Who Do You Think You Are? Come to Lights, Camera, AFRICA!!! 2018

Ugoma Adegoke

The 2018 edition of the Lights, Camera, AFRICA!!! Film Festival will run from September 28 to 30 with focus on the politics of ethnicity and identity as well as protest and resistance.

Venue is the MUSON Centre, Lagos

Proceeding under the umbrella theme of Who Do You Think You Are? this year’s festival seeks to facilitate interrogations of self and more reflective perspectives of our shared humanity.

“It is our thesis that self-knowledge – of history, of culture – situates, locates and informs communities, countries and civilisations,” say the organisers.

“This is because to take away a people’s history is to take away their power.”

Festival director, Ugoma Adegoke, continues: “The festival will focus on growing trends which threaten the ideal of the modern state today. Fragmenting communities and putting up walls – it is our view that this is a result of a poor understanding of what has gone before and our connections to that.

“The modern African continent was built on a cause that transcended individual identities. The new continent developed a common identity and values against the enemy of colonialism and later, apartheid. These were encapsulated in the spirit of Pan-Africanism which gave vent to ideals crafted in protest and resistance – alliance and alignment with other African peoples and causes reflecting a common history and destiny on the continent and throughout the Black Diaspora. The heroes to whom we owe today and the struggles they fought are forgotten. In the years that have followed, it appears as though those histories and identities collapsed.

“With this year’s eighth edition, the festival focuses on a core aspect of its message – to connect with issues that are rooted in the African experience.”