Egypt: Mohamed Ghazala on Egyptian Animation

Animator Mohamed Ghazala talks to African Screen's Don Omope about his AMAA winning film, Honayn's Shoe, and the beginnings of animation in Egypt:

When Disney (1901–1966) started to make his first feature animated film "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs" in 1930s, there was a small group of Russian carpenters who worked with their Egyptian partners to create an animated film for the Egyptian Ministry of Defence. The film was commissioned to help in the mobilization of the national army against the attacking Nazi army in World War II. The group of carpenters were Frenkel brothers, and the film called "National Defense" and was released before feature films in cinema halls in Cairo and Alexandria in late 1939, to be one of the oldest animation films not only in Egypt, but in Africa. Right now in Egypt there are more than 50 animation studios, which vary between big, medium and small, there are round 10 big studios which provide more than 100 animated hours yearly, between series, episodes, ads and short films. more

Africa: Mo Ibrahim on Gaps between Perception and Reality

 

At his sit down with Charlie Rose back in April, Mo Ibrahim recalls a conversation he had back in the early days of MSI with some American top honcho of some big international cellular company:

MOHAMED IBRAHIM: ...I remember a conversation with a very serious person, an international director of one of the baby bells. He was a very nice person, very educated. And I said, listen, Uganda. The people of Uganda are asking us to help them get a cellular system up and running. They don’t have a telephone system. I said, you are a big operation. Why not ... the license is for free. Instead of paying millions to all these licensing fees, why don’t you do in the Africa? And he said to me, Mo, I thought you were smarter than this.

CHARLIE ROSE: He said that to you?

MOHAMED IBRAHIM: Yes. I thought you were smarter than this. You want [me to] go to my [board] and tell them that I’m going to build a mobile network in a country run by this crazy guy Idi Amin? I said, excuse me, Idi Amin left Uganda 14 years ago.

(LAUGHTER)

MOHAMED IBRAHIM: But this is the point. I am the international director in my country. I was a hippy in New York in the ‘60s. And if I as an intellectual I don’t know that Idi Amin left the country [...] 14 years [ago], the people in my board, half of them don’t have passports.

CHARLIE ROSE: They know less than I do.

MOHAMED IBRAHIM: Charlie, wherever there’s a gap between perception and reality, there’s a great business opportunity. So I talked to my friends and I said look, let’s go into Africa. Nobody’s going to do it. Let’s go and do it. These guys are afraid of Africa. There’s nothing to be afraid of in Africa...

South Africa: First Trailer for "William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible"

hour-long film premieres October 21, 2010 at 10:00 p.m. ET on PBS

West Africa: Narco-Military-traficantes

It wasn't a secret that while he called the shots former junta leader Captain Dadis Camara went after Guinea's narcotrafficantes. But when the body of his son, Moriba Junior Dadis Camara, was recently found lifeless in a swimming pool in Longueuil, Quebec, where he was studying, theories abound. Abdoulaye Bah, over at Global Voices, parses through some of them.

Where he states that "this penetration of drug traffickers among [military rulers] is not limited only to Guinea, but it concerns all of West Africa" reminds me of this U.S Treasury document, purported to be the first time the U.S has labeled an active foreign military official as an international drug kingpin (more):

Kenya/Sudan: ICC Mouthing Off Checks Its Body Can't Cash

In reaction to the circus above, Sarah Nouwen over at Making Sense of Sudan blog takes on the question of whether the ICC judges, in their reaction to Bashir showing up in Kenya, had a legal basis for issuing this decision informing the UN security council and parties to the Rome Statute. She thinks:

Without a legal basis, such encouragement comes down to political activism. The US, EU and human rights organizations may be in a better position to conduct such activism than a court that is already under fire for using the law for political purposes.

You can confirm the 'ICC stepping into political activism' charge by watching the U.S disingenuously protecting their own interests against the court. Back in June, the American delegation to the International Criminal Court conference in Kampala, Uganda, was basically explaining to the State Dept. press corp how successful they were in thwarting the court's big political ideas that could threaten U.S interests down the road.

Mali: Documenting Malick Sidibe

Back in April, Tigerlilly films put up a trailer to Cosima Spender's 2008 documentary on Malian photog, Malick Sidibe. The doc premiered on BBC's Storyville back in '08. Promo below:



At the Passages exhibit at the Museum of Confluence back in June, people pose for the Sidibe-effect.



