Monday, November 5, 2007
3:00- 5:00 p.m.
JRC 401

Mr. Socrate Safo, one of the pioneers of the Ghanaian popular video-film industry, will be at UST on November 5th and 6th. On November 5th, he will show clips from a series of his video features and talk about his work in cinema. Please come! The screening is in JRC 401, 3-5pm.

Without any formal training in film or video production, Mr Safo learned the art of making video movies on his own, with the help of borrowed books and through trial and error. Family and friends made up his first crew and cast, and his first production was shot with a JVC M9 vhs home video camera. To date, he has produced and directed over 50 video features, in English and Twi. His titles include Ghost Tears, Lovers Blues, Akwaaba, Amsterdam Diary, Sika Nti, and Dufie. In Ghana, his films have appeared on TV, been released in theatres and are distributed widely in the local market for home viewing. Mr. Safo has presented his work at festivals in Burkina Faso, Italy, Nigeria, Togo, and Holland and last year was a visiting artist at the Recup Art Program in Bayreuth, Germany.

In line with UST’s commitment to diversity, Mr. Safo’s visit provides a unique opportunity to expose students to a transnational and grass roots African cinema that is not widely distributed in the United States, but that is having a powerful impact on filmmaking in Africa and elsewhere. Mr. Safo’s work represents a vibrant, lively, entertaining and tremendously popular African cultural product, one created by Africans for Africans. As Jon Haynes remarks, popular African video productions “are the great success story of African cinema, the only instance in which the local media environment is dominated by producers working in direct relationship with an African audience entirely outside the framework of governmental and European assistance and of international film festivals that has structured so much of African cinema.”

Given the generally negative and stereotypical portrayal of Africa we find in the US media, Mr. Safo’s visit gives the UST community exposure to another side of Africa, one bursting with energy, creativity, ingenuity, and humor.