The “Importance of Being Elegant” is a film by directors George Amponsah & Cosima Spender. It sheds a light (too little I think) on the Congolese SAPE (Société Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants) scene in Paris and Brussels. The narrative centers around Papa Wemba, widely considered Sapeur #1. He has just been released from prison on human trafficking charges. Among other things in this cinema verite style documentary, Papa Wemba is rehearsing for an upcoming show and laying tracks for a new CD. It also turns out that he has found religion while in prison, so this is a transitional time for Papa Wemba, who wrestles with how to marry his new spiritual side with the worship of “the cloth” that is the hallmark of La Sape. He struggles with how to keep his central position of power in the expat Congolese community, but also take them in a new direction. This leads to some pretty hilarious situations. In one he is laughably decrying materialism; in another he is in a high end (Cavalli?) boutique justifying to another Sapeur the wisdom of spending 15,000 euros on one article of clothing.
The film has some brilliant footage of Papa Wemba in rehearsal (that voice!). Those of a certain age will remember vinyl 45s of Congolese rumba available in Nairobi that contained one song pressed on two sides. The first side (Part 1) had the emotive, mellow side, and while I know zero Lingala the emotion conveyed by the singing was of sadness, longing, loss. Part 2 was the upbeat guitar-driven side; basically ”life sucks, whatever. Let’s dance!”. This contradiction, a willingness to live with the fact that this moment contains both sad and happy together forms the genius of rumba and informs the world view of Sapeurs, it seems to me. If you are from a place like Congo, where there is little hope for the future, why not live like all your dreams have come true, like there is no tomorrow?
La Sape has always been about escape even for the now old gentlemen in Congo Brazzaville where this all started in the 1940s. The young men in the film have bought into that escape fantasy to propel themselves from the poverty and war of Kinshasa to a life of luxury and elegance in Paris. In the final scenes when the filmmakers follow a sapeur nicknamed “the Archbishop” as he attempts to establish himself in Paris and in the SAPE scene there, we get a peek into the harsh realities awaiting these young men when they arrive, including a realization that it is all just a mirage.
One can tie a thread through two other NYAFF films I saw: “Killer Necklace” and “Area Boys”; through “Tsotsi” and “City of God” earlier. All these stories dramatize the effects of the developing world’s near complete failure to provide for its youth who can’t make a living, a life in the cities they grow up in. These young men become “area boys”, “tsotsis”, “sapeurs”, “pantsulas”, and other urban fringe subcultures created in the search to find meaning in life. Those who are lucky and can leave wind up living on the fringe of cities like Brussels, Paris, London, New York City, hawking knock-off merchandise, driving cabs and cleaning toilets, while avoiding deportation. Those who are left behind and who lose hope fuel the crime in Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, and war in Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia.
In the end, TIOBE is a lost opportunity. It is really an immigration story masquerading as a fashion story, a superficially narrated fashion story at that. In Q&A after the NY African Film Festival showing recently, director George Amponsah mentioned that they didn’t visit Kinshasa while filming and noted that Papa Wemba thought he was depicted as a gangster after seeing edited footage. It seems to me the director chose to caricature the Sapeur scene as a way of finding a strong narrative arc and to make the film accessible to non-African audiences. That way it was not necessary to explore any of the contradictions thrown up by Papa Wemba and the Sapeur culture. I was a little miffed that some people, unaware of the history of Congo in general and of La Sape in particular, probably walked out of that showing thinking “What losers! Spending 15,000 euros on a jacket while living in a hostel and running from la migra, wtf?!!”. To someone like me who grew up in Africa where music and pop culture was so driven by men like Papa Wemba, Franco and Tabu Ley, it is an injustice to reduce all that to just a buffoonish worship of clothes.
