The North Carolina State Univeristy Africana Studies Program and African American Cultural Center will present the "Eleventh Annual Africana Studies African Diaspora Film Festival: Journeys of Discovery," on Monday evenings on October 1st, 8th, 22nd, 29th and November 5th 2012. All screenings will be take place in the Witherspoon Student Center cinema and will begin at 7:00PM. The films selected for the festival focus on the experience that link love, war and politics.

On Monday, October 1, 2012 at 7:00PM the festival opens with Apocalypse Africa Made in America, this seventy-two minute documentary film looks at the continent after World War II, when new leadership and democratic governments seemed to place much of Africa on a path to prosperity and development. Since that initial prosperity boom, twenty million Africans have died of disease, starvation, and war. The film, produced and directed by ashington DC based filmmaker and journalist Del Walters, suggests that, after record growth in the 1950s, a series of internationally orchestrated local conflicts have positioned Africa as a place where the US and other developed world nations and corporations can continue to exercise economic and political control.

The festival continues on Monday, October 8, 2012 at 7:00PM with the feature film, Sleepwalking Land [Terra Sonâmbula]. In the midst of Mozambique's devastating civil war, Muidinga, an orphaned refugee, wanders the countryside in search of his mother. His only companion is an elderly storyteller; the only guide to finding his mother is a dead man's diary. Together, the storyteller and the diary lead him on a magical, and sometimes macabre, journey across war–torn landscapes to find the family he lost. Directed by Teresa Prata, the film is in Portuguese with English subtitles.

On Monday, October 22, 2012 Night Catches Us premiers at 7:00PM. Directed by Tanya Washington and
starring Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie, this feature film focuses on the personal impact of the Black Power Movement. In 1976, after years of mysterious absence, Marcus (Mackie) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age. While his arrival raises suspicion among his family and former neighbors, he finds acceptance from his old friend Patricia (Washington) and her daughter. However, Marcus quickly finds himself at odds with the organization he once embraced.

The festival presents Mama C: Urban Warrior in the African Bush, a documentary by North Carolina filmmaker, Joanne Hirschfield, on Monday, October 29, 2012 at 7:00PM. The film explores the life of Charlotte "Mama C" O'Neal and her decade's long project of coming to terms with who she is. An African American raised in Kansas City, KS, O'Neal joined the Eldridge Cleaver faction of Black Panther Party. In 1972, at the age of 19, she joined her husband to live in exile. For over 30 years, she has lived in Tanzania where the artist, poet, sculptor and singer has created a most unusual and engaged life.

The festival concludes on Monday November 5, 2012 at 7:00PM with An African Election. The 2008 presidential election in Ghana, West Africa, serves as a backdrop for this feature documentary as it looks behind-the-scenes at the complex, political machinery of a democracy. At stake in the race are the fates of two political parties that will do almost anything to win. Directed by Jarreth J. Merz and Kevin Merz, the film examines the election of John Atta Mills (1944-2012), the only sitting president of Ghana to die while in office.

The African Diaspora Film Festival is free and open to the public. Campus Cinema is located in the A.M. Witherspoon Student Center at 2810 Cates Avenue on the NC State University campus. Discussions led by various Africana Studies faculty will follow each screening.

The Africana Studies Program, housed in the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University, offers students the opportunity to study the Black
experience in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. Students explore topics, issues and research
from cross-cultural, international, transnational and multidisciplinary perspectives.