An old post on Sidibe's photography in music videos.

Africa: Is UK Press Coverage of the Continent Negative?

University of East Anglia's Martin Scott says "not as negative as you think!" Excerpts from the conclusion to his 2009 research article, Marginalized, negative or trivial? Coverage of Africa in the UK press, from Media, Culture & Society, Volume 31 (4):

Many aspects of the character of UK press coverage of Africa have been identified which suggest that such coverage is not as marginalized, negative or trivial as it is often accused of being. African affairs were the subject of 155 articles over the 15 days, which was more than double the number of articles relating to China. The majority of countries in Africa were mentioned at least once, coverage was relatively well spread out around the continent and disproportionate coverage of ex-British colonies was not as striking as it may have been in the past. African articles were often fairly large and five of the six newspapers had an African article on their front page. Negative topics such as civil conflict constituted only 23 percent of the African articles and, although there were 30 examples of negative framing of African events in newspaper headlines, there were many negative frames for which examples could not be found. From these results it can be concluded that, in terms of the amount, positioning and type of articles, the character of the UK press coverage of Africa is encouraging. My research did identify several areas of concern regarding the character of UK press coverage of Africa. There were a significant number of articles covering soft news topics, such as Western visits, and this was particularly evident when compared to the topics covered by African newspapers. Unlike the coverage for the USA and China, much of the coverage of Africa was given in the weekend editions, with all of the sport and travel articles, and a large percentage of the reviews and features, being published at the weekend. However, if this is the extent of the areas of concern emerging from this investigation then this gives further support to the conclusion that coverage of Africa in the UK press is not as deficient as is often assumed. These results show that, by neglecting research into press coverage of Africa, the influence of an important source of information regarding citizens’ perceptions of the developing world has been overlooked. It is hoped that this unexpected conclusion will encourage more research into the role of the UK
press in informing audience perceptions.

Africa/ United States: Children on Race

People Are Children - A Short Documentary. Dir. by Alrick Brown and Stewart Thorndike.



Not the doll test, but, still, 9 minutes solid of kids narrating personal experiences that have already shaped their views on racial relations. Remember the "color blind" kids from the late Yasmin Ahmad famous "Tan Hong Ming in love" ad?



One would like to keep them that way. But it appears you can't.

Africa: Films

Sudan/London - BBC 4 premiers Gabriel Range's I'm A Slave (2010) tonight (click on pic). Written by Jeremy Brock, it stars Wunmi Mosaku as Malia, a Sudanese 12 yr old taken to London to work -- above they talk about the making. The good folks at S&A also unearthed another clip - more here.



Ghana/New York - BBC's Strand talks to NY writer and critic Michael Atkinson - here- about the deafening festival buzz around Sean Baker's Prince of Broadway (2010), which opens in NY, Sept 3rd. The film spins--in a guerrilla documentary manner--a tale around Lucky, an illegal immigrant-New York street hustler from Ghana, played by Prince Adu, who is left with a baby to pull off what looks like a Pursuit of Happyness situation.  S&A has more on dir. Lee Daniels signing on to help the film go mainstream:



Rwanda - Trailer for Alrick Brown's Kinyarwanda, a tale interweaving six different tales that together form one grand narrative, which the filmmakers claim provides "the most complex and real depiction yet presented of human resilience and life during the [Rwandan] genocide."

Egypt/ United States: Queering an Ad

American blogs (here, here & here) caught a homoerotic wiff from this coca cola twist-off-the-cap ad for the Egyptian market -- as in whatever you want to make of the carressing twist, placement and angle of bottle etc...

But Egyptian bloggers are rolling their eyes, saying Americans are reading too much into the old ad.



But if American LGBTI bloggers are looking for some Egyptian defiance to hang their hats on, they can revisit this July report about Islam, 22, born a boy, but taking on the govt for sexual reassignment surgery to become a girl:

Africa: Defining Nerd

...maybe Africans nerding out is the new decolonization of the mind.

DRC: Denizens of the Congo River

Hauling up what he refers to as the "ultimate piranha," biologist and angler Jeremy Wade on Animal Planet marvels at the Goliath Tiger Fish, which makes its home in the Congo River. Below, clips from an upcoming episode of Nat Geo's Explorers talks more about the river and wonders what adaptive forces unique to the river creates as unique a predator as the Tiger Fish. DRC blogger Alex Engweate has also been fishing at the Congo River lately - he explains the land tenure along the shore.

