By JACQUELINE LYANGA, Associate Programmer
Film Professional Services
AFM Liaison

Nestled in AFI FEST's World Cinema section is the African Showcase. This selection of new African cinema showcases the turbulence and triumph of changing societies in Guinea (CLOUDS OVER CONAKRY), Mali (FARO - GODDESS OF THE WATERS), Nigeria (WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD) and the Catalan village of Saint Feliu where immigrants from Mali have changed the cultural makeup of the community (NOSALTRES).

The films in this year's showcase are distinctly African but at the same time, they are brilliantly universal. The filmmakers analyze African culture, myths and religion in the African oral tradition, but it infused with an intensely contemporary point of view.

CLOUDS OVER CONAKRY, the impressive feature debut of Guinean writer/director Cheick Fantamady Camara takes us into urban Africa, where the new - beauty pageants, Apple laptops, recording studios, beachside bars - clashes with the old, and the weatherman's predicting rain. Camara deftly weaves a relaxed narrative of romance, light comedy and drama into a challenging tapestry of heartbreak and tragedy. Camara is an extraordinarily talented filmmaker on the rise.

Salif Traore, a former assistant to renowned African filmmakers Souleymane Cisse and Abderrahmane Sissako, makes his masterful directing debut with FARO - GODDESS OF THE WATERS -- the story of an engineer who returns to his rural village in Mali many years after having been cast out for being born out of wedlock. It is a cultural narrative we've seen before in African cinema, but all of the elements -- the directing, the cinematography and the screenplay (co-written by by Traore and Olivier Lorelle) -- are remarkably assured and brilliantly rendered.

For a lesson in guerilla filmmaking, Nigerian style, forget film school and look no further than Jamie Meltzer's documentary WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD. Nigeria produces 2, 400 films a year -- it's the third largest producer of films in the world, after the United States and India. This bustling new Nigerian film industry is known as "Nollywood." Meltzer showcases the African ingenuity of Nollywood directors, Izu Ojukwu, who learned how to make movies by building a projector from scratch and Chico Ejiro (aka "Mr. Prolific") who has made so many films that he doesn't remember the plotlines. This is one of the most inspiring and entertaining films about moviemaking that you will ever see. Not to be missed.

In NOSALTRES, award-winning Senegalese filmmaker, Moussa Toure, takes us into the Catalan village of Saint Feliu, where the influx of immigrants from Mali has swelled tensions in the village. Toure turns on his camera and forces all of the village's inhabitants to confront and confess their ignorance, their prejudices and their fears directly to the camera -- it's a powerful act of exceptional emotional intelligence through which Toure perfectly recaptures the humanity of their souls.

All of the filmmakers in this year's African Showcase owe a great debt of inspiration and genius to the father of African cinema Ousmane Sembene, who died this year, at the age of 84. Sembene burst onto the international cinema scene in 1965 with the French New-Wave inspired Black Girl (La Noire de...), his feature debut -- a film that is commonly referred to as the first African film. AFI FEST is screening Sembene's film FAAT KINE (2000) at the Festival as part of its Milestones tribute section. For screening times and ticket information, visit www.AFI.com/AFIFEST.