Trailer for 2011 release of Fold Crumple Crush, Susan Vogel's documentary look at El Anatsui, the renowned Ghanaian sculptor, active for much of his career in Nigeria. Synopsis:
...The film circles around Anatsui, drawing ever closer to a deep understanding of the man and his surprising bottle top hangings. We see the celebrated artist installing work on the great world stage of the Venice Biennale; we follow him back to the small town of Nsukka as he goes about his daily life, then watch him inside the hive of his studio directing assistants as they stitch together bottle tops into a vast metal hanging. Finally, Anatsui admits us to the privacy of his home where he tells us about his formative years, and reveals a youthful discovery that clouded his life.
Video for Just a Band's cut ---with German electronic producers Gebrüder Teichmann & Jahcoozi and Kenyan singer/guitarist Michel Ongaro--- for the Berlin-Nairobi collabo - Welcome to the madhouse! Details @ OkayAfrica
Noir, trees, a baseball bat and loads of gorgeous camera angles on Stella Nasambu. Like with the suitcase in Pulp Fiction, no one should bother asking what the blurred-out package is.
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is the founder of the Khatt Foundation Center for Arabic Typography, which is dedicated to advancing design research-- especially bilingual typographic research and design--and typography in the Middle East, North Africa, and their diaspora.
With the recent release of Arabesque 2: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia, it is time to revisit AbiFares' Typographic Matchmaking in the City project which brought 5 teams of Dutch and Arab designers together over a period of 18 months to explore the relationships between Arab and Latin typography, typography and architecture, as well as the visual musicality of calligraphy.
More from Nneka's Soul is Heavy album. In video for "My Home," she morphs from Cele priestess to Lawma sweeper in a Lagos minute.
Another African Kickstarter documentary worth every dime - Siji's Elder's Corner:
Shot against the colorful and gritty backdrop of some of Nigeria’s urban cities particularly Lagos and through the clever use of extensive in depth interviews, archival footage and still photographs, Elder's Corner will take viewers on a musical journey through the country's turbulent and colorful history. It will chronicle and showcase the lives and work of some of the leading exponents of the various musical movements that spawned Afrobeat, Juju, Apala, Highlife and Fuji music.
That was fast. Season 13 premier of Law and Order SVU, dubbed "Scorched Earth," rips Guinean hotel maid accusing former IMF chair, Dominque Strauss-Kahn, of rape straight from the headlines. In this episode though, DSK gets swapped for an Italian diplomat played by a guiltier looking Franco Nero, who allegedly rapes a Sudanese hotel maid who may or may not be in it for the money.
The episode covers all the big points: DSK/Nero's insistence of innocence, the maid's allegedly sketchy past, and some scandalous surprise testimony from a last-minute source (ok, so that last part may have been exaggerated for TV, BUT). Showrunner Warren Leight said this episode was a beast to write: "In this case, I don’t believe we ripped from the headlines. I believe the actual story ripped us off...We had to do rewrites. Everything we had in our initial draft had to be changed." Right.
...but I’m a sucker for ripped-from-the-headlines campiness, and the decision to plug the SVU squad into the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case made for some fun bits, all of them involving Ice T. (When Faux-DSK demanded to know why he was being paraded in front of cameras, Ice T cackled: “Freedom of the press, baby!”
A revealing piece over atthe Daily Trust tells stories of Nigerians traveling to countries like Malaysia to sell off their kidneys for $10,000, which amounts to the capital many of them need to lift themselves and their loved ones out of poverty. Excerpt:
Mike, also from Edo, sold his kidney in Malaysia and returned back to the country recently. Like Eghosa, he says he was paid $10, 000.00 for his kidney. He says he was left with no choice because it was either he sells one of his kidneys or sits down to watch two of his younger sisters who just graduated from a sewing school become prostitutes because they have no money to set themselves up. He now feels a sense of justification for his action even though he now worries that he is still young and at any time in the future his remaining kidney might not be able to serve him if he falls sick. Mike says there were a lot of people in the queue in Malaysia, most of them Nigerians, who have gone to sell their kidneys. Like him, those who took the risk needed money desperately to start something that will turn their lives around. Back in the country, he now thinks of a suitable business that will keep him out of the reach of poverty forever.
