Africa in Motion is a largely volunteer-run festival, founded in 2006 by good friends Lizelle Bisschoff and Melissa Trachtenberg. At the time, Lizelle had just commenced with a PhD in African cinema, and quickly came to realise how difficult it is to access African films. Not wanting to keep her research to the academic realm only, she founded the Africa in Motion film festival alongside Melissa in order to create more opportunities for Scottish audiences to see African films and to provide a platform to African filmmakers to exhibit their work in Scotland.
The main aims of the festival have been, since its inception, to introduce Scottish audiences to the brilliance of African cinema and to overcome the under-representation and marginalisation of African film in British film-going culture. We believe that the best way to learn about Africa is to listen to African voices and to view representations created by African themselves, as these often counter the stereotypical representations we see from Africa in mainstream media in the West. But our main reason for screening the films is because we believe they are great films which should be seen the world over. Our audiences agree with us – we are proud that our audiences have grown from around 1,300 people in 2006 to over 3,000 people in 2010!
Lizelle Bisschoff - E-mail
Isabel Moura Mendes - E-mail
Kari Ann Shiff – E-mail
Stefanie Van de Peer
Adam Barnett: Filming and Editing
Zora King: Volunteer School Tour Coordinator E-mail
Natalia Palombo: Marketing & Sponsorship Assistant E-mail
Natalia Rodríguez Domínguez: Website Development and Marketing E-mail
Jamie Young: Graphic Designer E-mail
Darling Forsyth: Website Design & Hosting
Thank you also to all the volunteers who come on board just before and during the festival!
Mark Cousins – Film critic, writer and producer
Andrew Lawrence – Honorary Fellow at the University of Vienna
Noe Mendelle – Head of Film and TV at the Edinburgh College of Art and Director of the Scottish Documentary Institute
David Murphy – Senior lecturer at the University of Stirling and a leading scholar on African Film
Paul Nugent – Professor of Comparative African History and Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh
Browse our archives for previous festival programmes: