September 2002

Community Media Conference

September 9–15, 2002

For many filmmakers a medium where sound doesn’t synch well, cuts and dissolves are lost on a small screen, and viewers have to wait and wait for the film to download is a medium in which the limitations outweigh the benefits.

While dignitaries from fifty-three African countries gathered in Durban, South Africa, for the in Inaugural Summit of the African Union (AU), the African Union Film Festival (AUFF) drew together filmmakers, cultural policy experts and audiences for six days of free screenings and panels. The thirty-plus films programmed reflected African cinema’s past, present, and future, including classics, documentaries, shorts, and new feature films. Taking a cue from the new era launched by the creation of the AU, panels focused on the future of media in Africa.

The world of 3D animation is slowly opening up to new artists. New training options, online communities of users, and lower prices now make the prospect of 3D animation more enticing for independent filmmakers.

While the Lumiere brothers originally screened their films in a Paris café, the term microcinema was not coined until 1991 with the naming of Rebecca Barten and David Sherman’s Total Mobile Home Microcinema.

While dignitaries from fifty-three African countries gathered in Durban, South Africa, for the in Inaugural Summit of the African Union (AU), the African Union Film Festival (AUFF) drew together filmmakers, cultural policy experts and audiences for six days of free screenings and panels.