by Steve Ayorinde/Talent Press

The order of importance is not given. Nor is it needed anyway. But the good news for black brothers and sisters at the Berlinale is that Africa is the focus this year, curiously sandwiched between sex and soccer.

The soccer bit is understandable, given Germany's preparation as the host of the FIFA World Cup in 2006. “Shoot Goals, Shoot Movies!“ therefore, was rightly conceived as the theme for the short film competition on football and culture at the Berlinale Talent Campus.

Good idea, but since the mundial will not be held until next summer, it would have been better to let the talents showcase their films at next year's festival, as a prelude to the soccer tournament itself. To prepare film buffs for the fever pitch tournament in 2006, you will probably need a film like Hannes Stöhr's One Day in Europe", about the day of the European Cup Final as experienced by four different nationalities, except if you are neither a fan of Deportivo La Coruna nor of Galatasaray.

[A scene from "Sometime in April". Image provided by the Berlinale.]

But making sex a special object of focus is yet to be seen four days after the festival started. If the extreme but ingeniously shot lustful scenes in Ventura Pons' "Idiot Love" (Amor Idiota) is the festival's yardstick for measuring a sexy festival, or the documentary, "Cycles of Porn", or the revisit of "Deep Throat", or even the intellectual discourse on Directing Sex at the Campus, sorry, Berlin does not enjoy a monopoly on such film nor does it have an edge on the subject. Besides, sex is perhaps one of the commonest issues at festivals, but hardly deserves a special endorsement.

That then leaves Africa with its head and shoulders higher among the focuses at the festival. This is remarkable because the Berlinale, which is older than most African countries, has chosen to focus on a continent that looks up to its richer and more advanced friends for assistance. It is the first time that a major festival has found the continent worthy of such honour – not even Cannes, where more African films have been screened in the past, and where Senegal's Ousman Sembene picked up an award.The credit goes to the Berlinale's director, Dieter Kosslick, who has repeatedly stressed the African focus this year. "There is an overreaching theme throughout the festival," Kosslick says. "This year's focus is on Africa - with numerous films that provoke emotions, inspire hope and entertain."

What other film can be more touching or represent hope than "Hotel Rwanda"? So topical an issue is the revisit of the genocide in Rwanda that the Berlinale welcomes two films on that sad event, one of them, "Sometime in April" in competition. In choosing "Man to Man" as the opening film of the festival, the choice underscores, more than the condescending portrayal of the pigmies, a return to Africa, where man is thought to have originated from.

Four out of the 22 films in competition this year are about Africa. Among the other soccer-loving or sexually-attractive films, none other boasts of three Oscar nominations, with one of them for the Nigerian-born super actress Sophie Okonedo, like "Hotel Rwanda." The focus on Africa this year certainly does not look like an afterthought.

Whether the analysis of the focus or its implication raises different meaning in Cameroonian filmmaker, Nana Ntsanyu and Nigerian director, Seke Somolu or in the South African critic, Herbert, the reality of it is that there is a potential new bride in Africa that its Western suitors desire to court.

It therefore makes more sense to go and see the South African adaptation of the opera, "Carmen", or "Lost Children" by Oliver Stoltz and Ali Samadi Ahmad, or Beninois Idrissou Mara-Kpai's "Arlit", "The Second Paris", and the story of the 78-year-old mother of rap music in "Grietjie From Garies", or just attend the panel discussion on the new challenges for African film festivals, than argue over what constitutes a focus on Africa as opposed to African filmmakers.

[For two years, Steve Ayorinde from Nigeria has served as chief film critic of The Punch, the largest circulating daily in Nigeria. He has also worked as an arts journalists for The Guardian and The Comet in Lagos, Nigeria.]

© Berlinale Talent Campus 2005