Report on the History of Ethiopia

An intimate look inside the immigrant community in Portland, Maine, as told by Nyamuon Nguany Machar who arrived as refugee in 1995 and David Zwalita Mota who came as an asylum seeker in 2019.

The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian National Park Administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro Crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values ​​they needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two airplanes, the Grzimeks found out that the migration of the herds was different than assumed.

In the fifties, when the future Democratic Republic of Congo was still a Belgian colony, an entire generation of musicians fused traditional African tunes with Afro-Cuban music to create the electrifying Congolese rumba, a style that conquered the entire continent thanks to an infectious rhythm, captivating guitar sounds and smooth vocals.

This is the story of Africa's first Boxing World Champion, Battling Siki. Who was this boxer born in Senegal, decorated for Bravery in World War I? Why do so few know that he fought and won the World Light Heavyweight Title aged 25, only to lose it controversially six months later? And why was his life cut short on a New York Street aged 28?

Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country.

A history of racialism in Rwanda, from the European colonization to the 1994 genocide.

Tunisia itself is the subject; we wanted to render the genius of the site. Tunisia is almost the central character of this little film: we see the relation of the city to the sea, the traces that bear witness to its foundation, the remains of Carthage, the symbolism of the recently discovered Medina coin … The splendours of the house interiors and courtyards are associated with a scene of origin, what psychoanalysis calls a primal scene. Entering these houses opens up a world peopled by women: the child’s ‘homecoming’ in the hands of women is staged as an abduction, playing doubly on fascination and terror. These places were mine, from my childhood, they can be found almost intact – it’s the return of the exile visiting the kingdom. I let Ruiz discover all this, and immediately that led him to echoes and resonances ranging from Spain to Chile.

Documentary on the Ethiopian orphanage ‘Toukoul’, filmed in Addis Ababa in December 2003

The ruthless dictator Teodoro Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron hand since 1979. Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is the most translated Equatoguinean writer, but he had to flee the country in 2011, after starting a hunger strike denouncing the crimes of the dictatorship. Since then, he has lived in Spain, feeling that, despite the risks, he must return and fight the monster with words.

The history of art in Ethiopia. The film emphasizes the styles, materials, etc. ofpaintings on walls and roofs of ancient churche

Jomo Kenyatta's death in 1978 brought to an end a political career that encompassed more than 50 years of African history. Kenyatta entered politics in the mid-1920s and then spent 17 years in exile in Europe. He returned to Kenya in 1946, and was elected president of the nationalist movement, the Kenya African Union. Arrested and imprisoned in 1952 for allegedly leading 'Mau Mau', he was released in 1961 and two years later became Kenya's first Prime Minister. In power, the man whom European settlers had once reviled as "the leader to darkness and death" was eulogized by them as a pillar of stability, while former allies challenged him by creating a left-leaning political opposition. Kenyatta weaves archival and contemporary images with interviews with friends and relatives, comrades and opponents, to create a biographical portrait of a key figure in 20th century politics, and a case study of what Frantz Fanon called the pitfalls of nationalism as a political force in Africa.

Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.

The region of Lake Turkana, located in Kenya and Ethiopia, is considered to be “the Cradle of Humankind”. Among other finds, primate fossils from millions of years ago have been discovered in the region. But what about the region’s modern inhabitants and their relationship to their environment? Iiris Härmä, whose previous work includes the award-winning Leaving Africa, had the chance of joining Helsinki University’s researchers, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares and Mar Cabeza, on their pre-pandemic trip to study the Daasanach people’s relationship to their environment through traditional animal tales. The researchers hope that storytelling would help to bridge the gap between people’s everyday lives and conservation efforts.

75% of all enslaved Africans coming to America came in through Beaufort and the sea islands of South Carolina. This beautiful and picturesque tourist destination, by its unique history is the epicenter of the Gullah culture and the foundation of African American history; the result of the mingling of West African slaves with the plantation culture awaiting them in America.

In Africa's Simien Mountains, Braveheart is the undisputed king of his gelada family. For four years, he has fought off predators, kept the peace, and in return, has had his pick of potential mates. But now, his reign is under siege by a pack of marauding males, led by Braveheart's younger brother, Tiko, who has a score to settle. Witness this royal battle up close as we enter the most complex social structure of any animal except humans, one where women rule the roost and have final say on who sits on the throne and for how long.

Distressing accounts and images of historical warfare and the ongoing issues of a population suffering from hunger fill this short documentary about the North Ethiopian region of Tigray.

Sara from Zurich was circumcised as a little girl in Ethiopia. This event severely traumatized her. To find her inner peace, Sara decides to look for her circumciser.

The film portrays the trajectory and life of the “Agudá” people today. This is a group of descendants of Africans enslaved in Brazil, who returned to their homeland with the end of slavery, and also descendants, Brazilian and Portuguese, of slave traffickers, who settled in that region of Africa in the 18th and XIX. Present in Benin and Togo, the “agudás” assimilated the surname and part of the culture of their masters.

Running Movie is a documentary film that focuses on Israeli long-distance runner Ayele Seteng (a.k.a. Haile Satayin), the oldest marathon runner to compete in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and his efforts to participate in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Satayin has been a long-distance runner since he was a young boy in Ethiopia, but he only became a marathon runner after immigrating to Israel in the early 1990s. Now, at the age of 55, he keeps on running. We follow him as he practices in Ethiopia, far from his wife and eight children, and witness his moments of victory and defeat, as he competes in marathons around the world—from Berlin, Germany, to Tiberias, Israel.

South Africa, July 11th, 1963. Several members of the African National Congress, an organization declared illegal, are arrested in Rivonia, a country house near Johannesburg. The detainees, along with Nelson Mandela, imprisoned since 1962, are charged with serious crimes for their radical activism against the apartheid regime.