by Yohannes Zecharias
A group of San Jose SIATech students attended the Silicon Valley African Film Festival and created a mini-festival of our own. Feeling that a cultural gap needed to be filled, we banded together to have our own foreign film festival leading up to the one in Silicon Valley.
Watching movies that ranged from comedy to social/political commentary—sampling themes of prejudice, isolation, adversity, and conviction—our in-house foreign film festival (complete with snacks and drinks) was a nice and enriching break from the norm.
As a part of our exploration of different places and cultures, we did a map activity that highlighted economic inequality around the world as manifested by nutrition, health, literacy, life expectancy, child labor, war, carbon emissions, etc.
When our festival project came to a close we went to the actual African film festival. We were excited to find diverse movie goers from university professors to directors who were delighted to converse about opinions and backgrounds.
We watched two very good films, one called “The Children’s Republic,” a film starring Danny Glover about a group of children who flee a violent land and find a city devoid of violence and chaos… or adults. The second film, called “The Pardon,” revolved around two friends torn apart by their Rwandan environment and what they and their warring tribes would have to do to overcome the cycle of deep-rooted prejudice and division.
Luckily for us, the festival had many authentic food and jewelry / clothing vendors. The event was a lot of fun. We shopped and ate. We laughed, we bonded. More importantly, the event was culturally satisfying as it got us out of the classroom and beautifully illustrated the world we live in.
Yohannes Zecharias is a student at SIATech San Jose.
