documentary filmmakers criticized for not disclosing re-enacted footage in their oscar-winning short, "Mighty Times: The Children's March"
Indeed, as documentaries are being increasingly viewed as commercially viable - "Fahrenheit 9/11" has sold over $119 million in tickets domestically - documentary makers are under pressure to produce movies with the emotional payoff and high production values of fictional films. "What's new is that the documentary has become a high-octane genre within the last five years," Mr. Else said. "We have also become an image-obsessed culture, a culture that increasingly doesn't care about whether things are real or not."
http://nytimes.com/2005/03/29/movies/29docu.html
follow up to previous post on the fact that africa is the new source of inspiration for this spring's fashion collections. new delhi born, UK educated ashish gupta was one of the favorites of the recent London Fashion Week using the prints, colors and patterns of africa, a look dubbed "Pop African with a sprinkling of Bollywood glitter. Then throw in a bit of vintage Americana..."
[via the fader magazine]
ny times article on the angolan film "the hero" which is currently playing at the New Directors/New Films festival in Manhattan, but will be in commercial release later this spring.
"'The Hero,' like many African films, represents a collaboration of European technical skill and African storytelling" i guess that is the formula that guarantees a film will have success on the international festival circuit. the next step is african technical skill and african storytelling. with emerging technologies this is not as difficult as it once was. the stories are there, we just need to focus on getting the technical skill to tell them our way.
http://nytimes.com/2005/03/24/movies/24hero.html
in the wake of hotel rwanda, many in the media have been doing mea culpae for how they ignored the rwandese tragedy as it unfolded in 1994. but it seems like the story is not being told again in central africa as another conflict roils the heart of africa. per the new york times, the war in congo, having taken an estimated 3.8 million lives, is the most deadly conflict since world war II. that makes it the largest humanitarian disaster in the world right now.
stunningly, only 2 per cent of those souls were lost directly from the conflict. the vast majority of people scattered across the countryside by the actions of a few thousand militia die from malaria, diarrhea, malnutrion and not from bullets and machete cuts. is that why there is minimal reporting on this story? the deaths are not occuring en masse in cities with piles of bodies to document, but out in the forest, in refugee camps 5, 10, 50 lives at a time. or maybe i am not the one paying attention. again.
[source: new york times sunday march 20 section 4 page 1.]
there were a number of articles of note in nyt this weekend
african artists raise voices against malaria "As he prepared for his final performance, which would end the show, Mr. N'Dour said musicians held a special place in the African imagination, making them the best agents of progress and change.
"We are guardians of Africa's diamond, its shining jewel, our culture," he said. "It has sustained us for so long, and now it can move us forward.""
the other side of paradise lamu has become the playground of the super-rich since princess caroline of monaco and her husband prince ernst of hanover bought some propery there. yeah, i know that it a story aimed at the wealthy or those who want to be, but nothing on the character of the swahili character of the island.
next stop, africa.
"This spring's fashion is intriguing precisely because, for once, there are influences from Africa and its diaspora. Prada looked to the continent itself for its exotic peacock skirt and shades of burnt orange and blue; and to England, by way of Jamaica, for the knit Rasta caps. Intimations of Africa could also be found in the accessories at Donna Karan, and the Fendi bags made of barklike python. Antonio Marras's collection for Kenzo had an African beat, and Gaultier's spring couture show was an African watershed."
from sounds to pictures, a survey of video music production companies operating in nairobi.
http://www.eastandard.net/mags/pulse/articles.php?articleid=15683
daara j, positive black soul and pee frois form the triumvirate at the top of senegalese hiphop. daara j is blowing up with their new release "boomrang". they were featured on this morning's leonard lopate show on wnyc [http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/03172005]. for the hipsters among you, there is a podcast of the live performance and interview as well (link on the site). boomrang: "rap music was born in africa and only traveled to america during the slavery era to grow up here to go around the world and to come back to africa".
related: "african underground vol. 1: hiphop senegalese" release party this Saturday March 19th at Nublu 62 Ave C in NYCs Lower East Side. details here [http://www.senerap.com/Article265.htm] kofia tip, flavorpill
finally got a chance to see the film "hotel rwanda" this past weekend. i am sure that not even the filmmakers hoped to capture the scale of what happened that april in 1994, but hopefully depct scenes that, point to the real life turn of events.
for instance, the scene where all the westerners are evacuated from the hotel pointed out to me how the west wanted nothing to do with the rwandese situation beyond getting any of their people out of there. while they had the pain of somalia failure fresh in their minds, the message is that africa is such a remote, unknowable place for the west that even with such horror unfolding, african suffering does not register on a human scale.
another part of the movie that hits home is the scene when joaquin phoenix's character dramatizes the reaction that the world would have to his images of the massacre. he correctly says that average news viewers will watch the footage, shrug their shoulders and continue eating their dinner.
this sentiment is borne out by the coverage of the time. i remember listening to radio reports of the aftermath of the massacres when refugees had poured into congo, specifically goma. i remember one npr correspondent trying to convey the scale of suffering and squalor in the refugee camps. for a number of weeks he filed reports where he roved around amid the refugees with his mike attempting to describe what he was seeing. i would hear what sounded like despair in his voice in seeing the suffering and his powerlessness to accurately convey its scale.
i remember listening to those reports in my car on the way home from work in suburban LA and while the f**ked up nature of the situation would make sad or angry, i would get home, make dinner, watch tv and go to bed, those emotions fogotten. that was my reaction and i am an east african; i had some rwandese acquantances. the killing seemed so far away that the human dimension of it all didn't register with me. it was just another in the line of disasters that were afflicting the world that decade (in srebrenica, in grosny, in baidoa). but as in-depth reports started to get out and i got better informed on what really happened, i have grown to feel ashamed that one of the greatest atrocities of humans against others happened during my time and i did nothing; didn't even feel something beyond temporary sadness. close to 1 million africans dead. in 90 days. a lot of them dispatched with pangas (machetes) which has to be a most painful way of dying.
i suspect that in the rush of images, and sounds we are exposed to daily, even news of the killing on the scale of that in rwanda get compressed into a visual montage of faceless seas of dark-skinned people, bundles of useless posssesions, undistinguished corpses, endless rows of temporary shelters and bloodthirsty youth. such images blend harmlessly into the media landscape of car ads, health reports, sitcoms, etc., etc., without conveying their impact on the devastation of human life.
the south african film "drum" wins the top award at this year's confab of all things african film, fespaco. in praising the accomplishment by the film's crew that covers the victorious struggle against the injustices of apartheid in sa, thabo mbeki said ""This gives momentum to the revival of thought, innovation, art and music that lies at the heart of the African century that is unfolding." [via allafrica].
separately, the angolan movie, "the hero" won the best picture prize for this year. the film directed by zeze gamboa was also awarded the best foreign dramatic movie earlier this year at the sundance film festival. [via allafrica]
director gaston kabore has decided to open a film school in burkina faso's capital, ougadougou. kabore insists he is grappling with one of African film's most pressing problems - the lack of training schools in Africa, which means many of the continent's filmmakers train abroad. "it is not just to make films" says kabore who won the top award at the 1997 fespaco film festival for the film "buud yam".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4305449.stm