Africa: Yes, There is Economic Growth. But is it Sustainable?

McKinsley Quarterly panel of regional business leaders discuss the sustainability of Africa's economic growth. Skip to 3.09 for an illustration of how corruption takes advantage of the lack of clarity about what the rules are or businesses having no clue as to the existence of agencies created to guide them through the maze.

Kenya: Constitution Bloopers

Ghana: Nkrumanism

Reuters talks to Samia Nkrumah about her father.

Friday

savage cave man salad. Yum!

Ghana: Photography of Devin Tepleski

On going exhibition of Canadian photo-based artist Devin Tepleski's portraits of the inhabitants of Bui, Ghana, threatened with relocation by a new hydroelectric dam. Online gallery - here. The logic behind the compositions:

Tepleski purposely situated his subjects in the very river that will flood their homes. In the photos the only discernible remnant of the river exists as a reflection of the human, a memory.

Exhibition vibe:



H/T: KMBA & Lenscratch

Nigeria: Documenting the Lagos Arts Scene

Joel "Kachi" Benson has the eye - intimate looks at the photography of Kelechi Amadi Obi and Lagos gallery owner Nike Davis-Okundaye:







Back in April, Vanguard ran a piece on an art auction at Nike gallery, referring to it as the "first auction by an indigenous auctioneer" and the first in the country to include photographs.

Africa: Dictators Opulent Private Jets

Above, one of Nick Gleis' photographs of pimped out private jets belonging to African dictators and other heads of state, showing at the Brighton international photography festival. The Telegraph has a gallery - here.

Even though there is no way to tell which plane belongs to which dic, judging from Gabon's late Omar Bongo's rottenly opulent taste in cars, I found myself wondering which of these jet interiors is his.

Tanzania: "Albino Soup"

Two clips from National Geographic's Explorer episode about the plight of albinos in Tanzania - something this blog has also devoted some ink to; where else will you find an essay on albinism and sci-fi? ;-) If nothing else, the clip above contains a touching scene between melanin challenged Yasim and his grandfather, who, poking fun at him, talks about how he could have ended up as "albino soup."

Zimbabwe: ZANU-PF's Genius

This is Zimbabwe on ZANU-PF's "genius":

Western critics have often registered surprise at the extent to which Mugabe’s nativistic, victim ideology still curries considerable favour across the African continent. But as political scientist Goran Hyden once wisely pointed out, “those of us who study politics in Africa have usually underestimated the symbolic power of the collective experience of colonialism”. The fact is that Mugabe’s rhetoric of anti-imperialism and black nationalism resonates loudly with a genuine concern that the African self still needs to be regained from a deeply scarring historical degradation. Zimbabwean commentator Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni summarises this as the heartfelt desire by Africans “to know themselves, to recapture their destiny (sovereignty), and to belong to themselves in the world (autonomy)”. ZANU-PF’s genius has been in ensuring that this legitimate desire for black liberation be manipulated to sanction the party’s every ignoble move...There’s a part of me which remains hopeful that Mugabe’s rhetoric is wearing thin. My head says that pretty soon everyone must see it for what it is; a content-less populism, mobilised so that he can allocate blame whilst accepting none, thus ensuring political survival...But am I simply burying my head in the sand? Is there really any evidence that Mugabe is finding it increasingly difficult to garner support from other Africans? more

Someone once made the following useful distinction between terrorists and rhetoricians:

...the eternally recurring conflict between 'terrorists' (those who see innovation as a rejection of pre-existing models) and 'rhetoricians' (those who believe creativity is only possible by working within the necessary limits of conventional forms).

Even though we would like to think of Mugabe and his ilk as terrorists, alas, they are, like all apt politicians, rhetoricians. They are rhetoric's bad guys; they are living proof that you can get away with tons of terrorism  within the necessary limits of convention.

Sierra leone: Hanging with the Yankees

To be the king of New York for a day might tempt anyone to buy a plane ticket and parachute into the nearest African conflict they can survive.

Africa/ Latin America: Intro to Third Cinema

FSFF has up an abridged version of Michael Chanan's 1983 documentary New Cinema of Latin America, re-edited into a priceless intro to Third Cinema: that cinema of the marginalized people of the Third World that took the conditions of underdevelopment as a rhetorical strategy and first principle rather than weakness.



