AfricAid to Host Second Annual Kisa Film Festival
This Sunday Denver non-profit AfricAid will host the second annual Kisa Film Festival at the Starz Film Center. The festival will feature a number of shorts by Coloradans about their connection to places around the continent of Africa. Each of the two screenings, one at 4pm and another at 6:15, will play the 2004 Sengalese-Spanish co-production Binta and the Great Idea which was nominated for an academy award for Best Short Film.
We here at metroAfrican were excited to be part of a digital story telling workshop earlier this month where we created a piece that will play at the festival. "Out of Context" deals with metroAfrican founders Daniel and Isabel Muturi Sauve, an American and a Kenyan, as they interact with each other's culture.
See the press release below for all the details and see the festival program here.
___________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
- Contact: Nina Shuyler
- AfricAid
- (303) 351-4928
Local film festival showcases Coloradans’ Connections to Africa
AfricAid Hosts Second Annual Kisa Film Festival at the Starz Film Center at the Tivoli in Denver
Denver, Colo. October 13, 2009– AfricAid announces the Second Annual Kisa Film Festival to support girls’ education in Africa. On October 25th, at 4:00 and 6:15 p.m., AfricAid will screen short films directed by Coloradans about their experiences, work, and travels in Africa at the Starz Film Center at the Tivoli Student Union in Denver. Produced with support from the Colorado branch of the Center for Digital Storytelling, the films will introduce festival-goers to a new kind of movie-making that connects people from different countries and cultures, which AfricAid uses as part of their girls’ scholarship and leadership program, the Kisa Project.
“Attendees will get a glimpse into the deep connections that Coloradans have developed with Africa– the people, the land, and its cultures,” says AfricAid Executive Director, Ashley Shuyler, who founded the organization in 2001 at the age of 16. AfricAid has since raised nearly $700,000 in its efforts to help support the educational needs of girls in Africa.
At the inaugural festival in 2008, “everyone enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about life in Africa,” said Shuyler. “But this year, we hope that people will leave the festival feeling both inspired and empowered to begin building their own strong bonds with individuals across the ocean through AfricAid’s Kisa Project.”
Kisa, from the Swahili word meaning “story”, gives African girls scholarships to secondary school,
enrolls them in a two-year leadership training program, and connects them to their sponsors in the U.S. through an interactive website. Using the Center for Digital Storytelling’s model, girls in Africa are able to tell their own life stories in video format and bring the realities of everyday existence in Africa to life for their sponsors in the United States. “Kisa will connect Americans and Africans in a new and rich way,” Shuyler says.
“These were human beings just like me,” Kisa filmmaker Mark Mann narrates in his short film about the life-long friends he made during his first trip to Kenya, “In the end, I realized that everyone is the same,” Mann says, whether African or American.
The money raised from the festival will go directly to educate and empower young girls in Africa through the Kisa Project, which will launch in Tanzania in 2010. Admission is free and refreshments will be served.
For more information on AfricAid’s Kisa Film Festival visit: http://africaid.com/?page_id=957
About AfricAid
AfricAid is an international non-profit organization that supports girls’ education in Africa in order to provide young women with the opportunity to transform their own lives and improve the future of their communities.
AfricAid’s origins date back to 1996 when its founder, Ashley Shuyler, traveled to Tanzania with her family at the age of 11 and saw first-hand the enormous educational needs that exist there. Determined to find a way to help, she formed AfricAid in 2001 at the age of 16, which has since raised nearly $700,000 in its efforts to help support the educational needs of girls in Africa.
The Kisa Project is a new AfricAid initiative that will provide school scholarships and leadership training to some of Africa’s brightest young women. Through sponsorships provided by American families and groups, these young women will be able to complete their secondary school education, while also participating in a formal, two-year leadership training program. At the same time, through a specially designed curriculum and interactive website, American sponsors will develop a truly meaningful connection with their Kisa Scholar in Africa. Through the website and curriculum, they will be given the concrete tools they need to develop cross-cultural relationships, become leaders, and undertake service in their local and global communities on an ongoing basis.
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