The African Diaspora Film Festival has grown each year since its genesis in a kitchen-table conversation between a couple of film fanatics frustrated by the shallow pool of black films in New York. Starting today the 15th edition of the festival will offer something for just about anyone interested in the global black experience: 102 films from 43 countries in a 17-day feast of documentaries, comedies, musicals, dramas and romances.

 

Reinaldo Barroso-Spech and Diarah N’Daw-Spech, the married couple behind the mom-and-pop venture, had also been casting about for “something important” they could do together, Ms. N’Daw-Spech recalled recently. After coming to New York from Paris in the 1980s and “not being able to see the same breadth and depth of films we saw in Paris, we figured there was a niche, a need,” she said.

 

Forty-five films will receive some sort of premiere at the festival: 23 are being shown for the first time in New York and 22 for the first time in this country. Along with the screenings are panel discussions on themes like “African leaders” and “slavery in cinema,” question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers and even some parties.

 

This article appeared in the November 23, 2007 edition of the New York Times.