Africa in Motion is already in its sixth year! The profile of the festival has grown steadily since the inaugural season in 2006 and this year, 2011, Africa in Motion focuses its attention on films and events that open doors to children and youth in Africa.

Our programme of films and events deals with many aspects relating to youth, such as education, entertainment, stories and myths, the future, and social issues affecting children and young people in Africa.

This year we made a special effort to invite schools and children to the cinema and we are screening a number of films especially for primary and secondary schools in and around Edinburgh, in collaboration with National Schools Film Week.

Alongside the film screenings, the festival has endeavoured to create fun and challenging workshops and events for Scottish children to really engage with the lives and experiences of their African counterparts and get to learn the stories best known to them.

The rest of the festival will be dedicated to our well-known quality films: epic features, contemporary gems, incisive documentaries, acclaimed shorts and animation films, with a continuing focus on children and youth in Africa.

Since 2007 the LIDF has worked to ensure that London is host to exciting, diverse, challenging and inspiring films from every corner of the world. The LIDF is committed to providing a platform for international documentaries and their directors. It does this by working with globally recognised partners and venues, such as the British Museum, the Barbican Centre, and the Royal Society of the Arts on a year-round programme of screenings and other events that includes the 10-day London International Documentary Festival.

The LIDF’s ongoing commitment to what it calls ‘Conversations in Film’ creates a unique kind of film festival. The films within LIDF are the starting point for a series of programmed ‘conversations’ – panel discussions and workshops – that bring diverse audiences together to go beyond the films themselves in order to engage with social, cultural and political issues in the company of policy makers, academics, journalists and other cultural commentators

Having celebrated its third year the LIDF is now looking forward to working with new partners and presenting another feast of film and debate in April / May 2010.