‘Really you’re African?’

Filmmaker Shola Ajayi (she’s also a media studies student at The New School in New York City) is one of the people behind this humorous, but sharp, web series on “the African experience in America.” The point behind is to “refute negative portrayals of Africans in the media but it will also work as a window into the lives and traditions of individuals from different parts of the continent of Africa.” Here‘s a link to the trailer and below we’ve embedded the first three episodes. The first features Olajuwon Ajayi (Shola’s sister?) and people messing up her name. The second video includes the question, “Really you’re African?” to a Ivorian who people confuse for someone from the Caribbean.

And here are links to episode 4 and episode 5.

For more information, see the series website, its vimeo channel where you can watch newer episodes and on soundcloud for audio interviews.

Further Reading

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.

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.