Eight new features make their Chicago premieres at the African Diaspora Film Festival.
by Drew Hunt, J.R. Jones and Ben Sachs
Created by the independent distributor ArtMattan Productions, the African Diaspora Film Festival premiered in New York in 1993 and arrived in Chicago as a touring festival ten years later, thanks mainly to the efforts of Facets Cinematheque programmer Charles Coleman. Like the social migration it's named after, the fest has always been hard to pin down, and the 12th local edition is no different: the subject matter of the ten features and two shorts screening this week range from the U.S. civil rights movement (Freedom Summer) to the persecution of Egyptian Jews (Jews in Egypt) to an 18th-century slave revolt in Curaçao (Tula, the Revolt) to an Islamist kidnapping plot in Morocco (The Miscreants).…[ Read more ]