, lost or forgotten. Old and lost films were rediscovered, and we enabled the restoration of some important African women’s films.

The film screenings took place over the course of 2017, 2018 and 2019 - marking a series of celebrations of the history of African cinema on a huge scale. Including restored and never-seen-before films, it was an unprecedented look at the long history behind some of the world’s masterpieces of African cinema.

Explore Africa's Lost Classics below.