The African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) is kicking off 2018 with a series on the very best films they screened last year. Focused, as its title suggests, on projects from around the world that represent the black experience, the selection of screenings covers ample ground. Opening with Michael Brewer’s The Last Revolutionary, which tells the story of two black men who came together as revolutionaries in the 1970s and who reunite after decades to take stock of what’s changed since they fought alongside one another, The Best of ADIFF addresses history and the current moment in equal measure.
As part of their Afro-Latino program, the fest will be showing two films. First up is El valle de los negros (The Valley of the Black Descendants), a documentary about Chileans of African descent fighting to get official recognition from a State that has concealed their culture and African identity for more than 200 years. Directed by Richard Salgado, the doc offers an intimate look at this community, creating a kind of ethnographic travelogue for viewers who may never have seen this part of Chile on screen before.
Moving further north, The Invisible Color: Black Is More Than A Color investigates the black Cuban exile community in South Florida. Initially conceived as a way to counteract what he saw as a continued if not systemic erasure of Afro-Cubans in the United States’ cultural imagination, The Invisible Color continues director Sergio Giral’s interest in putting forth the black Cuban experience front and center. The film tracks its presence throughout the region, and highlights its contribution to Miami’s civic culture through testimonies and visual documentation.
The Best of the African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) runs from January 12-14.