Bridging the Western art world and the West African film industry, London-based artist Doug Fishbone cast himself as a local farmer in the film Elmina, a feature-length movie shot and produced in Ghana and starring well-known Ghanaian actors. The over-the-top story is rife with witchcraft, murder, and intrigue as the characters battle against corrupt multinational corporations, but it all pales in comparison to how bizarre (sometimes painfully and sometimes amusingly) it is to watch Fishbone, “a white Jewish guy from New York,” play the lead role without any reference to the overtly odd casting choice. “In a quietly radical way [it] completely overturns conventions of race and representation,” he says. Adding another level of interest is Fishbone’s choice to release the film throughout Africa on DVD–planting one foot in mass-media–as well as to put it on limited display at the Tate Britain and Rokeby galleries in London–planting the other in the more limited art world.

From the little I’ve read I like the politics behind this project, but I’d like to hear what others think of it.  Here’s the film’s trailer:


[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdcYp8neDg]

Via [H/T: Nerina Penzhorn]

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

The new antisemitism?

Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.