The Silicon Valley African Film Festival (SVAFF) is an annual film festival held in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

to promote an understanding and appreciation of Africa and Africans through moving images. Nigerian filmmaker

Chike Nwoffiah Chike C. Nwoffiah (born 22 July 1965 in Nigeria) is a Nigerian filmmaker and arts consultant. He was listed as one of the "Top Ten Most Influential African Americans" in the San Francisco Bay Area by ''City Flight Magazine'' in 2000. Educati ...

founded the SVAFF in 2010 and has served as its director since. According to Nwoffiah, "People’s understanding of Africa was limited to the

Tarzan Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adv ...

narratives of Africa as backward, untamed and uncivilized. Those who thought they knew better, at best, saw Africa as a 'country' with starving children and a people ravaged by disease and war." He founded the SVAFF to change that.

History

References

{{reflist Film festivals in California African-American film festivals