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Akira in competition at PAFF!

They got over 2,500 entries and chose over a 100 films. Proud to say we’re not only screening at the Pan African Film Fest, but in competition for an award!

As always the credit goes to my amazing performers, fantastic crew and hard working producers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, February 1, 2008

LARGEST U.S. BLACK HISTORY MONTH EVENT
ANNOUNCES FILMS IN COMPETITION

16th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival
Opens February 7 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CA – The 16th ANNUAL PAN AFRICAN FILM & ARTS FESTIVAL (PAFF) todayannounced the line-up of films selected from a record number of submissions for their 2008 film competition. Known for showcasing new films first and recognized as America’s premiere black film festival, past PAFF features have included box office and award-winning hits: Ray, Lackawanna Blues, Redemption, Crazy As Hell, Kingdom Come, The Brothers, Gridlock’d, Days of Glory, and the 2006 Academy Award® winner for Best Foreign Film, Tsotsi. The film festival will take place in Los AngelesFebruary 7-18, 2008 and is expected to draw over 40,000 attendees during its twelve-day run. The complete list of films is available at www.PAFF.org.

For the 2008 Pan African Film and Arts Festival, 162 films were selected including 25 world premieres and 10 U.S. premieres representing 31 countries with 9 first-time filmmakers, 49 feature-length films, 59 documentaries, and 54 international films. These films were selected from over 2,500 submissions.

At the 2008 Festival, Jury Prizes will be awarded in the following categories: Best Documentary, Best Short Documentary, Best Narrative Short, Best Feature, and Best Director-First Feature. New for the 2008 PAFF is the addition of The Oscar Micheaux Award, named after the first African-American filmmaker. In addition to the Jury Prizes, Audience Favorite Awards will be voted on in the following categories: Best Feature, Best Documentary, and Best Short Narrative. The PAFF Vision Award will be given to the film that the Festival has chosen that best exemplifies its mission of reinforcing positive images and helping to destroy negative stereotypes.

With an overall festival attendance of 200,000, the PAFF attracts a diverse audience of over 40,000 people to its films at the AMC Magic Johnson Crenshaw 15 Theaters. Each year the PAFF presents quality films from the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, the South Pacific and Canada, all showcasing the diversity and complexity of people of African descent. PAFF also presents one of America’s largest fine art shows featuring prominent and emerging Black artists and fine craftspeople held at the BaldwinHillsCrenshawPlaza. Other signature PAFF events include over a dozen industry panels and workshops, the PAFF StudentFest®, ChildrensFest®, SpokenWord Fest®, Senior Connections®, and Comedy Night. For more information, please visit www.PAFF.org or call (323) 295-1706.

NOTE: Only the narrative shorts in competition are listed below. For the full list please visit www.paff.org

BEST NARRATIVE SHORT COMPETITION

The films screening in the Best Narrative Short Competition are:

AKIRA’S HIP HOP SHOP (US/Director: Joseph Doughrity) – A romantic comedy/drama about an expatriate Japanese hip hop DJ. When a young Black culinary arts student walks into his shop, his life is changed forever. Does love conquer all? Or will prejudice and politics drive the couple apart?
Los Angeles Premiere

BOLD AS LOVE (US/Director: Joshua Gee Alafia) – Mbube is a South African Saxophone player with a heroin addiction. Thandeka is his childhood friend working in new york as an au pair. A funeral brings Thandeka back to South Africa and she returns to new york with an herbal potion to help Mbube quit heroin. After fighting the advances of her employer, she loses her living situation and moves in with Mbube. Bold As Love is a film about the powers of creation and destruction, and the fine line that separates the two. It’s about facing the love that is the core of our being. Starring Thandiwe Maphumulo, Ezra Mabengeza, Roger Guenveur Smith, Magaly Colimon, Masauko, Vincent Burwell, Lady Blue, Miralva Melo Swaby, Lady Blue and Duke Mseleku.
Premiere

DRAWING ANGEL (US/Director: Rosalyn Coleman Williams) – Lonely and new to the city, Samantha meets Levi, a 9-year-old boy displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Starring Vanessa Williams.
Los Angeles Premiere

PARIAH (US/Director: Dee Rees) – A Bronx lesbian teenager juggles multiple identities to avoid rejection from friends and family but pressure from home, school, and within corrodes the line between her dual personas with explosive consequences.
Premiere

SPIN (US/Director: Tamika Lamison) – On the eve of a big press conference with the nation’s top critics, premiere book publicist Alex Burke and her lover James Hughes, a former National Fiction Award winner whose last three novels bombed, joyously celebrate that she hooked the New York Times and he negotiated the printing of 100,000 more copies of the book. Yet a horrible betrayal deals a deathly blow to their relationship. What follows is a series of events that make us question the reality of artistic integrity–do we ever really know the truth behind who wrote a famous novel, movie, song? In the end, Alex learns that every lie has a consequence. Even her own.
Premiere

THE KNIFE GRINDER’S TALE (US/Kenya/Director: R. L. Hooker) – Based on the short story by award-winning Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Ogwang, a countryside knife grinder, has lost his son to an angry city mob. Not knowing the place his son lost his life, Ogwang sets out on a journey to bridge the distance between love and death in the face of violence.
Premiere

URBAN GENESIS (US/Director: Larry Bryant) – After serving 20 years in prison, Clifford comes home to live with his daughter in hopes of making up for lost time. But the road to redemption will be harder than he thinks when he realizes that he has to deal with his daughter’s live-in boyfriend who is the mirror image of Clifford as a young man.
World Premiere

WE ARE ALL RWANDANS (Rwanda/UK/Director: Debs Gardner-Paterson) – NyangeSchool, 18th March 1997: a day in the life of six normal students who had to make the decision of their lives. Recreated in dramatic form, this is the true story of a rebel attack in post-genocide Rwanda, filmed in the school and village where the real events took place.
Los Angeles Premiere