A Revue of the 2015 Massimadi Film Festival, Montreal
By Lola Kamarizah. Photos by Kevin Calixte, The Bao Huy Nguyen et Arc-en-ciel d’Afrique. Translation by Michaela Kalfou Danjé

“Start Eating From The Edge”

I will always talk about it with a smile and yet seriousness. Always. Because what happened in Montreal from the 17th to 28th of February was magical! I would even say amazing! The organizers of the international GLBTQ Afro-Caribbean festival kept me alive for 10 exciting nights. I went from laughter to tears, from joy to sadness, from excitement to discouragement and I came out of it stronger.

Let me tell you: I wept because of nine-year-old Junior’s mom misunderstanding. This little black kid lives with his mother and his little brother in a Venezuelan favela and he dreams of having straight hair for his class picture. His mother forced him to look at her giving up her body to an unscrupulous boss to show her son, as the doctor told her to, what a relation between a man and a woman looks like. I also wept after watching “Le Retour” a short-film about the pain of an adolescent who discovered, while wandering in the streets on a rainy night, that the brother he worships is probably “a fag.” If the disappointment can be that heavy, what about when the same adolescent discovers this side of his identity?

Alongside those favorites, I can’t forget the screening of  “Woubi Chéri”

This 1998 documentary about trans women in Abidjan (way before homophobic actions became popular in Africa) was followed by a very rewarding discussion with two trans women with different diasporic backgrounds, Solange from Rwanda and Suzanne from Mauritius.

More than a simple experience, the movie “Stories of our lives” by Jim Chuchu is an amazing artistic and archival prowess done by young queer from Kenya. I admired and was fascinated by the way in which the beauty of nature was animated in a black and white editing.

The selection of films for the opening was also excellent. “L’autre femme” a movie by Marie Ka, just made you want to see more. If you are reading this Marie, please, make us experience again the colors, the sounds and the scents of this delightful feminine and generational eroticism – shared by these two Senegalese co-wives. The crowd from the opening night warmly welcomed the movie “Black Bird” during which the director Patrick Ian-Polk was present. A cool moment compared to the temperature outside

Massimadi 2015 also had some enlightening documentaries like “History Must Not Repeat Itself ” by Stéphane Gérard, “Global Gay” by Remi Lainé , or some more troubling ones like ” In The Night” – about four black lesbians who were unjustly imprisoned for aggression while, in fact, they were defending themselves against the violent and homophobic attacks from a stranger.

“To remember, To dream and To plan” that was the Festival’s theme. Outside the screenings there were a lot, lot, lot of talking. We talked about visibility of black LGBT people in cinema with no less than seven panelists including: filmmakers, sociologists, actors, photographers and state officials. It just shows that we should not hesitate to take our own camera and give shape to our ideas. The black community is not uniform, the LGBT community either. But, who can bring out the complexity of our universe, if it’s not us?

With Maitre Michel Togue, a Cameroonian lawyer and honorary president of the Festival, we were outraged at the injustice suffered by LGBT population in Cameroon. How to act? Through education. It begins with family members who are closely connected with those living elsewhere. The screening of Marlon Riggs’s “Tongues Untied,” followed by a discussion with the American artist Doug Locke and Canadian activist Peter Flegel, also touched our souls and recalled the importance – and it can’t be said too often – to be oneself and never put your head down: black man love black man, black woman love black woman.

Did I mention the gigantic closing night? I know some people who danced their ass off at the “Afro Queer Mafia Party.” I only talked about the most impressive moments. The whole Massimadi 2015 program is still available here: http://www.massimadi.ca/calendrier-des-evenements/. During a panel, one of the speakers approximately said something like “The gay and transgender issue is like a big hot pie. To make people accept your difference, one have to start eating from the edge and don’t rush to go to the center or somebody’s gonna burn inevitably”. With Massimadi, the non-profit Arc-en-Ciel d’Afrique   (http://www.arcencieldafrique.org/) already ate a big part of its edge. In Brussels too, the black LGBT community started to eat from the edge in May 2011 with the Massimadi Brussels Festival. All the info is here: http://www.massimadi-bxl.be/.

I can’t wait for more initiatives like this so that African and Afro-diasporic LGBT culture lives! Let’s meet again next February in Montreal. I’ll be there.