Deflated

today i wake up feeling a little flat. the air of excitement has been forced out...pffffffft.
the new york african film festival is over. i wait all year for it to come around, wondering what the theme will be, where the films will come from, what they'll be about. will there be comedies? dramas? something that makes me cry? and then the flyers come in the mail with the information and i get excited - it's coming, it's coming.
and every year the films are amazing. i want to watch nearly all of them. every year the festival seems too short, here and then gone in a blink of an eye. every year the festival brings new curious, and excited film-watchers. this year i got to watch only two films - an epic about namibia and it's first president sam nujoma and a pilot of a television show about the slave trade. both films were oh so enlightening. i kept thinking to myself, namibia was so close geographically to zimbabwe and yet i grew up almost clueless about what was going on there. i mean they got their independence only in 1990 and the world barely noticed, it seems. or was that just me? and the pilot touched on the indian ocean slave trade. you know, there are times when history overwhelms me and i feel as though i am drowning in the things that people do. thankfully the theatre was dark so no one saw the tears. i found out about a slave uprising in what is now known as basra. and the question was asked - where are those people? the former east africans who were taken to the middle east in earlier centuries. where are they indeed? we were fortunate enough to meet one woman from dubai who has dedicated her life to trying to trace her history and, one day, intends to take the ship journey her ancestors were forced to take.

and then i volunteered over the weekend. i met new and passionate young people who were so very excited to be there and determined to help the festival grow and impact more people. i got to sit and answer questions, to try to convince people to get the 15th anniversary t-shirt, to encourage visitors to return for more film. not that i really had to. so many were moved and felt as though their eyes had been opened to things they had never even considered. others felt a connection, an understanding, an 'oh, i am not alone. others experience this too.' everyone came out recommending that i watch the film i had just missed - "i hope you find a way; that was a great film."

but now it is over. and i am deflated. another year to wait again. pfffft. oh but there is the summer outdoor series - a little air. and the festival does show a few films in brooklyn - a little air. and maybe if we work hard the whole year the festival will be bigger and longer and with more films and... and...