ADIFF ’24: Lanier

Lake Lanier in Georgia is [still] named after Sidney Lanier, who was best known as a poet, but also served in the Confederate army. As hawkish conservative, it never made much sense that we have so many landmarks named after Confederates. After all, we the United States of America, kicked their butts after they violated their oaths to the Constitution and betrayed their country. It should be called Lake Sherman, because nobody did more for Atlanta’s construction companies. Regardless, the directing-screenwriting tandem of William Eric Anderson & Cindy Estenfanie Kunz-Anderson do not even have time for him. They are more concerned with the supernatural desire to avenge racial injustices of the early 20^th Century in Lanier, which screens as part of the 2024 African Diaspora International Film Festival.

The lucky Stevenson family won a weekend getaway to partake in the “Lake Lanier Experience,” a cultural event curated by Mariah Wilson’s nonprofit. As a cop, James Stevenson has a keen awareness of the number of people who go missing around the lake-area each year. Yet, he [mistakenly] assumes Wilson’s lodge is safe.

However, he takes an instant dislike to her husband, Daniel, even though he works as a CSI investigator. If anything, he should trust his instincts more, because Wilson is haunted by his grandfather, who was one of the men lynched in Oscarville, the Reconstruction-era Black community that was eventually cleared and flooded during the construction of Lake Lanier. For years, Wilson lured victims to the lake, hoping to satisfy his grandfather’s lust for blood. It is clear the Stevensons will be next, even though their daughter Kayla immediately forged a close friendship with the Wilsons’ daughter Tasha.

Anderson and Kunz-Anderson try to use the real-life haunted lore surrounding Lake Lanier and the submerged town of Oscarville to tell a socially conscious horror story. Unfortunately, they invest more time and energy making their points than in developing suspense and tension. They capture several creepy images, but that is about all they can offer horror fans. Even with a modest 73-minute running time, their pacing feels sluggish.

ADIFF ’24: Joe Bullet

According to hiis theme song: “He’s the man, the man who fights evil. He’s the man, the man who fights crime. He’s the man nobody can tie down.” Maybe the band credited as “Silver Threads” does not go as far as Isaac Hayes did describing John Shaft as a “sex machine” and a “bad mother,” but they clearly went for a similar vibe. Yet, this is not just another blaxploitation movie. It was the first South African-produced film featuring an all-black cast. Suppressed shortly after its 1973 premiere, it has been recently “rediscovered” (hardly forgotten, it spawned a1982 sequel) and freshly restored. Over fifty years later, Louis de Witt’s Joe Bullet returns to the big screen as a selection of the 2024 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

South African must have a rough-and-tumble football tradition. considering ANC-breakaway politician Mosiuoa Lekota is still affectionately nicknamed “Terror” from his time on the pitch. However, the tactics unleashed against the Eagles club are beyond acceptable bounds. Fortunately, the Eagles president knows Joe Bullet, a very Shaft-like detective, because gangsters targeted his two best players, Jerry and Flash, trying to strong-arm them into switching to the Falcons club, right before the rematch of the Cup championship.

Obviously, Bullet must protect them, while lending a hand as a replacement for the trainer killed during the prologue. Of course, Bullet’s alpha-manliness inadvertently complicates matters when Jerry’s sort of girlfriend Beauty, the club president’s daughter, inevitably falls for the detective.

Sure, Joe Bullet is a derivative low-budget exploitation movie, but it is solidly enjoyable on those terms alone. However, it also represents some significant South African cultural history. It is recognized as the first South African film of its kind. Frankly, some reasonable, free-thinking Western viewers might be baffled by the censorship of the film, because it makes absolutely no political statements, explicit or implied. Presumably, the Apartheid government simply considered a black hero of Bullet’s strength, stature, and pride to represent a threat.

Still, lead actor Ken Gampu went on to become a trailblazing South African movie star (despite his weird open-palmed, slightly Gumpish running style). Gampu co-starred in two Golan-Globus Cannon films, King Solomon’s Mines and American Ninja 4: The Annihilation, as well as the breakout art-house hit The Gods Must Be Crazy, all which qualifies him as legendary.

ADIFF ’24: Far from the Nile

The prospect of war between Egypt and Ethiopia is well within the realm of possibility, all because of the Nile and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The strategic value of water cannot be over-estimated. It is not the new oil. Rather oil was the new water—almost. However, this ensemble of musicians hopes the Nile can connect them rather than divide them. Despite differing cultures and nationalities, their styles are quite compatible. Nevertheless, the usual stress of touring might undermine some of their bridge-building in Sherief Elkatsha’s documentary, Far from the Nile, which screens as a selection of the 2024 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

The Nile Project is a musical nonprofit actively working with musicians in eleven nations based along the Nile. Their big showcase is a multi-national touring ensemble designed to set a musical example for transnational cross-cultural cooperation. In 2017, they embarked on a 100-day American tour, which would be even be grueling for top acts traveling by charter planes and limousines. The Nile Project was booked into Motel 6’s, but they would up meeting some typical Americans that way.

The Nile Project musicians do not play Afrobeat or Highlife, but fans of successful crossover African musicians should still feel at home with their percussive rhythms. Inevitably, set-list inclusion often became a sore point of contention. Ironically, one of the best tunes of the film, a feature spot for Ethiopian vocalist Selamnesh Zemene, was almost cut because the musicians were struggling with communication and the rhythm.

At least twice, emergency group meetings were called. Kenyan percussionist Kasiva Mutua sort calls out some of her colleagues when she suggests some of group (including her) consider the tour a mission, whereas others see it as just another gig.