Above, insightful scene from Stephen Frears' 2002 sleeper hit about organ trading, Dirty Pretty Things, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou. Below, scholar Nils Gilman's 2009 lecture on the "Global Illicit Economy" or "Deviant Globalization" - @ 2:19 mins in, he lays out the global economics of illicit organ trading:
Corny but powerful - University of Rochester's singing club, The Yellowjackets, perform Somali troubadour K'naan's "Waving Flag" on the Season 3 premier (September 19, 2011) of NBC's "Sing-Off", a singing competition show featuring a cappella groups.
Keith Campbell writes in Engineering News about South African's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and its research in "niche areas" where robotics may be of help to South Africans.
South Africa cannot remotely match the scale of these investments – military or civil. Yet, the country cannot ignore field robotics either. It is becoming too important, too dynamic – a field relevant to many areas of human endeavour. Consequently, the CSIR is undertaking research into field robotics through the formation of the Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems (Mias) group. “This is an emerging research area for the CSIR, so it is different from a competence area,” explains Mias group leader Dr Simukai Utete. “Our group targets niche areas which address national needs – niche areas which are of relevance to [our] society. We are very concerned about capacity development in robotics.”
They just do their tasks. Field robotics is relatively new. Field robots are in-between industrial robots and science-fiction. They operate in unstructured environments but in limited roles. They can act autonomously. Some can operate with people safely. Some have limited learning ability,” explains mining robotics project manager Liam Candy. The group has projects in the field of mining robotics, vehicle robotics, intelligent manipulation and active vision for autonomous systems.
"Come get it" from UK based SA female MC Noni Zondi, signed to Nigerian label Big Boyz Entertainment. Reminds us of Dama Do Bling rather thanLady Gaga.
Below, mash up of the year by Amerigo Gazaway combines Fela and De La Soul and comes up with "Fela Soul," or the definition of "Gummy Soul."
Metropolis TV reporter Maoreports on Japanese kids appropriating a ‘B-style’ or the ‘black lifestyle’ which sees them not only channeling hip hop culture and aesthetics, but also shedding their pale skin for a darker look with regular visits to tanning salons to become as dark as American hip hop artists and music video eye candy.
Unlike these idiots who are clearly mocking black people. It’s women like them and Kreayshawn that make you almost want to wish a yeast infection on someone. Almost. The karma isn’t worth it. I learned that from Mother Oprah.Anyway, these Japanese ladies are different. I get the feeling that if they took a field trip to Brooklyn they would find a way to stay permanently. Then they would go off and find the Asian dancer from Soul Train on Facebook in order to get a blueprint on how to find their place in a different world. The proof lies in the comments they deliver with a big cheesy grin in each and every instance.
Algerian born Rachid Koraïchi has won the £25,000 Jameel Prize [international art prize awarded to a contemporary artist or designer inspired by traditions of Islamic craft and design] for a selection of embroidered cloth banners from a series entitled Les Maitres invisibles (The Invisible Masters), 2008. Martin Roth, Director of the V&A, Hasan Jameel and Ed Vaizey MP, presented Rachid Koraïchi with the prize at a ceremony at the V&A on Monday 12 September. The Judges felt that Rachid’s work matches the aims of the Jameel Prize through its qualities of design and reliance on traditional craft. They particularly admired how he has made his great spiritual and intellectual lineage accessible to all through the graphic language he has created out of his artistic heritage. Koraichi uses Arabic calligraphy, and symbols and ciphers from a range of other languages and cultures to explore the lives and legacies of the 14 great mystics of Islam...
...The work aims to show that the world of Islam, in contrast to contemporary perceptions of crisis and violence, has another side entirely, evident in the tolerant and sophisticated writings of great Muslim thinkers and poets such as Rumi and El Arabi. These ‘masters’, whose fame has spread even to the West, left an imprint on successive generations and their message is just as relevant today as when first written down (more).
