Sudanese Film Festival

The European Film Festival in Khartoum has become an annual cultural event. In the past few years we got the opportunity to view films from Europe at the three cultural centres namely British Council, Goethe Institut -German Centre and the Institut Francais -French Cultural Centre. This year there were a few Sudanese films screened and I chose to see only these films. I have had the privilege of seeing Taghreed Elsanhouri’s ‘Our Beloved Sudan’ at some other place and the films I saw at the festival are ‘The Rabbaba Man’ directed by Mario Mabor; ’Blue Stars’ directed by Alsadig Mohamed and ‘Nomads’ directed by Mohamed Hanafi. These three documentaries were the product of the first batch from the workshop at the Sudan Film Factory of Goethe Institut. All three had the common theme of Musical Journeys in Sudan. All three were documentaries about musicians, their passion for music and their livelihood. Blue Star spoke of musicians from the yesteryear jazz bands, Nomads spoke of how music loving workmen converted their workshop to jamming sessions, leaving their hammers aside and fixing their guitar strings and reeds of their saxophones, but ‘The Rabbaba Man’ was most popular because it was a short film with a singer Mohamed Haraka as the protagonist who makes the string instrument Tanbur and sells it in the market singing his way through but has never been reckoned with. In the other section under the theme ‘A Night of Shorts’  I saw  ‘Grizelda Eltayeb’ directed by El-Tayeb Siddig; ‘Boh’ by Saddam Siddig and ‘Sibha’ by Alshafi Ibrahim Aldaw. The biography of Grizelda was very well made where we appreciate her adaptation to Sudanese Culture having lived in Damar with her husband late Prof. Abdalla Eltayeb whom she had met in England. It was a touching moment to meet her personally at the end and taking her photograph which you can see. I asked my Sudanese friends whether they understood the film ‘Boh’ but they responded with lack of clarity. In ‘Sibha’ we got to see the various forms and places where the Sibha is used and this was interesting. I am happy that I could see these documentaries made in Sudan. Thanks to the European Film Festival for having included them. Special thanks to Talal Afifi, film curator, who is empowering the people of Sudan to express themselves with the power of film at the Sudan Film Factory in Goethe Institut.