Once I have seen the films I will post a brief review/synopsis (and post it in bold italics). If you have one, please send it to me and I will include it here.
AFRICA
A Panther in Africa On October 30, 1969, Pete O'Neal, a young Black Panther in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested for transporting a gun across state lines. One year later, O'Neal fled the charge, and for over 30 years, he has lived in Tanzania, one of the last American exiles from an era when activists considered themselves at war with the U.S. government.
Camels,Courts,and Concubine: The Adventures of Ibn Battutah (based on his book, Travels with a Tangerine) hosted by classicist Tim Mackintosh-Smith (author of the book of the same name), this BBC/NATGEO documentary traces Ibn Battuta's journey from Tangier to China.
God Grew Tired of Us (2006) "explores the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan who leave their homeland, triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities and move to America, where they build active and fulfilling new lives but remain deeply committed to helping the friends and family they have left behind."
Lost Boys of Sudan (2003) "is an Emmy-nominated feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America."
Stolen (2009)
Filmmakers Ayala and Fallshaw follow Fetim Sellami, a Saharawi refugee, to North Africa for a reunion with her mother. Mother and child were separated when Sellami was a toddler. But the UN-sponsored reunion reveals a secret which spirals the film into a dark world the filmmakers could never have imagined. The black Saharawis start talking about a forbidden subject…Their enslavement.
The Redemption of General Butt Naked Joshua Milton Blahyi, aka General Butt Naked, murdered thousands during Liberia's horrific 14-year civil war. Today this once brutal warlord has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as Evangelist Joshua Milton Blahyi.
The film follows Blahyi's quest to redeem himself, as he attempts to reconcile with his victims and rehabilitate the fighters who once killed for him
War Dance (2006) The film centers on three children - Rose, a 13-year-old choir singer; Nancy, a 14-year-old dancer; and Dominic, a 14-year-old xylophone player. They are members of the Acholi ethnic group, living in the remote northern Uganda refugee camp of Patongo, which is under military protection from the Lord's Resistance Army, a terrorist group that has been rebelling against the government for the past two decades. In 2005, the camp's primary school won its regional music competition and headed to Kampala to participate in the annual National Music Competition. War/Dance focuses on three of the eight categories: Western choral performance, instrumental music, and traditional dance, where the students perform the Bwola, the dance of the Acholi.
The Devil Came on Horseback
The Jews and the longest kiss in history
http://vimeo.com/21752090
Where the Blue and the White Nile meet is known as the longest kiss in history. This is where the story of the Jews in the Sudan starts with eight Jewish families living under Egyptian-Turkish rule before 1880. In 1977 a group of Jewish people, having fled persecution in the Sudan during the 60’s, organised a highly secret mission to transfer the buried remains in the Jewish cemetery and the Torah Scrolls from Khartoum to Jerusalem. This film reveals the unusual journey of the sacred books away from the Sudan to make known how this most enigmatic community has kept its identity as, The Jews of Sudan. In 1945 the Jewish population of Sudan numbered near a thousand, today it is zero. ‘The Jews and the longest kiss in history’ is a journey through history told by those that experienced it at firsthand. The film chronicles life under the Mahdi, the effect of British imperialism on the community and the eventual exile and deliberate obliteration of all signs of Judaism in the Sudan.