Floyd Webbcaught up with Cameroonian auteur Jean-Pierre Bekolo [Quartier Mozart (1992)] a few months back and edited this 4-minute compilation of the director's thoughts about the state of cinema today.
More: a kick ass 2008 interview with Indiana University's Akin Adesokan over @ Postcolonial Text and an old post on Bekolo and black sci-fi/ speculative fictions - for example, his use of Cameroonian beliefs about female sexuality in Les Saignents (2005) as the jump off point into a film noir-African speculative future.
AFP's Justine Gerardy explains the emergence of so many black opera stars in South Africa:
South African black opera voices have burst onto the international stage, mirroring the country's shift to democracy, decades after white Afrikaner soprano Mimi Coertse debuted at the Vienna State Opera in 1956. Experts say their rise is no sudden outpouring of new talent but rather that all-race freedom in 1994 levelled the playing field to allow those with remarkable gifts who were stifled under apartheid to enter the game. "At the moment our best singers are black," said Virginia Davids, head of vocal studies at the South African College of Music based at the University of Cape Town. South Africans can be found from Tel Aviv to London, with soprano Pumeza Matshikiza performing at Monaco's royal wedding-- where the principality's Prince Albert II married South African Charlene Wittstock in July -- and Sweden-based Dimande Nkosazana taking first prize in a competition in Italy. more
Above, clip of opera singers Lunga Tubu and Nkululeko Maphoyi from Laura Gamse's 2010 documentary, Creators.
Reuters' Silvia Aloisi on director Emanuele Crialese's "Terraferma" (Mainland), which screened at the Venice film festival. The film explores how the lives of a fisherman and his family on a remote island off the Sicilian coast are transformed when they rescue a pregnant Ethiopian woman at sea and hide her in their house. Excerpt:
...Crialese decided to make the film in 2009, after reading the story of an African woman who was one of only five survivors on a crammed boat that spent 21 days drifting at sea without assistance before running aground on Lampedusa."I was hypnotized by her face, her expression. She had just been through hell, three weeks at sea, with people who saw them, got close and threw them water and then abandoned them again. And she looked as if she had arrived in heaven," he said. Crialese offered the woman, identified only as Timnit T., the part of the pregnant Ethiopian in Terrafirma, a film which is a clear indictment of the crackdown on illegal immigration by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government and its ill-preparedness in the face of a humanitarian emergency.
"...she looked as if she had arrived in heaven," Crialese's description of the pregnant Ethiopian migrant literally gets painted on screen in another immigration film that screened at Venice. Check out the nude beach meets garden of Eden opening scene of Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost's The Invader (starring Burkinabé actor Issaka Sawadogo and Italian actress Stefania Rocca). Tambay's preview -here.
More stuff: an Italian graphic novel about another Ethiopia migrant -here. More or the depiction of racism in Italian cinema - here. More immigration cinema: S&A previews + trailers for Maggie Peren's Color of the Ocean (Germany) and Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (Finland). Erwin Wagenhofer's Black,Brown and White (Austria)
Above, the final gory page from an other wise well written and scrumptiously drawn first issue of Batwing - the new character, spawned from Bruce Wayne's desire to franchise the Batman name across the globe. Batwing's name is David Zamvimbi from Tinasha in the DRC and he will be wearing the cape for the time being as "Africa's Batman". Batwing Issue #1was part of DC comics' historic relaunch of 52 of its titles last week, resetting those books' clocks back to issue one.
