Kuumba Festival 2012 presents the first Kuumba  Zumba Marathon Saturday June 30 at Chillhowee Park. Zumba is one of the most popular forms of aerobics, centered on all type of dance forms into a circuit style workout.  The marathon will feature various Zumba instructors from around the nation. Join the marathon for your chance to win the title as a Zumba champ. Registration will start May 25^th through June 25^th, 2012.

Kuumba International Film Festival at Market Square June 29^th, 2012. Come and enjoy international cinema with showings of various films from around the world and experience motion picters from a different cultural perspective. Discuss various films that will be shown through the day and take pleasure in the Kuumba Festival @ Market Square African Market place (International vendors, food, live entertainment and more).  This event will be hosted by Armaa Johnson. A complete schedule of Show times and discussion will be posted in June 2012. Our International Film festival host Armaa, is a freelance filmmaker base in New York but, resides in Knoxville, Tennessee. He currently works as a camera operator or art director/prop on a range of productions (commercials, docs, short & student films, music videos, etc). His experience in the film and television industry dates back to 2003 when he started as an intern at Hungry Man Films Inc. He gravitated towards the camera and art aspect of filmmaking where he gained extensive knowledge and skills. Armaa has photographed and directed a number of short films and videos. Armaa was born in Yekepa, Nimba County, the northern region of Liberia in West Africa; his passion for filmmaking began to develop as a child watching many foreign films (Hollywood, Bollywood and Kung-Fu), which captivated his imagination. He shelved his passion for filmmaking because there was no room for such career within his homeland. In 1995, due to civil unrest in Liberia, Armaa relocated to the USA, where he began to fully explore and cultivate his vision and see it into reality. For the past three years, Armaa has been working on Looka Us his directorial debut that focuses on the living conditions of Liberian immigrants living in Staten Island, New York and he intends to build a framework within the documentary genre that will bring to light the underrepresented and misrepresented peoples of the world. In 2009, he received a J.P. Morgan: Arts In Our Community Grant from the Council on the Arts and Humanities of Staten Island (COAHSI) for his documentary Looka Us.