Blackstar International Film Festival 2019 opens in Accra
The fourth edition of the Blackstar International Film Festival has opened in Accra with hundreds of visitors from all over the world patronising.
The opening ceremony took place on Tuesday, August 20, at the Alliance Francaise in Accra with a cocktail screening of two opening films, Nirvana — a Ghanaian film by Richard Governor, and Solvable — a film produced by The Rockafeller Foundation.
This year’s edition, which coincides with the Year of Return has subsequently been adopted as one of the key activities of the celebration ( Year of Return) on the theme ‘Connecting Cultures through Film’.
The week-long festival will see a wide range of activities including workshops, panel sessions, the African Film market, a music concert, awards night and daily film screenings all happening in the city of Accra-Ghana.
Organizers say that this year’s event received entries from 25 countries with Ghanaian films competing on the same level with several of the international films submitted. Participants for this year’s event are from Nigeria, Brazil, Uganda, Kenya, France, the United States and 28 other countries.
Speaking to The Ghana Report, the founder of the Blackstar International Film Festival, Miss Juliet Yaa Asantewaa Asante, said the festival was gradually gaining international recognition so much so that it will soon be competing with other festivals like Cannes in France and FESPACO in Burkina Faso because Ghana is now a film hub.
“We can now also proudly say as Ghanaians, we have a film festival we can be proud of and certainly our goal is to make it as good as any of those festivals (FESPACO, Cannes) that I have mentioned,” she said.
She continued that the resilience of her team will make sure the festival gets bigger.
“Maybe those festivals should watch out for us because you know as Ghanaians, when we put our minds to something, we do a good job,” she added.
Aside from the event attracting people from other countries, especially people from the diaspora who were also here as part of activities marking the year of return, it also saw the attendance of several Ghanaian filmmakers and celebrities such as Akorfa Edjeani-Asiedu, Prince David Osei, Berla Mundi, Stephanie Benson and the recent winner of the Miss Ghana pageant, Rebecca Nana Adwoa Kwabi.
The Blackstar International Film Festival is an annual event organized by the Blackstar International Film Institute with a focus on showcasing African and Ghanaian films and by doing so, giving filmmakers a common platform to network and share ideas.