FREE DAYTIME SCREENINGS

Saturday 7 November   MenelikEducation presents films from Zimbabwe, Senegal, Angola, Sudan and South Africa

2pm: THE POSITIVE LADIES FOOTBALL CLUB
Director: Joanna Stavropoulou. Producer: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Zimbabwe 2009. 30 mins.
The Positive Ladies Football Club is a testimony to positive living and the universal theme of strength through adversity. A group of HIV positive women, all seeking treatment at an MSF clinic in a Zimbabwean township, decide to form a football team, ARV Swallows, to fight two stereotypes: that HIV is a death sentence and that women cannot play football. After an initially shaky start the Swallows start winning matches and make it through to the finals of the HIV positive women’s football league. But despite their successes, the women have to carry on with their treatment and daily lives. The difficulties of living with HIV are ever-present for these women.

NORA (TBC)
Dir. Alla Kovgan and David Hinton. Choreography: Nora Chipaumire. Zimbabwe 2008. 35 mins.
Nora is a startling work of art which translates a profoundly personal story into dance. Based on the life of Zimbabwean-born dancer Nora Chipaumaire and filmed on location in Southern Africa, the film uses light, landscape, sound, colour, and movement as a vivid setting against which Chipaumaire performs, transforming herself into compelling characters to tell her narrative. The New York Times says that “[Nora] succeeds in combining a rough personal narrative with poetic, allusive imagery.”

3pm: AFRICAN HOOP DREAMS
Director: Eric Drury. Senegal/Angola/US/South Africa 2007. 54 mins.
African Hoop Dreams is a unique and timely film which takes viewers on a tour of discovery to reveal the present-day hope and excitement that surrounds the game of basketball on a continent which promises to change the landscape of the sport forever.

We are delighted to welcome director Eric Drury to do a Q&A.

WAR GAMES
Directors: Heather Baker and Marc Allen. Sudan 2005. 45 mins.
War Games is an intimate portrait of a community, recently devastated by war, struggling to put itself back together again and to stage an Olympic games (called the Twic Olympics) for thousands of children from the surrounding villages. The film follows the organisers as they struggle with broken goalposts, hungry players, and the constant threat of bombing by the Sudan government, all in scorching daily temperatures upwards of 50 degrees Celsius. The beauty of this film is that it shows the humour and energy that Sudanese people are investing in this Olympic enterprise, in site of the war raging in the country. The people we see are anything but victims – they are movers and shakers. The film was a hit at the LA Amnesty Film Festival and has been screened on BBC World in 52 countries.