Akosia Film Festival!

This past Friday was the event that we had all been waiting for… the final film screening for the kids’ two films, The Friendship Bracelets and The Four Friends and the Golden Aluguitugui (I will post links as soon as they become available). The screening was a huge success and drew in tons of kids from the local community. Before the screening of the actual films, there were live performances done by a few of the volunteers and the kids themselves.

The kids had a lot of preparation to do before the big event. They helped out with the set decoration by drawing animals on cardboard that were cut out, painted, and hung up in front of the stage. They also prepared some acts to perform. There were a lot of kids who sang and danced to popular songs in Ghana, a few who rapped, three kids who created and performed a very complicated skit, and a crazy acrobatics show. 

When we saw the acrobatics group practice during their rehearsal, they did things like back flips and cartwheels. While on stage, they did much more than that. They were dressed in crazy costumes & make-up and did things that took amazing balance, such as balancing while standing on someone's head and things like that. At one point in the act, the boys lit these sticks on fire, and one of the older boys, Prince, picked them up. It was right here that I learned Prince could eat fire. Who knew?

After all the performances came the film screenings. This was the first time I got to see the final projects and they looked great. All the locations that were used in the film are very familiar to everyone, so it was really cool to see something like a patch of trees being used as an evil forest in which skeletons and ghosts are all around. The kids really enjoyed seeing themselves on the big screen and how all of their hard work paid off.

And what better way was there to wrap up this event that with an impromptu dance party? The kids and volunteers all stayed at the event until we got kicked out of the venue to continue the party and do all the dances that the kids had been teaching us for the past few weeks.