Ambika festival connects pan-African filmmakers and financiers

The Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) in collaboration with Communication Pathways Trust (CPT) is currently celebrating African film, having organised the Ambika Afrika Safari Film Festival and the African Film Finance Summit in Nairobi that started on Wednesday and running through October 19.

The theme of this year’s festival is ‘The Africa We Want: One Africa, One Vision, One Destiny.’

Following on the heels of the Good Pitch, organised by Docubox, the East African documentary film fund, both the Ambika Film Festival and the Good Pitch aim to connect African filmmakers with prospective investors who see the commercial viability of promoting a fledgling African film industry.

The Ambika Film Festival opened at Westgate Mall with a special screening of the award winning film by the Malian filmmaker Abdderrhamane Sissako, entitled Timbuktu.

Noting the remarkable coincidence that both Westgate and Timbuktu have in that both have undergone terrible terrorist attacks in recent times, former assistant minister Ndiritu Muriithi, now adviser at FEPACI, said most of the films being screened through October 19 at the Louis Leakey Auditorium are feature films and documentaries that won awards in Ouagadougou at the Pan African Film and Television Festival.

The features and documentaries as well as short films by students from Kenyatta University and Kenya Institute of Mass Communication will be screened four times daily throughout the festival.

But what is equally important to the former Planning assistant minister in the Kibaki government is the Africa Film Finance Summit which is currently taking place at the Radisson Blu Hotel.

Since Thursday, filmmakers together with representatives of banks and financial institutions as well as entrepreneurs and other investors have been meeting to consider ways to launch commercial film funding partnerships and mobilise $200 million (Sh20 billion) in the next two years to catalyse the growth of the continent’s audiovisual and cinema industry.

One reason for the timing of the Ambika Festival is that it was just in June that ministers of Culture, Youth and Sports of African Union member states finally established the long-awaited African Audiovisual and Cinema Commission (AACC), making it a specialised agency of the African Union.

The AACC has the mandate to promote the rapid development of African film.

To facilitate that process, the Kenya government is hosting an Extraordinary Session of the 2nd Specialised Technical Committee on Youth, Culture and Sport from October 17 through 19 at Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi.

Meanwhile, throughout the festival, from October 10th through 21st, there’s an Ambika Pitching and Production Forum (APPF) underway which aims to promote and develop the so-called “African Story.”

Finally, on the 18th there will be an Africa Film Forum at Radisson Blu both to discuss and collect data on creative economy practices around Africa and to explore ways that the AU Agenda 2063 can be advanced through the regional film industry.