Black Is Black

A comic tale about a stubborn village elder who resists slipping gently into retirement. Directed by King Ampaw.

A fearsome 19th century bandit, Cobra Verde cuts a swath through Brazil until he arrives at the sugar plantation of Don Octávio Countinho. Not knowing that his new guest is the notorious bandit and impressed by his ruthless ways, Don Octávio hires Cobra Verde to oversee his slaves. But when Cobra Verde impregnates Don Octávio’s three daughters, the incensed plantation owner exiles the outlaw to Africa where he is expected to reopen the slave trade. Following his trans-Atlantic journey, Cobra Verde exploits tribal conflicts to commandeer an abandoned fortress and whips an army of naked warriors into a frenzied bloodlust as he vies for survival.

Asante, a hearse driver in Ghana, wants a wife. His profession puts most women off. He falls in love with a client whose mother has died, and manages to win her over. But her father forbids marriage to a hearse driver. Asante persists and becomes the first hearse driver in Accra to get married.

"The film starts with a shot of a cassette recorder, and it has a juke box in it. There’s always music in it. When I was asked by some critics at a festival press conference what the film was all about, I said 'it’s about the song All Along The Watchtower, and the film is about what happens and what changes depending on whether the song is sung by Bob Dylan or by Jimi Hendrix.'" Well, both versions of the song appear in the film, and everybody thought I was pretty arrogant to explain the story this way. But the film really is about the difference between the Dylan version of All Along the Watchtower, and the Jimi Hendrix Version. One is at the beginning and one is at the end." – Wim Wenders

Addey is a lorry driver and an industrious family man who makes ends meet by plying his trade between Accra, the capital city, and his village , Kukurantumi. When he loses his job for reasons beyond his control, he plots a marriage between his daughter, Abena, and an affluent businessman but she refuses the union because she loved another. Abena disobeys her father Addey and, with Bob, the poor young man she loves, elopes to Accra where things worsen.

Two young prostitutes decide to settle on a farm in the outskirts of an idyllic Bavarian mountain village. Initially, this is a pain in the neck for the village council and the local clergy, but the moral guardians soon reveal themselves to be lacking in steadfast ideals.

Paul (William Donald Powell), a former American GI gets by as lead singer of a band in the wake of the 1968 cultural revolution in Munich. Paul’s monotonous life plays out between the hotel bar, his adjacent studio apartment, and the rare night out on the town or a visit to the suburbs. Director King Ampaw's thesis film at the University of Television and Film Munich is the second film by an African filmmaker to be shot in Germany (the first being Ibrahim Shaddad’s “Jagdpartie” in 1964).