COLOPHON: Do not attempt to adjust your monitor you have come to the right place. I am just continuing my search for a suitable theme for this site. Not overly thrilled with this one either, so I will be dusting off my rusty config skills to tweak it to suit.

Screenshot of Carol Pineau’s film “Kenyan Stories”

FILM: Kenya National Business Plan Competition. Carol Pineau’s work in progress film about 100 aspiring Kenyan entrepreneurs who get to pitch their business concept to a panel of sponsors before the 2007 elections and the fracas that followed. I am no fan of reality shows like “The Apprentice” which is how the story was shot/edited, but I suspect that presenting this story as an earnest documentary style wouldn’t generate much notice for the film either. [via Kenyan Pundit]

PHOTOGRAPHY: JR: Women are Heroes. Guerilla photographer has taken photographs of women in Kenya, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Brazil. He usually asks his subjects to make exaggerated/humorous facial expressions and shoots them up close with a wide angle lens. Hen then posts the images he has taken (often illegally) in the environments where his subjects can see them (as opposed to a gallery/museum). Most recently he has posted his images on the sides of homes in the Providencia favela of Rio de Janeiro. [via rion.nu]
Previously: Portrait of a Generation previously featured here.

Obama - Extra Golden feat. Opiyo Bilongo

MUSIC: Extra Golden: “Obama”. Kenyan-American Benga/Rock group pays tribute to a prominent American of Kenyan ancestry.

Stephanie McKay performs “Tell It Like It Is” live for the Darfur Olympics at BB King NYC

MUSIC: Stephanie McKay: Tell It Like It Is. Bronx native McKay’s new album has me digging back in the crates for that old soulful funk from the early to mid 70’s. Prediction: this will be one of the standout releases of 2008.

screenshot from Jim Chuchu’s site
PHOTOGRAPHY: jim chuchu {photography}. Photographer, animator, musician Jim Chuchu’s photography site. [via Ntwiga]

MUSIC: Iwinyo Piny: Just A Band. Music and visuals by aforementioned Jim Chuchu who is also a member of JAB. Band member Dan posts on kenyananimation blog their thinking process in creating the video. He also discusses how JAB had a rough time pitching this video to Kenyan TV stations: one Program Manager responded that they couldn’t air it as it would alienate their viewers since it was 5 years ahead of its time. You know you are doing something right when you get a response like that. [kenyanimation blog link via paula callas].

screenshot of Ian van Coller’s photo essay, “Interior Relations”
PHOTOGRAPHY: Ian van Coller: Interior Relations (portraits of black South African domestic workers taken in the homes of their white employers).

BOOKS: Chinua Achebe and the great African novel: it’s been 50 years since “Things Fall Apart” was published.

FILM: Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad). High concept: “City of God from the police perspective, but with more brutality and violence and less nuance”. Director Jose Padilha meant to shoot this story as a follow up to his acclaimed documentary “Bus 174″, but chose to fictionalize it based on interviews and a book by 2 ex-BOPE cops. Raises some serious moral questions about how to combat out of control urban crime in townships/favelas/slums that have been criminally ignored by governments. Showed (not so) recently at Tribeca film festival, not sure when it will get wide release.

FILM: killer of sheep: charlie burnett’s debut full length feature (it was his MFA thesis submission at UCLA). raw, rambling, unstructured, filmed neorealismo style in watts in the 1970’s with mostly friends and acquaintances. it is one of the most nuanced portrayals of black american life anywhere on film. must see.

PHOTOGRAPHY: flickr set: hip hop culture. more hip hop “baby pictures” taken by ricky “mr. wiggles” flores in the bronx circa 1984. it all looked so innocent in those days before crack, NWA, bling and “puff daddy”. Correction: Ricky Flores and Mr. Wiggles are not the same person, per Mr. Flores himself (thanks!)

MUSIC: The Roots “Rising Up” ft. Wale & Chrisette Michelle. more go go flavored goodness. 23 year old olubowale “wale” folarin who reps DMV (DC, MD, VA) via Nigeria (parents) features on the first single from the roots new album “rising down” which drops 4/29.

MAGAZINES: shook magazine: possible successor to the late, great global underground music magazine straight no chaser, the passing of which is much lamented here at casa forota. shook even sports the same experimental (sometimes unreadable) typography/design style.

screen shot from “Touki Bouki”

Finally watched “Touki Bouki”, Djibril Diop Membety’s first feature from 1973 about two disaffected Senegalese youth in love who dream of leaving Dakar for Paris. Mambety told his stories in a witty, idiosyncratic visual and sonic language that was influenced by French Surrealism. This makes his movies hard to sit through as the narrative jumps around in time, the same scene play multiple times, visual references sail miles above the viewer’s head and Josephine Baker pops up every once in a while to sing about Paris. Patience ultimately rewards as he tackles relevant African themes particularly traditionalism vs modernity. The DVD I rented also has a short, “Contras’ City”. It, you know, contrasts the Dakar left by the French with its colonial architecture and baroquism, with the controlled chaos of the “other” (real) Dakar of open air markets, madrassas, public water fountains. It is accompanied by a haunting, mesmerizing kora score that is still playing in my head.

