Film Screening:

Ayanda and the Mechanic

(Sarah Blecher, 2015, 105 min, South Africa, in English, Color, Blu-Ray)

-- Introduced by Prof. Anne-Maria Makhulu (Cultural Anthropology/African & African American Studies); Q&A to follow!

In a community, vibrant with migrants from across the African Continent, against the backdrop of unspoken love, a young woman tries to navigate a path for herself. But this is a world where everything keeps shifting... Everything except the one thing that does need to change. Ayanda and the Mechanic is a coming of age story of a twenty-one-year-old Afro hipster, who embarks on a journey of self-discovery trying to keep the memory of her father alive, when she's thrown into a world of greasy overalls, gender stereotypes and abandoned vintage cars in need of a young woman's re-inventive touch who tries to reclaim what would've been, what could've been.

-- Winner for World Fiction at Los Angeles Film Festival (2015)!

"The film has the urgency and magnetism of an assured youth-culture manifesto, only stumbling a bit when the balance between dramatic and comic elements leans too heavily toward the former." - Ernest Hardy, Village Voice 

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Africa Initiative, the Department of African and African American Studies, the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).