Africa Is a Country

The Race Card

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Race Card

By
Sean Jacobs

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

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In search of Saadia

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Binti, revisited

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The bones beneath our feet

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What comes after liberation?

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The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

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