NYC Arts: The Complete Guide to Art and Culture

The African Film Festival (AFF) builds the American audience for African film through an annual film festival in New York, a National Traveling Film Series, various panel discussions and a number of educational outreach and community programs.

Established in 1993, the African Film Festival offers screenings and panel discussions that run over the course of two months from April to May. Screenings showcase critically acclaimed releases of feature- and short-format works by African directors as well as those of African descent living around the world. In recent years the festival has been hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in conjunction with the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The multiplicity of stories emerging from post-colonial Africa are at once fascinating and complex. Left to themselves after the withdrawal of the European powers, Africans had to construct new identities. African filmmakers therefore have drawn on themes of myth, fantasy, humor and magic to nourish a narrative sensibility in which tradition and modernity encounter each other, sometimes starkly.

• Gift Shops: Visit African Film Festival's Web site for DVDs of classic and contemporary films from Africa and the Diaspora.