The documentary film Cuba in Africa, by Ethiopian-American filmmaker Negash Abdurahman, was nominated in the Best Documentary Short Film category at the 30th Pan-African Film and Arts Festival (PAFF) in Los Angeles, Californiaaccording to official media on the island.
The 22-minute film is included among the 44 works that compete this year in six categories at the prestigious film event, which takes place in that US city from April 19 to May 1, according to a report of the Prensa Latina (PL) agency.
“This year’s list of films reflects the times we find ourselves in. Many focus on social justice issues such as gender equality, police-community relations, and changing lifestyle norms,” PAFF General Manager Asantewe Olatunji was quoted as saying.
Several of the PAFF 2022 films focus on familiar characters and heroes, and sometimes others whose “stories told by their own people provide a new perspective on history and insight into our world,” Olatunji added, according to the news agency. news.
Cuba in Africa had its premiere in Havana on April 1, and among its merits is the ability to connect with feelings from the first moment, it reaches the heart, says the source.
Abdurahman affirmed, according to PL, that he was only the messenger who showed the untold story of more than 420,000 Cubans, including soldiers, teachers, engineers, doctors, nurses…, many of whom gave even the most precious and precious: their lives for the independence of Africa.
This is how important moments of Cuba’s revolutionary internationalist mission from 1976 to 1991, decisive in winning the sovereignty of angola and Namibia and ensure the dismantling and defeat of apartheid in South Africa, recalls the medium.
The story comes to life in the voice of some of the protagonists and begins in Angola with a common thread that narrates, in detail and from different perspectives, the presence of Cuban internationalists on the African continent, PL appreciates.
The documentary was based on an exhaustive investigation by the author, who overcame many obstacles to achieve his goal, and in this way the epic of Cuba in Africa reached the screen, recalls the publication.
PL’s note highlights that «the human perspective stands out in this audiovisual material that has truth as its flag. A truth silenced or distorted in the big media. It has been done for so many years and it is very difficult to change that in one day, Abdurahman told PL.
PAFF is the largest African-American film festival in the United States, and this time it returns to the Cinemark Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles for face-to-face screenings.
More than 200 films from 55 countries, in 18 languages, including 58 world and 32 North American premieres, will be shown. Many titles will also be available virtually, says PL.
