LOS ANGELES — From the late 1980s to the early ’90s, when people thought of blackness in Los Angeles, most thought of either the rise of N.W.A’s West Coast style of rap or the fallout from the LAPD’s beating of Rodney King. As actress Alfre Woodard put it, “people didn’t think there was a mindset here of an African artistic consciousness, or a black or African American artistic consciousness.” Los Angeles was no Brooklyn or Harlem.
Then came Ayuko Babu and the Pan African Film Festival in 1992. Descending on West Hollywood’s Sunset 5 theater, everyone was in full bloom African regalia, Woodard recalled — geles or head ties; dashikis; kaftans.
As a Times article written at the time said, “for most Americans, the face of Africa belongs to a starving Somali child or a stoical Nelson Mandela. The Pan African Film Festival (offered) diversity and universality — with complexity.”
Years later, such an offering persists in the hundreds of films on display through Feb. 20 at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza’s Rave Cinemas. And on the festival’s 25th anniversary, Woodard, who will be receiving the group’s Lifetime Achievement award, still relishes the festival’s existence.
“To have a festival, and I’ve been to them all, where the majority of the images on screen are familiar to my eyes — the palette, the skin tone, the way of speaking, of moving — is remarkable,” she said. “It’s an affirmation. You feel like you just slid down into your family (when you come).”
When Babu conceived of the festival, he drew on principles learned during the ’60s around community building and collective consciousness among people of African descent. He wanted a space where the full diversity of blackness, of pan-African-ness, could exist unapologetically.
“We got to a point where we understood that, as a result of the slave trade and colonization, African people are spread all over the planet and everybody has a bit of the story,” he said. “What happens though is because we’re spread (out), we start thinking that one story is the supreme story. But each part of the black world has a bit of it and it’s important that we hear the entire story. Only in places like this do you get to do that.”
Woodard interjected, recalling an early conversation she had with Babu that led to the first convening.
“This brother said, ‘All you fabulous Africans, you are gleaming stones in this mosaic that is the diaspora. Let’s get together and celebrate that very distinct thing we bring. We are this harmonious collision of all the parts that go into telling our story.’ “
