African Film Festival could yield future Oscar winner

Our community is rich in can-do, civic volunteerism. And poor in movie theaters.

So thank goodness for Jackie Fischer. When she is not making the Marble Hill Houses bloom with daffodils and helping young community gardeners plant their cultural roots, she is helping to promote the African Film Festival, an extravaganza of cinematic talent and innovative programs opening Wednesday, May 4 at Lincoln Center. Riverdale, meet African film.  

Worth leaving home for: The African Film Festival is a miracle of grass roots organizing.  Mahen Bonetti, the executive director for the series’ 26 year history, started with simple idea: bring African cinema to the United States, especially to people of African descent in New York City.

“What I felt was there were always people hungry for this information but there was this question of how this information reached them,” she told me. After years of organizing and friend making and meeting the leaders of African immigrant communities, she had an audience to bring to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where the festival has been for 23 years.  

This year, the African Festival celebrates the 50th anniversary of a film that can truly be said to have launched a continent’s cinematic art. Ousbane Sesmene’s “Black Girl” (1966), shimmering with the life of Senegal and the tension of interracial domestic scenes, is a must see. Like the new films in the festival, it is the kind of film you want to discuss with friends or better yet, to make new ones.  Ms. Bonetti programs discussion — and friendship — into the festival. For her, this is the best part of cinema: “Whether the film breaks your heart or makes you want to jump for joy, you can start a friendship that is very real and can last a very long time.”

See the exciting schedule of films and forums at www.africanfilmny.org. You might also be able to say, “I saw the next Oscar winner.”  “Timbuktu,” a 2014 Oscar and BAFTA nominated best picture for foreign film, premiered at the African Film Festival. When the world takes notice, you might say you’ve created an audience for African cinema.

Worth staying home for: What a disappointment. I was at the World’s Fair of 1964. I ate the Belgian waffles.  I saw “Tomorrowland,” the attraction.  And then I watched “Tomorrowland.”  I want my childhood back.

Brad Bird really is one of my favorite filmmakers. “The Incredibles” remains a touchstone for anyone who thinks that people really do give themselves way too much credit. This being academic awards season, I am fully on board. And if you would stop using the word “amazing” to describe what is actually sufficient, that would be fine with me.

But Bird went to far with “Tomorrowland” and made it about all the Aspen Institute and the TED conferences he ever went to. The film’s titular Tomorrowland is actually not in the future but in an alternative dimension that we would know in the real world as Davos, that Swiss conference where the intelligentsia gather to plan the future. There are great effects and there is the obligatory mention of Nicolai Tesla. The film’s smartest moments come when you’re told that the most enjoyable parts of the film were really a commercial. Then you’re supposed to move on. This is fun.

And a clarification for fanboys and fangirls:  though you may not have caught it in my review of “Batman V. Superman,” I consider the Batman fight scenes worthy of the greatest acclaim, on par with those in “Oldboy.”

For more info about the African Film Festival, visit www.africanfilmny.org.