The African Film Heritage Project will restore African films with "historic, artistic and cultural significance."

Martin Scorsese has launched an initiative to locate, restore and preserve classic African movies. Scorsese’s The Film Foundation has partnered with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and UNESCO to create The African Film Heritage Project (AFHP). As part of this initiative, 50 films with “historic, artistic and cultural significance,” will be restored.

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The initiative will be lead by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, which was established in 2007 “to ensure that the most vulnerable titles don’t disappear forever… Along the way, we’ve come to understand the urgent need to locate and preserve African films title by title in order to ensure that new generations of filmgoers —African filmgoers in particular— can actually see these works and appreciate them,” the renowned filmmaker said in a statement.

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“Africa needs her own images, her own gaze testifying on her behalf, without the distorting prism of others, of the foreign gaze saddled by prejudice and schemes,” added FEPACI Secretary General Cheick Oumar Sissoko. Watch the announcement trailer below.

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