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February 9, 2023   |   By The New York Community Trust
First person with Mahen Bonetti: Sparking a conversation through film

Photo courtesy of passerby

Mahen Bonetti is the founder and executive director of African Film Festival, which is using a Trust grant to archive its collection of movies from the African diaspora and make them more widely available. This May marks the 30th anniversary of its New York African Film Festival.

“My first lightbulb moment was at the Paris Theater on 58th Street. It was the late 1970s and I was working at an ad agency and would eat my lunch at the theater—sometimes it would just be me and the projectionist—and I discovered the work of great directors, including Ousmane Sembène of Senegal. It was a reclamation of African identity for me; it was African storytelling.

My family came to the United States for political asylum from Sierra Leone when I was 14. When I returned to New York after college in the late 1970s, the city was facing so many constraints, including bankruptcy, but the cultural scene was really ripe. It was diverse, inclusive, worldly, and I found my footing in that space. Because I was outside my continent, looking in, I started appreciating African human experiences.

I wanted to give Africa a back story. I wanted to find a counterpoint to the narrative of famine, of corruption, of upheaval. Everything you see on the nightly news is going on, but there are more layers to those stories.

In those days when I went to see the occasional African movie playing in New York, the audience was mostly people of European descent. I realized access to information was key. There was this belief that people of color were not interested in these stories.

My second lightbulb moment was going to an African film festival in Locarno, Switzerland: I discovered 30 years of African cinema.

When we launched the New York African Film Festival in 1993, we spent time going into communities—speaking to people in laundromats, churches, community centers—letting them know what we wanted to do.

The image you see on the screen is the catalyst to spark a larger discussion. For every program we do, we make sure there is a discussion as well, because that is equally important. That is the most democratic space. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Read other stories from our 2023 Winter Newsletter.

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Peter Panapento
peter@turn-two.co
(202) 531-3886

Courtney Biggs
cbi@nyct-cfi.org
(212) 889-3963

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Press Contact Information

Peter Panapento
peter@turn-two.co
(202) 531-3886

Courtney Biggs
cbi@nyct-cfi.org
(212) 889-3963

>> Get our press kit <<

Statue of Liberty in Red