Why do I blog about Africa? Two words. Chinese film. Wait, let me explain. I grew up a very westernized kid in Kenya. I am in the second generation of people that grew up with the world view that was distilled as follows: “Modernity (Europe + Christianity) = good. Backwardness (Africa + tradition) = bad”. I believe Fela Kuti called it “Colomentality”. Don’t get me wrong, I am intensely proud to be Kenyan; I just felt no real compulsion to learn more about my culture beyond a reasonable competence in my mother tongue.
The Chinese art film I discovered in the 90’s (I’m a huge fan of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai) was a window into Chinese culture and through that to one central insight. Modernization is not Westernization. For all of us non-Westerners, our challenge is to balance African-ness/Asian-ness/Eskimo-ness/whatever-ness with the best of what the modern world has to offer in science, technology, philosophy, art, culture. That is the promise of globalization.
I blog mostly for myself, filling in the blanks in my own knowledge of the culture of the African diaspora, a lot of which already navigates that space between old and new, tradition and modernity, Africa and Europe. Film, photography, and other visual arts are critical tools to communicate the stories people tell themselves about their place in the world. Like Zhang Yimou’s films which were (are) motivated in part to portray China differently after the shame and chaos of the Cultural Revolution, I hope this obscure little part of the blogosphere and the visual media it highlights becomes part of the the new story we Africans tell about us and our place in this globalizing community.
FILM: “Pray the Devil Back to Hell”. Documentary about peace efforts of Liberian women led by Leymah Gbowee to end their country’s war. What started out as sit-ins at fish markets developed into meetings with the warring factions and even pressure during peace talks to ensure that negotiations went all the way to fruition. There is a quote over at The Daily Beast from film producer Abbey Disney (yes that Disney) on how easy it was to find Liberian war porn but (little) no footage of Gbowee and other women trying to end the fighting (they got some footage from a former presidential videographer):
One of the interesting things was how easy the combat footage was to come by—you do a search for it, and the next thing you know is you are swimming in the most disturbing images of blood and gore. What was hard to find were the women working for peace, because no one knew they were there—we had reporters say to us, “We knew they were there, but why shoot them?” They were so pathetic.
Trailer for This is Nollywood
FILM: “This is Nollywood”. Director Franco Sacchi spotlights the third largest movie industry in the world, by following Nollywood director Bond Emeruwa in his quest to make a feature length film with $20,000, a digital camera, 9 days and a whole lot of Lagos-style chutzpah.
“We are telling our own stories in our own way, our Nigerian way, African way,” Bond says. “I cannot tell the white man’s story. I don’t know what his story is all about. He tells me his story in his movies. I want him to see my stories too.”
Bond Emeruwa, Nollywood director
TEDTalks: Welcome To Nollywood. Franco Sacchi discusses the making of his documentary “This is Nollywood” and the significance of film and a vibrant storrytelling culture to Nigerian society. Includes excerpts from the documentary.
Kofia Tip for Nollywood linkage: Africa is a Country
Screenshot from New York Times slideshow of Eritrea’s art deco architecture
PHOTOGRAPHY: NY Times slideshow: Relics of a Long-Gone era in Eritrea. Frozen in time classic Italian-inspired art deco architecture found in Etritrean towns like Asmara and Massawa.
Trailer for “Black Orpheus”, directed by Marcel Camus starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello
FILM: RIP Marpessa Dawn. Dawn played Eurydice in 1959’s Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) which was a retelling of the Greek myth “Orpheus and Eurydice” set in Rio de Janeiro at Carnaval. With its all-black amateur cast it was both hailed for introducing the world to bossa nova and criticized for stereotyping Rio de Janeiro’s black poor. Despite that and the cringingly wooden dialog, it is an important film to watch. For one, it illistrates the power of myth to depict the universality of the human condition (love, fate, death, rebirth) free of time and place. For another, Camus went into documentary mode to film the carnaval and dance scenes and captured the fleeting moments of authentic happiness that favelistas enjoyed during carnaval, as respite from the sea of endless sadness that would have been the life of being poor and black in Rio de Janeiro. Spooky: Breno Mello, who played Orpheus also passed away recently, just 41 days before Marpessa Dawn.
