This Sporting Life: Sports Stories from Around the African Commonwealth

With so many other cultural outlets curating events to tie in with the upcoming Commonwealth Games, it’s little surprise to see a film festival taking part, though Africa in Motion have a more interesting and unique hook than most. Since launching in 2006, the annual festival has screened over 350 African films for Scottish audiences; with Sports Stories from Around the African Commonwealth, they bring 30 more. For the last month the programme has been touring Scotland, with screenings and events in Dundee, Dumfries, Inverness, Oban, Isle of Skye, Cromarty, Coll and Dunoon. July sees proceedings move to Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Among the sports stories on offer, most fans are catered for. Football-nuts have a couple of options: there’s hard-hitting doc Inside Story (8 Jul, The Grosvenor, Glasgow), which follows a young footballer from Kenya whose life is turned upside down when he gets an offer to play football in South Africa's professional league and at the same time discovers he has contracted HIV; and Streetball (11 Jul, CCA, Glasgow), which looks behind the hoopla of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and tells the story of the home nation's 2008 Homeless World Cup team.

Unsurprisingly, given the African nations’ dominance in the sport, there are a fair few films featuring distance running. In The Runner (17 Jul, Summerhall, Edinburgh), we see how champion athlete Salah Ameidan used his talent to fight for what he believed in: “running is part of my resistance,” he says in the doc. “It’s the only weapon I have.” There’s also Athlete (10 Jul, Grosvenor), a biopic of tragic Ethiopian long-distance runner Abebe Bikil, who shook the world by winning gold in the marathon at the Rome Olympics while running barefoot, and Town of Runners (11 Jul, Summerhall), a doc that visits the extraordinary rural town of Bekoji, in Ethiopia, whose runners have won eight Olympic golds, 32 World Championships and broken ten world records in the last 20 years.

Rising from Ashes (3 Jul, Filmhouse) is a documentary that follows a group of struggling genocide survivors in Rwanda as they pursue the dream of having a national cycling team. We discover the country has a rich history of bike racing, and in the film we see cycling legend Jock Boyer move there to help the group with their goal. The Fighting Spirit (7 Jul, CCA; 12 Jul, Summerhall), meanwhile, is a spunky doc centred on several boxers from Bukom, a small Ghanan town where a tenacious coach is encouraging kids to fight their way out of poverty.

Kenyan short film Beach Boy (10 Jul, Andrew Stewart Cinema, Glasgow) is concerned with a different kind of sport. It’s a vérité documentary following one of the so-called ‘beach boys’ on the coast of Mombasa, who are young men that date older, wealthy European women in the pursuits of riches, visas for abroad, and, er, other successes. We follow one named Juma, who embarks on a relationship with an older British woman on holiday in the region. That particular screening is run in collaboration with the Commonwealth Film Festival, and it screens with main feature Rain.



Govanhill Baths in Glasgow is, appropriately enough, hosting a South African surfing doc double-bill (6 Jul). Titled Waves, Vibes and Vimand, the programme promises a 'sensory and site-specific audio-visual experience.' Zulu Surf Riders follows a pair of surfer twins, Cyril and Mishak, who have become inspirational figures in their neighbourhood, teaching local youngsters to continue on the path of the ‘Zulu wave.’ It’s paired with Kushaya Igagasi, an inspirational doc following four street kids who love to hit the waves. The films will be followed by a night of South African house and Afrobeat DJ sets.

Other innovative events at unusual venues include a Film and Food Marathon at the Mackintosh-designed House for an Art Lover in Glasgow (9 Jul). While most screenings in the festival’s line-up are free and non-ticketed, this event will set you back £20, but you get your money's worth, with a three course meal, each dish paired with a film that reflects the nation the dish in question comes from.

Although the various screenings within established cinemas like the The Grosvenor and Filmhouse are welcome and appreciated, it’s the creative approach of these site-specific screenings that should help bring an inter-cultural dialogue regarding African sports and filmmaking to a wider audience during the Commonwealth Games.