The 2nd Arusha African Film Festival [AAFF 2013] took place from Friday, 29th November to Saturday, 1st December, 2013 at various venues in Arusha. The venues included Mount Meru Hotel, Alliance Francaise, New Arusha Hotel, Mango Tree, and Via Via. As a sister festival ZIFF was fully supportive of the AAFF this year holding it Arts Journalism during the AAFF festival in Arusha. 10 professional arts journalists from media houses in Tanzania were invited to attend this second part of a series of workshops on Critical Journalism supported by the Tanzania Media Fund (TMF). The AAFF held workshop sessions, seminars, panels, poetry reading, and performance arts from the 25 to 28 November 2013.
In all, the film festival events ran from 25 November to 1 December 2013. There were 70 films from 20 countries shown in 7 days, with over 3,000 people attending the screenings. The film festival organized by HAKIKA Entertainment is a sequel to last year’s successful, first ever film festival to be held in Arusha, Tanzania. The key personnel for the Arusha African Film Festival are Akpor Otebele, the festival director, Mary Birdi, festival manager, and Nasir Mohamed, festival coordinator. Maliki Sufiani and Ally Maukwe serve as AAFF’s publicists, and there are volunteers who are also helping with day-to-day operations. ZIFF’s own dynamo Muslim Nassor was the co-MC for the night! More volunteers are needed.