Sign in shop window on Fredrick Douglass Avenue in Harlem
Saw the above sign in a window while out on a stroll in Harlem over the weekend and it made me think of “Hot Irons” Andrew Dosunmu’s documentary that covers some of the characters and out-of-this-world hair styles highlighted at the Hair Wars show in Detroit. Hair as art, as quoted in the movie trailer below.
Posted: September 8th, 2008 | Author:kamau | Filed under:film, photography | Comments Off
Nola’s Birthday Dance, from Spike Lee’s movie “She’s Gotta Have It”
The first art house film I saw was Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It”. While it was a breakthrough for both black and indie filmmaking, its most notorious legacy was its introduction to the world of that nerdy b-boy Nike spokesperson Mars Blackmon. I, er, bootlegged movie when it was released on VHS and I had the opportunity to watch it multiple times, so the score and dialog are etched on my brain.
So, this past weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has held up pretty well over the 22 years since it was released. Now that I live in NYC, it is doubly satisfying to recognize the locations where the film was shot around Brooklyn. There is the still photography of David Lee (Spike’s brother) showing a pre-gentrification Fort Greene. There is the jazz score by Spike’s dad Bill Lee. To this day, when I see a beautiful Black woman sashaying down the street ala Nola Darling, the score from the scene when Jamie and Nola meet automatically cues up in my internal soundtrack. The film was shot in black and white out of necessity (cheap film stock) but I can’t see it any other way now, and it makes the dance piece shot in color pop out in contrast. The dialog still sounds hackneyed, but it is so consistent it’s become part of the film’s aesthetic. At that time, it was still quite unusual for me see black folk doing “the wild thing” on screen (to quote Fab 5 Freddy from the “dog” montage in the film).
In the interim the dominant portrayal of Black women has gone from strong, independent black boho woman to video ho. The Black bohemian was marginalized even further by the “keepin’ it real” aesthetic that washed over Black pop culture courtesy of gangsta rap and thug life. While other filmmakers like the Wayans brothers, Robert Townsend, Hudlin Brothers followed in his footsteps, none succeeded like Spike in presenting real Black people with wit and insight. To me, “She’s Gotta Have It” is a part of the essential black film canon ala Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep“. Definitely worth watching (again).
Angela (played by Angela Burnett) and neighborhood boy in the film “Killer of Sheep”, a Milestone Film & Video release.
… these looks are the sole creation of the Surma and Mursi tribes of East Africa’s Omo Valley. Inspired by the wild trees, exotic flowers and lush vegetation of the area bordering Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, these tribal people have created looks that put the most outlandish creations of Western catwalk couturiers to shame.
Ory Okolloh’s talk at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha Tanzania, 2007
TECHNO-ACTIVISM: Ory Okolloh: The Making of an Activist. Ory’s site Kenyan Pundit was the site of record for information on the post-election fracas in Kenya, she practically live blogged the events on the ground. In her talk she makes a great point about Africans creating original content or forfeiting the right to complain about how others portray us (a big reason that blog exists). She discusses how she became an activist as well as her work with the site Mzalendo that monitors the doings in Kenya’s parliament. More on TEDGlobal 2007: Africa the Next Chapter including writer Chris Abani’s talk on the importance of storytelling in rethinking the African narrative.
Trailer for Jerusalema directed by Ralph Ziman
FILM:Jerusalema. Tsotsi’s Rapulana Seiphemo switches sides from outraged middle class husband/dad to gangland boss ala Scarface in post-apartheid Hillbrow in Johannesburg. Mines the same themes of urban poverty and its repercussions as Fernando Meirelles’ Cidade de Deus Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, Jose Padilha’s Tropa de Elite. Can’t wait to see this, will keep eyes peeled for Stateside release. [via afripop!]
See also: Johannesburg Series by South African Guy Tillim, a great photo essay on the decaying center of Jozi that forms the main location and is a central part of the plot in Jerusalema.
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).
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.
