RADFORD -- The African Cultures Festival continues through May at Radford University. The festival began last fall with a variety of educational and entertaining events, including lectures, films, dance performances and a children’s festival designed to share the customs, traditions and history of African cultures.

RU faculty and students collaborated to bring the festival to the university and surrounding communities. Everyone is invited to attend these events, which are free of charge:

April 2, 7 - 9 PM (Hurlburt Auditorium)
Movie: Invisible Children, a film documenting the effects of a rebel group in Africa’s northern Uganda, which for the past 18 years has forcefully and brutally abducted children from their homes. Invisible Children chronicles three naïve journalists as they discover thousands of children sleeping in the streets. The story unfolds as the filmmakers try to understand why these children run for their lives each night, and who is responsible for this atrocity.

April 3 - May 16 (Gallery 205, Powell Hall 205)
Tesfaye Tessema: Affirmation of the Self. Trained in Addis Ababa and at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Ethiopian-born Tessema synthesizes African and Western elements to create paintings that speak to the affirmative human experience. His works are in several prominent collections, including those of the United Nations, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution.

The African Cultures Festival is sponsored by the McGlothlin Family Endowment and the RU International Education Center. To learn more, contact the International Education Center at (540) 831-6200.