Recall Ethiopian Third Cinema scholar, Teshome H. Gabriel, who passed away recently, had in his early work laid the bridge between the social realism of early African cinema and the manifesto driven Third Cinema of Glauber Rochas, Miguel Littin, Octavio Getino, Fernado Solanas and others (blogged here).

Below, Solanas and Getino's 1968 Third Cinema masterpiece Hora de los Hornos - The Hour of Furnaces, complete with English subs.



H/T: FSFF

Nigeria/ United Kingdom: Humor in the Age of Black Modernity, Cont'd

Still on our humor and black modernity series... The Guardian has a review of Nigerian-British born comedian Andi Osho's stand up act, Afroblightly, which she is currently performing at the ongoing Edinburgh Arts Fest. The review picks up on the uncertainty in hyphenated lives:

Andi Osho uses her solo fringe debut, Afroblighty, to address her heritage. Is she British, Nigerian, or something in between? ... [Osho] broaches her own uncertainty as a young Anglo-African, abbreviating her name after a radio DJ refused to say it when she called a phone-in, and marvelling at the zealous African nationalism of her uncle.

That part where the reviewer cites Osho's edgy humor, saying in her spirit of post-prejudice he could do without her reference to her "white and chavvy" neighbours, re-echoes below when Osho refers to white people's penchant of being easily "impressed" by rap:



Speaking of patronizing applause, more of the militant character she plays, who has you in stitches in her refusal to be patronized:

South Africa: This Revolution Will Be Embedded

South Africa From the Waist Down by the Car Guards. Album: Halala Soccer Album. Label: Coza prod. June 2010.

The song's rags to riches story here.

Nigeria/ United Kingdom: $220 Million Apartments. What Recession?

Even as the recession lingers, VOA reports that Nigeria's super rich are butting heads with Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern royalty for $220 million penthouses and other high end real estate in the heart of London:

Kenya/Angola: Bridging the Portuguese Barrier

lack of diplomatic ties and a language barrier are not stopping Kenyan entrepreneurs from setting their sights on the expensive, oil rich Angola capital of Luanda, where everything is imported.

Uganda/ Angola: Cinema, Youth and Space

Weeks back, a reader and dear friend from the U.K doing his PhD on the autonomy and spaces where  young Africans meet and interact, cited Donald Mugisha's 2007 feature and '08 Berlin Film Festival pick, Divisionz, a film about aspiring musicians in Uganda. You can see the whole film - here.

Along those same themes of urban space and how the youth innovate around it, I recall Ondjaki and Kiluande Libadade's 2006 documentary about Luanda - Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas (Hope the Pitanga Cherries Grow):

Dominica/ Africa: Junot Diaz on Writing Dictators

Africa: East India Company Reborn as a Luxury Brand

After lying dormant for a century, CNN reports that in 2005 Indian-born importer and entrepreneur, Sanjiv Mehta, bought the intellectual property rights to the East India Trading Company - that awesome engine of British colonialism and imperialism that ruled the world from the 17th to the 19th century. Though its counterpart, The Royal African Company, was the main trader of slaves from the continent to America and the West Indies, the EITC was "also in the business of shipping Madagascar slaves to India and East Indies." Below the owner of the brand chooses to dwell on colonial benefits, relating EITC to the "google of its time":



The power EITC once wielded has, of course, evolved and taken on other forms of capital. However the fact that the name of the company and its place in colonial imagination now serves as an Indian "luxury brand" must provide a postcolonial/postmodern chuckle or two. But leave it to the makers of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End  to supply us with the Hollywood ending to the East India Trading Company:

Kenya: Ory "Kenyan Pundit" Okolloh on Blogging

Ory chats with CNN's African Voices about blogging, her father & Ushahidi.

Liberia: The Aspirant is Naked

The old Italian ad below, depicting a butt naked George Weah--Liberia's football icon and presidential aspirant--is suddenly gaining clicks thanks to "a heated debate on morality" leading up to next year's presidential elections.



Spokesperson for Weah's party goes "meh" and adds...:

...personally has never seen the promotional video but its publication will ony help to make Mr. Weah popular amongst voters, especially women voters. “Only constitutional deviants should not be elected,” he said, adding that “Mr Weah committed no crime by posing butte naked.

Oops. Forgot I Had a Blog

Been in Nigeria for the past few weeks having a blast.

 Yaba, Lagos - got a pic of the building I grew up in.
Dang. That used to be my bedroom window :-)