A recurring theme in director Akin Omotoso’s films is the fraught postapartheid relationship between Nigerian migrants and their South African hosts. Part of the reason is autobiographical: Akin is the son of Kole, the literary professor, who moved his young family, including his then teenage son, to South Africa in the early 1990s from Nigeria. The result is that Omotoso is as much Nigerian as he is South African.
Akin Omotoso’s Country
May 25, 2012 By 1 Comment
Blackwater’s “Rwanda”
May 21, 2012 By 2 Comments
I know we’ve been hearing about evil Erik Prince and his name-swapping mercenaries for years (Blackwater, Xe, my personal favorite Academi, and the latest, Greystone). But I only recently discovered how close all of this is to my hometown. Hell, from their “idyllic Dutch hamlet” in Holland (Michigan) the Prince family has formed and backed some of the biggest and most powerful militant Christian groups in the world. Just check out this interactive map.
Africa as Science Fiction
May 10, 2012 By 10 Comments
Since Sun Ra descended in a breast-shaped Ark to recruit Americans for his planetary Afrotopia, science fiction has played a significant role in representations of African life. The original past represented by Africa as ‘cradle-of-civilization’ has recently been inverted in work which measures futuristic narratives against everyday life on the continent. Now the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol, England, has produced Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction (until July 1st), an exhibition bringing together ten works for which the continent is the point of departure for speculative fiction.
‘We’ve always been migrating’
May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Bentley Brown, director of the exciting new film ‘Faisal Goes West’, spoke with me about migration, building a cinematic bridge between Sudan and America, and lawyers turned pizza delivery boys. [Read more...]
A French migration fairytale and other films
May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In his new film ‘Le Havre’, the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki has beautifully weaved a whimsical, somewhat timeless portrayal of France — all baguettes, bars à vins and shoe-shine boys — with an unavoidably contemporary problem that plagues France’s ports, and moves in tides through its politics (the recent support for Marie Le Pen a good example); immigration. [Read more...]
Classic African Films N°3: ‘Come Back, Africa’ by Lionel Rogosin
May 5, 2012 By 3 Comments
‘Come Back, Africa’ (1959) is an explosive film; a strongly political piece, its show the hardship, joy and pain of township life, otherwise closed to the world by the Apartheid regime’s strict hold. Enriched through Lionel Rogosin’s collaboration with the Drum writers Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane on the script, the film possesses a ‘Kafkan sterility’ (Modisane 1990), and tells the archetypal story of the rural man forced toward the city through hardship and the prospect of a better life, something Modisane speaks of with bitterness in his autobiography Blame Me On History (published in 1963). [Read more...]
Documentary–’I am Malawi’
May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
‘I am Malawi’ is a short documentary by Geert Veuskens and Pieter de Vos. (Part 1 above, part 2 below.) Veuskens gave us some more details about their project:
[Read more...]
The ‘African Men–Hollywood stereotypes’ video, positive news and ‘Brand Africa’
April 26, 2012 By 21 Comments
As much as I tried, I can’t seem to like the new video by San Francisco-based NGO Mama Hope. Four young Kenyans sit on a bench talking through the worst stereotypical depictions of African men in Hollywood movies. We get to see these clips (which don’t not tell us much; the clips don’t make sense in the way they’re used here.) Watch it above. The surprising (!) catch is that our guys on the bench are all middle class, play rugby and are on Facebook. The video is by the same people who made ‘Alex Presents: Commando’ (that was cool just as a piece of popular culture) and the more earnest “Call Me Hope” (read Neelika’s generous critique). But this latest instalment – ‘African Men. Hollywood Stereotypes’ – isn’t funny (except for the line about a shirtless Matthew McConaughey), feels forced, and won’t get anything like as many hits. There are wider issues to think about too. [Read more...]
Classic African Films N°2: ‘Touki Bouki’ by Djibril Diop Mambéty
April 26, 2012 By 3 Comments
This is, perhaps, one of my favorite films of all time. A shifting and fragmentary tale of two young lovers — Mory and Anta — and their attempts to flee Senegal for Paris, ‘Touki Bouki’ is Djibril Diop Mambéty’s masterpiece. It fizzles with wit and acuity, it diagnoses the ambivalence toward the colonial master and the at times surreal practices of ‘traditional’ culture. [Read more...]
Africa and the state of Israel
April 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
My Land, a new documentary on the occupied territories of Palestine by Nabil Ayouch, opens with the statement by the director that his background gave rise to the inquiry his film makes. In the Israel-Palestine conflict this is almost a statement of the obvious: where you come from defines your position. Ayouch is one of the notable exceptions. The son of a Moroccan Muslim and a Jewish Tunisian, he claims a position of unusual sensitivity to the schizophrenic realities which trouble the region. [Read more...]
