In the beginning, we are addressed in quote. “This is a place where Death sometimes still warns of its passing. How? No one could answer exactly. It happens the day before, like a certitude that descends upon our bodies and minds…” Against a brooding shot of the breathing sea, cloaked in near darkness — our […]
In 1978 Jean-Luc Godard and his partner Anne-Marie Miéville traveled to Mozambique on the invitation of the new government to advice the latter on the start-up of a national television system. Read about it here and here.
Vanity Fair’s May issue features a photographic series of young Egyptians dubbed, at various points in the accompanying article, ‘tech-savvy internet activists.’ The first photograph is of Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who created the Arabic-language Facebook page, “We Are All Khaled Said.” Ghonim (in the photo above) emerged as a hero of sorts (despite […]
French filmmaker, Bastien Dubois‘ short animated film “Madagascar, a Journey Diary (Carnet de Voyage)” is nominated for an Oscar at this Sunday’s Academy Award ceremony. The film is about Dubois’ experience witnessing a Famadihana, or “the turning of the dead people” ceremony in Madagascar. Amazingly, the film explores this event without necessarily exoticizing it – a tough feat […]
Allison Swank If you thought that a children’s film could escape the exaggerated eye roll of this cultural critic, then think again. I found the 2005 animated film Madagascar, to be as problematic as any live action adult flick – if not more – so simply for the fact that it’s promoting a “West and the […]
