Imagine community for African, Arab and diaspora Cinemas
Following Engage @DFM "Imagine Community" that took place at the 2019 Durban FilmMart, in South Africa, the JCC-Carthage Film Festival is or-ganizing its own installment of Engage, in partnership with Steps, Dur-ban FilmMart, AWOTELE and United Screens.
Engage @JCC offers to build on the discussions initiated in Durban, while expending the focal points of the conversations to include Arab countries, taking into account the central position of Tunisia and the JCC as an historical crossroads where African and Arab cinematographies meet, and where professionals from all over the globe convene for a week.
Engage @JCC "Imagine Community for African and Arab cinemas", will take place over the course of 2 days, with the ambition to create a space for discussions on the trends, dynamics and challenges faced by the African and Arab film industries.
Engage @JCC is articulated around two themes: "Permission to nar-rate" and "Cinema for the future: building for and with the new genera-tions". The program is designed as a series of curated as well as solu-tion and action driven think tank conversations, followed by public-facing panels.
Echoing the general spirit of Engage as well as the mission of Carthage Talks, Engage @JCC is an invitation to all stakeholders in the industry to take part in multi-disciplinary and critical conversations, to exam-ine the industry’s norms and status quo, while exploring possible chan-nels for experimenting and creating alternative models, by developing new synergies.
Designed as spaces for experience sharing and production of knowledge, these discussions will be documented and their findings subsequently redacted into a report.
ENGAGE @JCC :Imagine community for African, Arab and diaspora cinemas.
The clear reference to Edward W. Said, in the title, is a call to con-tinue the conversations started in Durban on how to work collectively on developing African and Arab cinema, while taking into account and tackling the structural and historical realities that restrain and affect this development:
Towards a decolonial model for filmmaking and film: how can we build local, regional and national ecosystems, to empower the practitioners and the new generations to tell their own stories on their own terms ?
How can key African, Arab and Diaspora platforms work together and create collaborations to grow cinema? What are the steps we should collectively take to able to work together, while addressing the faultiness between the Global North and Global South divide ?
Both panels, continuing the conversations started in Durban, will pro-vide some precious insights to this pressing questions.
Engage @JCC: Think tank
Monday October 28, 2019
Africa - Zambèze I Hall - 5th Floor
9:00-12:00
The themes discussed in these think tank conversations will be: programming Arab and African and Diaspora cinemas beyond a Global North dominating gaze; moving towards more ethical and balanced models of collaborations, and towards more South-South coproductions; film criticism and reclaiming our voices while training new ones; creating new synergies and networks between platforms for African and Arab cinema.
Engage @JCC: Panel - Owning our narratives and reclaiming our repre-sentations
Monday October 28, 2019
Africa - Zambèze I Hall - 5th Floor
14:00 - 15:00
A critical conversation with artist, director producer Jihan Al Tahri; film critic and programmer Joseph Fahim, industry programmer and producer
Tiny Mungwe, as well as filmmaker and producer Pedro Pimenta
Moderation: film critic and journalist Bassirou Niang
Engage @JCC: Panel - Arab and African cinema in the international film festival circuit
15:30 - 16:30
A critical conversation with Giona A.Nazarro (Venice International Film Critics’ Week, Visions du Réel), Kiva Reardon (TIFF, Hot Docs, Miami Film Festival) and Jana Wolff (Africa Hub, Berlinale).
Moderation: Joseph Fahim
This day is designed to providing interested practitioners, from the industry and civil society alike, with an array of potential paths to follow when it comes to working, individually and collectively, on building strong and sustainable cinema ecosystems for and with the new generations.
The first panel in the afternoon, will highlight the specificities of the Tunisian ecosystem for cinema. This ecosystem, built over more than 6 decades, and that resembles no other, is based on a network of grass-roots organizations disseminated throughout the country, that is now reinforced by national institutions, the Cinémathèque and the National Center for Cinema and Image (CNCI) that support training, production, and circulation.
The second panel, in collaboration with the new Carthage Digital sec-tion, intends to open a critical discussion around the power of new technologies open new perspectives for cinema development in the conti-nent and beyond.
Engage @JCC: Think tank
Tuesday October 29, 2019
Africa - Zambèze I Hall - 5th Floor
9:00 - 11:00
With a focus on the Global South, these think tank conversations gather like-minded organizations, active in the fields of image education, au-dience development and more broadly developing programs aimed at empow-ering the new generations not only to be active audiences but also to practice cinema.
The intention is to create a momentum for experience and good practice sharing, to be maintained beyond the think tank itself: through collaborations, peer-programming and the development of inter-regional or international networks.
Engage @JCC X Carthage Digital: Panel - New technologies: tools for opening perspective for cinema and beyond : a critical conversation
Tuesday October 29, 2019
Africa - Zambèze I Hall - 5th Floor
13:00 - 14:00
With executive producer and cultural advisor Chérine Lakhdar (HERVE; AJAR), artist and researcher Zied Meddeb Hamrouni (AJAR) as well as cu-rator Abhishek Nilamber (United Screens - Savvy Contemporary)
Engage @JCC: Panel - The Tunisian cinema ecosystem at a glance
Tuesday October 29, 2019
Africa - Zambèze I Hall - 5th Floor
14:30 - 15:30
A conversation with Hichem Ben Ammar (Director of the Cinémathèque) La-mia Belkaïed Guiga (JCC’s General Delegate) - Chiraz Latiri (General Director of the CNCI), and Mohammed Sahbi Kraiem (Coordinator of the Patrimony and Heritage programme)
Moderation: Tarek Ben Chaabane (JCC’s Artistic Advisor)
