THE WEST African Documentary Forum, a non profit making organization has announced that its 3rd Annual Real Life Pan-African Documentary Film Festival would start showing in Accra between 31st May and 6th June, 2008.

Under the theme, “Africans Representing Themselves”, 52 films from Africa and the diaspora would be shown free of charge at four venues across Accra beginning this Saturday, 31st May at the GAMA Executive Theater.

The rest are scheduled for the Alliance Francaise, Holy Garden (Kwame Nkrumah Circle) and the Goethe Institute, all in Accra.

At a press soiree in Accra last Wednesday, one of the founders of the festival, Mr. Awam Amkpa, who is also a professor of Drama and Film at the New York University in the USA told Beatwaves that the festival was to inspire Africans to document their own histories while exchanging film vocabularies, methods and contexts with filmmakers from other continents.

He said, “Our reason for organizing the festival for the third time is to encourage and make Africans take interest in telling our own stories very well,” adding that their target was also to use the occasion to train younger filmmakers particularly in Africa.

According to him the festival would be used in touring the whole of Africa as well as Europe. From Accra, the festival would move to Conakry in Guinea.

As in past events, the festival while in Accra would provide a forum for showcasing innovative and historical documentaries on African and Diasporan communities and themes.

This will feature professional workshops on new technologies of film production and digital archiving as well as networks with films and television outlets worldwide.

In addition there would be two unusual and exciting exhibitions from a high school visual literacy program in which students would present outstanding works.

Participants would be from film schools in Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Sudan and the USA.

There would be three prizes for outstanding works. They include Best African Film worth $5,000, an Afro-Pop prize sponsored by US based National Black Programming Consortium; the Best African Diaspora film also worth $5000 and Walter Mosley Prize.

The Best African film student will be awarded the Joe Ampah Memorial prize worth $1000.