See also: Le Franc, and La Petite Vendeuse De Soleil, (The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun), part of a trilogy called “tales of little people” Mambety never completed (he died during post-production for “Little Girl…”)

Music: Roisin Murphy “Let Me Know”. Murphy reinterprets the Brit dance/soul that I so loved in the late 80’s (think Lisa Stansfield, Total Contrast, Loose Ends) with a hint of electroclash darkness/menace.

“BHF magazine Photo Gallery: I am African“. Portrait series of Africans around the diaspora.

Amy Stein: Halloween in Harlem portraits of Harlem kids in Halloween costumes.

Dale Yudelman: Suburbs in Paradise Johannesburg in the 1980’s.

“One has to choose between engaging in stylistic research or the mere recording of facts. I feel that a filmmaker must go beyond the recording of facts. Moreover, I believe that Africans, in particular, must reinvent cinema. It will be a difficult task because our viewing audience is used to a specific film language, but a choice has to be made: either one is very popular and one talks to people in a simple and plain manner, or else one searches for an African film language that would exclude chattering and focus more on how to make use of visuals and sounds.”

Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegalese film director.

herewith, in no particular order some observations on ideas, trends, programs, music, magazines of note for 2007 here at casa forota, organized as a randomly ordered year end list.

print: the new african literary renaissance. as heralded in the bono-edited “africa” issue of vanity fair. personal highlights:
chimamanda adichie wrote about Biafra in 60’s nigeria so vividly one would have thought she lived through the time.
ishmael beah described the crushingly depressing experience of being a child soldier in liberia (somehow he managed to survive and transcend it). dinaw mengestu intimately described the dream-crushing experience of being an african immigrant/expat in washington DC [video] in a way a lot of us can relate.

music: east african urban music arrives: although i have limited exposure to music from home, i was quite impressed with collections like urban africa club and nomadic wax’s nomadic mixtape vol. 2 east african hip hop beatdown where music from artists like necessary noize, professor jay, peter miles, xplastaz and others highlighted the fact that east african music has reached a creative watershed where hip hop/dancehall + sheng + bongo flava = globally aware music that distances itself from the pejorative term ‘local music” that has hung over the imitative music available until quite recently.

ideas: the term “afropolitan” enters my lexicon. as described by author taiye tuakli-wosornu a nigerian-ghanaian writer based in New York City, an afropolitan has a hard time answering the question “where are you from?” why? they have lived in multiple places outside africa (boston, brixton, berlin), claim some part of the continent as home (metaphorically) but inhabit a physical/mental space that encompasses all the places they have lived.

print/web: quality africa-related lifestyle/entertaiment magazines online and off: colures, kitu kizuri, jamati, mimi magazine and pan-african clutch magazine all published to highlight the doings of afropolitans in the worlds of art, music, film, fashion, business. trace (now a fashion mag) and clam were there before, but they still best capture the cutting edge of this quintessentially 21st century experience.

music: global album of the year. migration/globalization are annihilating all kinds of cultural/racial/whatever barriers. with “kala“, maya arulpragasm just dives into it all, equally embracing bhangra, dancehall, africa, australia, digeridoos, hip hop, punk, bollywood, politics, guns, violence, boys to create an album that is a hallmark of the dizzyingly disorienting cultural times we now live in. personal highlight: “hussel” a collaboration with ghanaian/brit afrikan boy sounds to me like the de facto soundtrack for new (illegal) immigrants from everywhere hustling and grinding to get a foothold in their new homes, all while trying to evade deportation.

film: ousmane sembene RIP. [ny times registration req’d] the father of african cinema, all other african directors will be measured against him. he was driven by the insight that film was the most powerful method to convey education/entertainment to africans without the formal education to read books. one of the tragedies of his passing must be that his films commenting on post-colonial african society/politics (xala, moolade, faat kine) were never seen widely outside art movie houses in cities like new york and paris during his lifetime. i managed to catch xala at a recent sembene retrospective here in NYC. if you missed it, some of his films are available on netflix.

race/television: pbs’ brazil in black and white. overt racism is receding everywhere (”it never existed in brazil”, as they like to say). however, social/economic exclusion of black folks in brazil and elsewhere is as plain as day. but how to redress this inequality using policy when there has been generations of racial mixing with african descendants and the identification with “blackness” is sometimes a personal/cultural choice, versus a genetic one? relatedly: the debate in the US on a certain presidential candidate’s blackness.

art/museums: “eternal ancestors, the art of central african reliquary“. brilliant exhibit at the metropolitan museum in NYC that displays sculptural pieces that fired the imaginations of the early 20th century art avant garde (among them picasso). inspired by these innovative, expressive religious artifacts from central africa, these artists found a way to break modern art from its representational (renaissance) roots. the exhibit runs until march 2nd, 2008 go. see it.

