Why The 17th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival will face some Problems with Vendors and Festival Goers

About a month or so ago, while checking out who was jamming at the World Stage Performance Art Gallery at Leimert Park, my partner in crime, a criminologist turned art collector and trader – call him Obi, because that’s his real name -- told me that the Pan African Film and Arts Festival (PAFF) may be encountering some problems at this year’s annual event for many reasons. (We hang out sometimes and talk local politics and some cultural stuff, but this time around, everything has gone down the drain with an economy gone bad no one knows what’s ‘gonna’ happen tomorrow). According to Obi, as one who is allergic to West Los Angeles, especially Culver City, known for its camera on every nook in this “little bit well to do community and curious-minded cops,” the decision to move the film part of the 17th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival to Culver Plaza Theater on the nine hundred block of Washington Blvd. in Culver City is “just a bad rap.”

The organizers’ of this year’s festival’s decision to move ahead with a change of venue – from the Magic Johnson Theaters on the hub of the “Black Township” within the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza to a not familiar suburb of Culver City -- may have made a bad decision, thus dissuading festival goers due to its new location which is not too familiar with the vendors, tourists and black filmmakers who have been used to the Magic Johnson Theaters on the Crenshaw thoroughfare for many years now.

Many vendors and festival goers I spoke to said the new venue has killed their desire to rent booths and watch the films at a distance for the fact movie goers who normally watch feature films and documentaries at the festival, and then stop by the booths to buy items and artifacts related to the films they watched by walking through the mall where the arts are on display may find it difficult shuttling about six miles from the Culver Plaza Theaters in Culver City to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza where African cultural products are on display.

Meanwhile, the new schedule at this year’s festival has begun to blow some unpleasant air in many years of the festival’s seventeen year history. “The idea that we walk back and forth in the same complex is what connects us to the festival,” said electrician John Hall who lives not too far from the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. “And it is, believe it or not, what makes this festival very unique. I’m not going to bother driving to Culver City. It is way out of the hood.”

And with a bad economy we are now aware of, coupled with the austerity measure that comes along with it, especially in a “New Dawn” we had expected better things ahead on a historic presidency of Barack Obama, never minding the economic meltdown as never seen before since the Great Depression, (so the experts say even though scholars in economics knew in detail the articulated theory of British economist John Maynard Keynes who advocated government intervention in a free market economy is required at a time of economic crisis to better control the economy, and especially unemployment), the new site may attract a wide range of varied ethnicities perhaps to test a new market and see how it plays out. Would that be impulse buying in this case? Who knows?

With the state of California being hit hard, on a budget crisis that has dragged on for three months, out of cash and desperate for a way out of the mess created by a Republican governor and a Democratic majority in the state Assembly, following a tight time, this year’s festival and the move to Culver City is expected to witness the lowest turnout, even though some black “big rollers” will be showing up and playing important roles during the two weeks cultural event. As already planned by the organizers, this year’s festival will be honoring Cicely Tyson, actor Omar Benson Miller will be receiving the Canada Lee Award, California State Assembly Speaker Karen Bass will be honored with the Community Service Award and Marla Gibbs will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

However, a close look at some of this year’s line up of feature films and documentary is quite interesting and reveals that the South African drama “Jerusalema” and the presentation of “Skin” starring London-born Nigerian-Jewish Sophie Okonedo could persuade festival film goers to change their minds and give it a shot for that six miles difference as a result of venue change. "Jerusalema" directed by Ralph Zinman opens tomorrow, February 5, at the Directors Guild of America complex on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The opening ceremony will be hosted by Blair Underwood.

On "Skin" Okonedo plays Sandra, born in South Africa by white parents but Sandra mysteriously looked black, alienating her parents and falls in love with a black dude. Opens at the Culver Plaza Theaters on February 11, at 7 p.m. The festival runs from Feb. 5 through Feb. 16. Over 175 films from all around the world will be presented at the festival, and all films are culturally related to descendants of Africa.

Go Africa Go!