New York-based writer and director Frances Bodomo will screen
and talk about her film Afronauts (USA, 2014, 13 min).
It's July 16, 1969: America is preparing
to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of miles away, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to beat America to the moon in this film inspired
by true events.
Inspired by true events, Afronauts tells an alternative history of the 1960s Space Race. It’s the
night of July 16 th , 1969 and, as America prepares to send Apollo 11 to the moon, a group of exiles in the Zambian desert
are rushing to launch their rocket first. They train by rolling their astronaut, 17-year-old Matha Mwamba, down hills in barrels
to simulate weightlessness. As the clock counts down to blast off, as the Bantu-7 Rocket looks more and more lopsided, Matha
must decide if she’s willing to die to keep her family’s myths alive.
Frances Bodomo is an award-winning Ghanaian
filmmaker. She grew up in Ghana, Norway, California, and Hong Kong before moving to New York to study film at Columbia University
(BA) and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (MFA).
Her short films Boneshaker (2013) and Afronauts (2014) both premiered
at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to play at various festivals including the Berlinale, Telluride, SXSW, and New
Directors/New Films. Afronauts received 5 Grand Jury Prizes and will play at the Whitney Museum as part of the group show
Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016. She most recently directed the short segment "Everybody Dies!" for the omnibus
feature Collective:Unconscious (2016) which won Best Experimental Short at the 2016 BlackStar Film Festival. Frances is currently
developing the feature version of Afronauts, which is supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, IFP's Emerging
Storytellers program, and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation.
http://tobogganeer.tumblr.com
