Ambassador Mykel Parish Ajaere is VP of African Film Festival Association

Nigeria’s Mykel Parish Ajaere has been elected Vice President of the new association for film festivals in the continent of Africa dubbed African Film Festival Association (AFFA). Ajaere is a filmmaker and founder of Africa Film Consortium (AFC) and the Nollywood Travel Festival.

The association, which the founders said was established to ‘develop, consolidate and build the independent sustainability of African cinema’ and to promote African film festivals was launched at the sidelines of the just concluded 10th Luxor International Film Festival, which closed in Tunis penultimate weekend.

AFFA, according to the founders, was born with a vision to promote African film festivals as a key platform that will nurture and project Africa films, filmmakers, and creative works. According to Ajaere who broke the news of the birth of the association, “AFFA aims to network African film festivals in order to share knowledge, expertise.

Programming content and best practice experience. It also aims at consolidating and expanding existing circuits and to develop and promote new circuits of discipline-based festivals as a means of distributing African films and providing longer income-generating opportunities for filmmakers.”

Executive Director of Luxor Film Festival, Azza Elhosseiny, heads AFFA interim executive committee. Azza is to serve as President while Ajaere will serve as Vice President. Other members of the executive are Firdoze Bulbulia of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Film Festival and Phillip Ama Bentuma Arthur of the Black Star International Film Festival who will serve as Secretary. Authur disclosed that full membership will be granted to any African film festival in the world that have hosted at least three editions of the said film festival, while associate membership will be granted to festivals that have hosted less than three edition.