The creatives at South African satellite TV channel Kyknet — which also produces movies now — not only blatantly rip off American romantic comedy plotlines, but inhabit a South Africa where there is not a single black face to be seen. On the other hand, maybe they’re being honest. About these ads
I know we’re already seven days into March, but visual artist Michael Paul Britto’s request for ‘an extra day to be black’ in mainstream media outlets, still holds. (For those in the dark, he is ripping into Black History Month.)
Surfing as leisure and a sport has historically been associated with whites in South Africa, though that’s not necessarily true in practice. In fact a few documentary films (for example, “Taking back the waves“), the new feature film “Otelo Burning” and the work of photographer Richard Johnson (scroll to the right) have pointed to a […]
I swore I wasn’t going to add a thing to the discussion about the idiotic poster campaign by the student/youth wing of South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance about a future non-racial love-fest. I have remained shtum (yiddish for ‘quiet’) about its horrid aesthetics, its awful family snap-shot quality. (Some have claimed it’s like a Benetton […]
Zimbabwean-Brit actress Thandi Newton (credits: Crash, Mission Impossible ) choice as a female lead in the screen adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s novel “Half of a Yellow Sun” has some people upset.
South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, usually very slick and media savvy, have really outdone themselves with a new campaign by its youth wing. Fresh out of leader Helen Zille’s troublesome ‘AIDS Gestapo’ views and calling the ever disgruntled musician Simphiwe Dana a “Professional Black” on Twitter, the DA now give us this poster, above.
Now and then I’ll scan the international media for reports about “heightening tensions between black and white South Africans.” They never disappoint. (Serious, try it.) Moreover, it seems to have become standard practice to believe and copy each other’s stories. It made me wonder how reporters actually measure those tensions.
UPDATED: NBC’s “Late Night with Jay Leno” is hardly considered a cultural arbiter anymore (except for its baby boomer viewers and for the mostly white supporters of the Republican Party) but in South Africa the appearance of comedian Trevor Noah on the show last week is big news. Noah is a big name back home […]
What was Egg Films thinking? This award-winning South African production house responsible for several corporate commercials and short films created this video for ‘The DNA project’, a local “not-for-profit company committed to advancing justice through the expanded use of DNA evidence in conjunction with a national DNA criminal intelligence database.”
