MVFF Lands Kabore to Head Cinema Africa Slate

For more than three decades, the has hung its hat on the ability to serve up a mix of programming, drawing with along with smaller films from around the world, many of which will never make it to the cineplex.

Festival organizers nailed down an acclaimed director to help them with the latter of those elements for the 34th edition of the 11-day event, set for Oct. 6 to 16. West African director Gaston Kabore has agreed to both host a special screening of his work and help curate a slate of films to be part of the festival’s Cinema Africa program.

Kabore, an award-winning filmmaker from Burkina Faso best known for films like Wend Kuuni (1982) and Buud Yam (1997), recently received the prestigious French Chevalier in the Order of the Legion of Honor award, and was hailed as a “champion of the moving image and promoter of cultural diversity.”

The festival last featured Africa in 2003 as part of its rotating focus on film’s from a different country or continent each year. The Cinema Africa slate that year featured films from South Africa, Tunisia, Rwanda, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Benin. They included such acclaimed films as 100 Days, which recounted the genocide in Rwanda, as well as Beat the Drum, a South African tale of a young bioy’s journey to Johannesburg after his mother’s death from AIDS.

In 2010, the festival’s Audience World Independent Cinema award went to the South African film Themba: A Boy Called Hope.

Festival spokesman Kevin Heverin said fans should expect around a half-dozen films to be part of the Cinema Africa program. The program will be presented in collaboration with the Consulat General de France in San Francisco, the French American Cultural Society and the Institut Francais du Burkina Faso.

The complete Mill Valley Film Festival schedule will be unveiled on Sept. 13, with tickets going on sale Sept. 21 at the festival’s website and the box office at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.