Over at Huff Po, filmmaker Bryan Young interviewsBatwing writer Judd Winick, and this time Winick reveals a lot more about how he will be remixing all the available African stereotypes for a Western audience while fleshing out the Batwing character and staying true to Batman's mythos:
Winick on Batwing's origins:
...what could be considered the more political bent is that Batwing is an AIDS orphan. He lost both his parents to AIDS. Which some folks might call that politics. From where we sit, we're just trying to be true to life in Africa right now. In most of the regions, one-fifth of the population is HIV positive or living with AIDS. And there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million AIDS orphans out there. It rang kind of true to us especially in the Bat universe. Batman himself and most of the other members of the Bat family come from tragic beginnings. That's sort of the motif. That's sort of the opera of it all. It's not like Batwing was out there doing pre-law for a while, starting his own practice, and then decided "Hey, I'll put on a costume and
In a 2007-2008 content analysis of YouTube videos featuring the countries Ghana and Kenya, California State University - Northridge Melissa Wall's argues in Africa on YouTube: Musicians, Tourists, Missionaries and Aid Workers (International Communication Gazzette, 2009, 71) that though YouTube is allowing everyday Africans to construct their own representations, a bulk of the videos are more likely to come from westerners. Although these African countries are not represented as chaotic and violent as has often been the case in the past, they continue to be stereotyped. Excerpt from her conclusion:
More broadly, the findings here suggest that YouTube enables the average westerner in particular to become a chronicler of other peoples in faraway lands just as travelers and missionaries ‘discovered’ Africa in previous centuries. Most of these westerners, although not the official voices of the past, do not offer a remedy to the Othering of Africa. Indeed, many of their contributions to YouTube reinforce and naturalize stereotypes. Those videos that feature Africans as the primary actors are almost all generally entertainment oriented often to the exclusion of seemingly more serious content. Why Africans who post videos stick mainly with entertainment content is an important area for future study because entertainment, which tends to be favored by YouTube visitors in general, may well serve as the primary source of information about other countries for many people. Therefore, Africans creating music videos have much more at stake than promoting their careers. Much of the world’s (particularly young people) very vision of their countries may well be in their hands. In conclusion, this examination of a small slice of the world’s largest and bestknown video social networking site does not suggest that a new day has dawned for Africa in terms of the structure and how of global information. What is revealed here is that the age-old inequities still exist and still allow westerners to dominate; although, there is perhaps a broader group of them doing so. That said, YouTub and other such uses of the Internet are providing a small opening for Africans to create and present their own stories to the world – or at least to the richer corners of it. of it. Whether that opportunity is pursued to provide a more complicated view of the continent’s political, social and economic issues, or whether Africans will see public spaces such as YouTube just as most westerners do – as another form of entertainment – remains to be seen.
In the Rhodes Journalism Review 28, 2008, Wall adds that in the event of a media covered tumult --i.e. Kenya's 2007 post-election violence--that causes a surge in information about the country on YouTube, older stereotypical videos still get more views:
The volume of additional content combined with the high interest level from visitors to YouTube may well have changed the nation’s image on YouTube – at least for now – from amateur tourist and missionary content along with entertainment videos to news and information. It should be noted, however, if the search is based on number of views, then tourists’ animal videos and music return to the top. Compared to Ghana, which remained fairly static in terms of types of content producers and images over the same time period, this suggests that a crisis may shift the sorts of videos being posted onto YouTube about a particular country or region.
Another unpublished paper does a content analysis of YouTube videos for Community of Portuguese‐speaking African Countries (PALOP)– Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea‐Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
Nokia sold it one billionth phone in Nigeria in 2005... 12 of the top 15 devices in Africa, are Nokia brand handsets. With the two Nseries devices in the top ten. The N70 in 4th and the N73 in 7th.
Infomatic below shows evolution of Nokia handsets (click to enlarge). Other surprising facts about Nokia phones and Africa - here.
The Economist video below explains why handset makers like Nokia rule Africa:
From the internet archives, a spoof on ethnological documentaries as an African TV team travels to an Austrian province to document the strange behavior of the natives in an episode titled "Darkest Austria." Though this example is fictional, the point of reverse anthropology (or simply "return anthropology"), wherein those often anthropologized and ethnographed now turn the lens of study on their anthropologists, gets across .
Like below in Jean Rouch's La Petit Petit (1971) where we see Rouch's protege Zika Damouré leaving Niger for France to observe to study the "curious" ways Parisians live. Soon Damoure's descriptions of the Parisians in letters to his companions back in Niger start sounding so bizarre to them that they think he's gone mad and they soon send someone after him:
"The indigenous critique and articulation of political alternatives [by the anthropologized and ethnographed] ," according to Stuart Kirsch, "temporarily align[s] ethnography and anthropology with the objectives of social movements."
