Support AFFRM – Kinyarwanda at select theaters this weekend
AFFRM is the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement – empowering black independent filmmakers with collaborative, simultaneous theatrical distribution in multiple markets.
Last March AFFRM got behind Ava DuVernay’s I Will Follow (click for T & T commentary). Giving it a chance to reach a wider audience. This weekend AFFRM is launching Alrick Brown’s KINYARWANDA. Which I will screen on Sunday.
The below video from Reelblack features Brown talking about the film, AFFRM and the state of African American Cinema in general.
For all its greatness, “Hotel Rwanda” nevertheless used the conventional Hollywood technique of a movie star as a protagonist to serve as the audience’s entry point. None of the actors in “Kinyarwanda” are stars, and their characters all live in the same world. By the equal weighting and linking of their stories in rotation, Brown prevents us from anticipating who will prevail. The criticism of this approach by Variety’s critic is unfortunate. Here is a powerful film– rogerebert.com
One Comment
tinseltine.com
Powerful, painful, hopeful, exceptionally well done.
The film feels very authentic – part documentary, part narrative.
Smooth transitions between the multi-stories; we're taken back and forth in time, within a couple of months of the worst of the Rwandan genocide, allowing the audience to see where certain stories intersect.
Looking for Alrick Brown to be Oscar nominated. Would love to see what he can do with just a movie – not a black movie, not a statement film, just a good feature length flick.