AFRO@DIGITAL: An African Look at Digital Technology

Country: Congo
Year: 2002
Length: 52 minutes
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary

Congolese filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda has just finalized documentary Afro@digital, co-produced by Akangbé Productions (France), Dipanda Yo! (DR of Congo) and funding by Unesco, CNC, the French Foreign Affairs' media office, the Francophonie Agency. The 52 minute documentary explores how digital technology has changed the lives of Africans and raises challenging questions about the use of technology in fashion, music, film, television, research, politics, and governance and in documenting humanity's memory.

"Technology is about a whole mind set" and Africans have much to say about it.

The filmmaker travelled to different countries searching for answers and giving the floor to African professionals using digital technology. Providing a positive and encouraging message about the development potential of digital technology in African countries, the documentary avoids traditional "pauperization" of African issues and offers a fresh approach to this much debated topic. Through the use of metaphor, the documentary even suggests that it was actually on the African continent that digital technology was invented some 20,000 years ago!!

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Country: Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon
Year: 1996
Length: 40 minutes
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Drama/Comedy

A wicked political satire about African dictators, this film tells the story of the president of a fictitious African nation who spends a sleepless night playing checkers with a pot-smoking vagabond who is claimed to be the "all-around champion". However the rules of the game entail opponents howling vulgar and foul obscenities at one another. The Champion proceeds to insult, and trounce the President. His reward - and fate - are not exactly unexpected in this hilarious send-up of living under tyranny.