Silicon Valley Film Festival Celebrates 15 Years

Whether you’re a Black filmmaker, critic, or simply a lover of cinema, we highly recommend the Silicon Valley African Film Festival.

Source: Janeé Bolden

Our Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden had the pleasure of attending the 15th Annual SVAFF in San Jose where she gained insight from founder Chike Nwoffiah and a number of the filmmakers in attendance, including Dr. John Kani, Julie Dash, Souleymane Cissé and Richard Mofe-Damijo who were all honored as 2024 Cultural Icons during the four-day event.

Source: Janeé Bolden

SVAFF was launched fifteen years ago when Nwoffiah began using film as a tool in college classrooms.

“I was teaching at one of the universities here, teaching African history and I would bring short clips by African filmmakers into my classroom to help animate my curriculum and my students were just in awe of what we were seeing,” Nwoffiah recalled. “It was challenging the very core of what Africa was or could be. These were short stories, and short films by the storytellers themselves from the continent and that revelation was very clear to me that I needed to take this experience and my students into the bigger Silicon Valley community and invite people to a different conversation about Africa. If only they can sit and hear the Africans and see Africa through the lenses of those Africans…”

Nwoffiah’s first Silicon Valley Film Festival was held on a Saturday for a half day, screening some 10-12 films, but the impact that was felt was immeasurable.

“People came, we had conversations outside the screenings and it was just amazing the reaction,” Nwoffiah recalled. “There was an immediate demand for more and hence was the birth of what today is the 15th annual Silicon Valley African Film Festival. From that humble beginning of half a day, 12 films, this year we’re showing 85 films, 38 countries are represented and the festival spans four days. Cultural competency is important, and when we tell it, we should tell it unapologetically on our terms. That’s why we theme our program ‘Africa Through the African Lens.’ It’s not only about building the continental shelves of Africa, it’s brothers and sisters in our festival connecting throughout the diaspora, from the United States, from Brazil, from Senegal, Nigeria to tell the global African story.”

Our SVAFF experience kicked off on Industry Day, held two days before the official opening ceremony for SVAFF when we joined the participating filmmakers on a visit to YouTube’s office in San Bruno, CA. After our arrival, we were hosted by two employees (members of Black@YouTube) who gave us a tour of the campus and answered questions.

This visit was particularly special because Souleymane Cissé (often referred to as “the greatest living African filmmaker”) was among the group. Hailing from Mali, Cissé’s film Yeelen became the first African film to win the Jury Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Cissé was also awarded the Carrosse d’Or award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

In addition to his global recognition and personal accomplishments, Cissé has served as a guiding light to other African filmmakers through his foundation of the Union of West African Cinema and Audiovisual Designers. The definition of a humble giant, Cissé was truly a joy to spend time with during Industry Day. The legendary director mingled with the other filmmakers, laughing and joking, often with his phone camera out, capturing the events of the day. Before leaving the YouTube campus, the festival filmmakers took a moment to pay homage to Cissé.

Nwoffiah also spoke with BOSSIP about his motivation for bringing the filmmakers to YouTube headquarters:

“It’s something that we started several years ago, just to give our guests and filmmakers a taste that is uniquely Silicon Valley,” Nwoffiah told BOSSIP. “We have the world headquarters of all these companies here and we have relationships with these companies, the people that work there are human beings like us, and so we try to use the opportunity to expose our filmmakers and get them into these spaces. We’ve received feedback that it helps demystify these plaforms for them. If you think about the lonely filmmaker in Sudan or somewhere in Brazil, the idea of YouTube is something they interact with on their computer. To be in the physical space that is actually the building and then meet, greet and touch human beings that look like them that work in that space, it does something to their minds. They get to meet senior executives that look like them, have conversations with them about their operations and all of that, and this is uniquely Silicon Valley.”

On Thursday, Oct. 10th., the festival launched its first film summit at San Jose State with the theme “Identities and Representations in African Cinema.” Check out the post below for more details about the panels:

Attendees were treated to a day of panel discussions featuring conversations about film studies, gender, media, distribution, and more. Afterward, Adobe hosted a reception and dinner for the filmmakers.

Next up was at the festival was a School Day offering screenings for local middle school students followed by the official opening ceremony red carpet. By Friday, we’d had so many conversations with the filmmakers taking part that we truly felt like one big family.