i am no fan of thrillers, but i recently purchased the dvd of the last king of scotland as it inspired in me what the brazilians call sodade (nostalgia tinged with sadness). on one level, the movie is a loosely factual biopic on the reign of idi amin. but temporally, it documents the end of the positive growth period, post-independence, that ended with the oil shocks of 1973 and that saw the dawn of 3 dark decades in africa. the producers of the movie were at pains to depict the uganda (africa) of the early 1970’s as a beautiful, glamorous, happy place. the streets were clean, the women dressed in africa-inspired fashions and wore either afros or plaited their hair in fancy designs. it was the time of congolese rumba and ghanaian high-life. there was plenty of optimism, joy and national pride. it is a time i have vague but fond memories of a kid.

as uganda slipped into bloody chaos, investigative news reports of amin’s brutality started to filter out of the country. to this day for me the signature image of the time is the black and white post-execution image of an amin opponent. the images comprised partially/mostly naked bodies, dark hoods tied over heads/torsos. the bodies would be bound to execution posts, slumped on one side, dark streaks of blood flowing down from execution squad inflicted bullet wounds. as a boy living in then idyllic, peaceful nairobi, the violence left a deep impression on me as these things were not happening in far off vietnam, but next door.

at that time i don’t think even the worst pessimists among us would have imagined that this was just the beginning of a dark time and that this decline into chaos and atrophy would be repeated all over africa as idealistic post-independence leaders were pushed aside and “big men” presided over corruption, the crushing of political and intellectual dissent, economic collapse, war, AIDS, famine, and other miscellaneous ills that have been the hallmark of the last 30 years in africa.

so the recent news that this long night may be coming to an end, economically speaking, brings hope that africa and africans can enjoy another period of optimism, joy and pride. while i am sure we will not return to the days of rumba and afros, i am most interested to what kind of cultural expression this time will inspire.

relatedly: a scene from the crappy exploitation movie “idi amin: rise and fall” was filmed in lenana school when i was in 5th form (IIRC). the film crew commandeered part of “tuition block” to film an assassination attempt where they blew up a citroen in the parade area. that was the coolest movie s**t i had seen with my own eyes in my life until that point.

“That is basically the next big challenge … is making this interdependent world of ours on balance far more positive than negative … and the extent to which we succeed in doing that will determine whether the 21st century is marred by terrorism of all kinds or whether it becomes the most peaceful and prosperous and interesting time the world has ever seen.”
Former President Bill Clinton from “Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy”

recently, i have watched a bunch of movies from the african diaspora. “Orfeu Negro“, - the greek myth re-told in the favelas of rio at carnaval time; “Tsotsi” - slum life in jo’burg, “U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha“, - bizet’s carmen remixed in cape town’s townships; “DRUM” - the legendary south african magazine and its connection to sophiatown, the slum that many of its writers/subjects lived/worked; “Cidade de Deus/News From A Personal War” - dvd of that seminal film, and an accompanying documentary that shows although the film got the MTV-treatment, factually it is not so far away from reality.

i believe that the story of the 21st century is the growth of megacities comprised largely of places like manguiera, soweto, kibera, which if not integrated into the mainstream threaten to engulf everything around them in the insecurity and despair they breed. already in many third world cities, there are huge swaths of urban territory that are outside the “official” economy. the violence and lack of formal infrastructure keep out all but those who have no choice but live there and the cops who are supposed to keep those areas in check. alternatively, the rich are imprisoned behind high compound walls, security systems, and armored SUVs. america has its war on terror, the rest of the world lives with terror created by urban poverty.

these films have given me a nuanced glimpse into places i may never willingly set foot in where people live and die much like the rest of us. its just that we don’t have the guns and the squalor, and they have much better music.

update: my blog software is experiencing unexplained techincal difficulties with links. please stand by while i resolve the problem. normal linking should resume soon. asante

stumbled upon 2 unrelated (i think) doings about the children who commute into the streets of ugandan cities to sleep there overnight so that they do not get kidnapped and conscripted into the lord’s resistance army to “fight” the horrendous northern uganda war.

1. don cheadle and his family went to uganda to do a screening of hotel rwanda to raise money and filmed a short documentary called “journey into sunset“. it will premiere at the tribeca film festival next week here in nyc.

2. three young cali filmmakers who also did a documentary on the night commuters called “invisible children“. they are organizing a global night commute to ask americans to spend one night (4/29) sleeping in the streets like the kids in uganda. they have a video to promote the event that is funny riff on the michael jackson “if-we-dance-we-can-save-the-world” school of thought.

i for one have stopped wondering how the world stood by and let the nazi holocaust happen. in my time rwanda, congo, darfur and northern uganda have all taken place (the last three together) and i have blithely gone on with my life with little more than an occasional twinge of outrage.