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After watching the introductions of this year’s Cultural Icons Souleymane Cissé, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Julie Dash and Dr. John Kani, attendees were directed into the main theater to watch the opening night films, both from Uganda. The first film, a narrative short called Half Chocolate, Half Vanilla, was directed by Kabuye Nodryn Evanci and tells the story of a young woman struggling with vitiligo who learns to appreciate her unique beauty.

The second film, a narrative feature titled Makula directed by Nisha Kalema and Dan Mugisha, also starred Kalema as a woman who believes she’s fallen in love, only to learn that her newlywed husband is running a black market business involving sex slavery as well as human and organ trafficking.

Kalema, who is also an SVAFF alum, was emotional as she described her feelings about having her film be one of the opening night features.

“The first time I had an opening film I think I had no idea what it meant,” Kalema told BOSSIP. “Right now, the pressure is real. All my idols are here, people I really admire and respect i’m honored and excited and nervous all at the same time. I just hope they really like the film.”

On Saturday, festival attendees were treated to an open African market set up outside of the historic Hoover Theater with stalls featuring clothing, fragrance oils, books, toys and more!

Following the shopping experience was Saturday afternoon’s fashion show featuring designers like Cameroon native Kevin of Picasso Style.

We especially loved the look he created for Nigerian acting great Richard Mofe Damijo for opening ceremonies.

A number of great films were shown Saturday but one of our favorites from the weekend was definitely Memories of Love Returned by Ugandan-American actor and director Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, which tied for a Best Documentary Feature win at the Festival. The film tells the story of his encounter with Ugandan photographer Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo. After randomly stumbling upon the photographer’s studio, Mwine was met with stunning portraits of the people of Mbirizi, some dating back to the 1960’s.

We don’t want to spoil it for you, but stay tuned for more details in our exclusive interview with Mwine. For any readers in London, Memories of Love Returned will be premiering at Film Africa Saturday, Oct. 26 at 6pm at the Ritzy Picturehouse. For tickets and more info, click HERE.

Another favorite from the weekend was Celestina Aleobua’s documentary short Tina, When Will You Marry?. The film addresses the pressures women often face to get married and explores the experiences of three very different Nigerian-Canadian women.

You can visit the SVAFF website for a full synopsis of all the films shown and hit the flip for more details from the SVAFF closing ceremonies

Interestingly enough, Chike Nwoffiah told us, “As soon as you arrive it’s like a family BBQ, you come in the back door, you’re going out through the front door.” This perfectly sums up the vibes for SVAFF.

Source: Janeé Bolden

For us, one of the biggest draws of this year’s SVAFF was the opportunity to watch Julie Dash be honored as a Cultural Icon and get her flowers as the creator of one of the greatest film homages to the diaspora: Daughters of the Dust.

“Being an African-American there is a bit of a disconnect so I was so surprised when I got the invitation,” Julie Dash told BOSSIP about being honored at the Silicon Valley Film Festival. “It was like, ‘Ohh yeah? Yes!”

The first African-American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film in the U.S., Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust tells the story of three generations of Gullah women in the Peazant family as they prepare to leave their home on St. Helena Island and migrate North at the turn of the century (the film is set in 1902).

Daughters of the Dust was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 2004 by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It also served as a reference point for Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, Solange’s album, A Seat At The Table, and the works of Kerry James Marshall, Ava DuVernay, and The Roots, among other artists.

“It feels good in retrospect, but I don’t think about it often because I’m always thinking of the next project,” Dash told BOSSIP about the impact of Daughters of The Dust. “I’m like seven or eight projects down from Daughters of the Dust, so I’m thinking about those right now, but it’s a good feeling to know that people still appreciate it and that there’s a whole new generation of people who weren’t even born yet who are seeing it now.”

We also spoke with Dash about the growing number of Black and female directors who are making a name for themselves both in Hollywood and independently.

“The change was made by us, now wasn’t it?” Dash remarked. “There was like a hundred years of Hollywood and cinema and here comes Ava [DuVernay] who produces Queen Sugar and hires all these women directors and that had never been done before. Never. So she made a huge impact on all of our lives.”

Currently the Diana King Endowed Professor at Spelman College’s Department of Art & Visual Culture, Dash also told BOSSIP the advice she offers her students:

“It’s about finding your own voice and standing in your truth and sharing that with the world, and a lot of my students are making films that are healing themselves, it’s about self-healing.”

In addition to her work directing on Season 1 of Reasonable Doubt, Dash recently directed the fourth episode of Reasonable Doubt’s second season and she has a short film showing at the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Dash is currently working on a feature length documentary called Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl about Vertamae Smart Grovesnor