Here's a documentary worth checking out. The film follows a group of talented musicians who fled the civil war in their home country of Sierra Leone and met at a refugee camp in Guinea. Scheduled to be released on DVD on August 14th, the film has recently partnered with Netflix and every time a DVD of the film is purchased, $1 goes to ninemillion.org, a human rights campaign to raise funds for refugee children. So please spread the word...
Sierra Leone's REFUGEE ALL STARS
(a documentary film by Banker White and Zach Niles)
The plight of the refugee in today's war-torn world is captured in the African proverb, "When two elephants are fighting, the grass will suffer." So it was in Sierra Leone from 1991-2002, where the government and various rebel factions carried out a brutal civil war in which the terrorizing of civilians, by killing, mutilation, rape, and forced conscription, was common practice on all sides. The war sent hundreds of thousands of ordinary Sierra Leoneans fleeing to refugee camps in the neighboring West African nation of the Republic of Guinea. That's where the remarkable documentary Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars begins.
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars are a band of six Sierra Leonean musicians who came together to form a band while living in a refugee camp in Guinea. Many of their family and friends were murdered in the war, leaving each of them with physical and emotional scars that may never heal. Despite the unimaginable horrors of civil war, they were saved and brought hope and happiness to their fellow refugees through their music.
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars chronicles the band over three years, from Guinean refugee camps back to war-ravaged Sierra Leone, where they realize the dream of recording their first studio album. And so begins a musical phenomenon that is making the world hear the voices of West Africa's refugees through the film Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars have been able to launch an international musical career, while drawing the accolades of Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Ice Cube (one of the executive producers of the film), and Joe Perry.
Through their unflinching spirit, their powerful stories of survival and their joyful music Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars celebrate the best that is in all of us. As violent conflicts multiply around the globe and the worldwide refugee crisis deepens, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars is a humanizing ode to all the innocent survivors of war whose brutal realities are often dismissed by surface mass media sound bytes.
www.refugeeallstars.org
www.myspace.com/refugeeallstarsfilm
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NINEMILLION.ORG
Nine million faces. Nine million names. Nine million stories. Nine million children are refugees right now. Ninemillion.org is a UN Refugee Agency led campaign to raise awareness and funds for education and sports programs for refugee youth, many of whom are forced to spend years of their young lives away from home with little hope of returning. What happens to them now, during their years as refugees, is up to all of us. Please spread the word.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
STOP TRYING TO 'SAVE' AFRICA
This article from the Washington Post is just one of many these days decrying the media's (and the Western world's) portrayal of Africa. The Live Earth concert 2 Saturdays ago was full of messages regarding global warming but somehow the topic of saving Africa managed to come up, as it's been deemed the sexiest topic these days, next to being green (if not ranked higher by the press).
Uzodinma Iweala questions the motives of these self-proclaimed saviours of Africa. We tend to ask, "when will Africans start helping themselves?", but in reality, they never stopped, the rest of us just need to get on board. An argument that comes up regularly is that regarding celebrities' motives behind their sudden "dying need to help Africa"? The Angelinas and Oprahs are no doubt doing some great humanitarian work but would we (Africans) be better off if they just gave the money to NGOs and called it a day without the media circus? Or are these characters more instrumental in that they are putting the African "pandemic" on the ever-busy world map?
(thanks for the article Rukky!!)
------------------------
Stop Trying to 'Save' Africa - by Uzodinma Iweala
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists.
"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!
My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.
"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.
It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East , the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.
This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.
Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying."
Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.
Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?
Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local governments -- without much international help -- did for the survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for their work.
Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
-----------
Uzodinma Iweala is the author of "Beasts of No Nation," a novel about child soldiers.
Uzodinma Iweala questions the motives of these self-proclaimed saviours of Africa. We tend to ask, "when will Africans start helping themselves?", but in reality, they never stopped, the rest of us just need to get on board. An argument that comes up regularly is that regarding celebrities' motives behind their sudden "dying need to help Africa"? The Angelinas and Oprahs are no doubt doing some great humanitarian work but would we (Africans) be better off if they just gave the money to NGOs and called it a day without the media circus? Or are these characters more instrumental in that they are putting the African "pandemic" on the ever-busy world map?
(thanks for the article Rukky!!)
------------------------
Stop Trying to 'Save' Africa - by Uzodinma Iweala
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists.
"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!
My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.
"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.
It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East , the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs.
This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help.
Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying."Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.
Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local governments -- without much international help -- did for the survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for their work.
Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
-----------
Uzodinma Iweala is the author of "Beasts of No Nation," a novel about child soldiers.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Africa You Don't Hear About?
This post was initially an email sent to us from Nnamdi Awa-Kalu (thanks Nnamdi!) but we decided to share it on the Beat because of the interesting issues it raised. Is it OK to promote the general picture of "the suffering Africans" in order to garner sympathy and aid from the West? Are they (we) essentially "pimping" us (ourselves) to the most sympathetic "bidder"? Does it matter as long as some good ($$) comes out of it?
--------
A friend of mine recently told me about a facebook group that was opposed to
what it's creator termed "development pornography" which refers to the pseudo-voyeuristic tendencies of those in the better-off world to display pictures of "suffering" and afflicted Africans to the world to earn their sympathy. Her argument was that the inundation of the world with these pictures- constantly depicting Africa's poorest and illest in the most visually- unbearable poses- will desensitize an already ignorant West to the problems of that part of the world.
I did not completely agree with Wendy (my friend). And our argument went on to cover several grounds of pet hatred which we young, vibrant students in diaspora (who are relatively free of "suffering") have to contend with day after day. These included the general portrayal of Africa as a single body, which is the single biggest mistake anyone can make seeing as our proud but tired continent is the embodiment of cultural proliferation and multiple ethnic identities. I generally agree that poverty should not be attached as an emblem to Africa nor should the West continue to be fixated on the immediate impact of horror stories but I definitely feel that Africa is not at a stage where it can debate such issues primarily because it is so dependent...on aid which is solicited by means of sympathetic stories. And nothing is so persuasive as "a picture of a shorty armless," as put so poetically by Kanye West in "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". With regards to the issue of Africa frequently referred to as a sum of its parts, we are unfortunate that we have to band together to summon as much bargaining power as most western nations can command individually. Chronic economic and political instability can tend to that. But that is not the subject of my writing.
I was overjoyed to see that two Nigerians had received literary awards in the last week. Chinua Achebe received international recognition with a Man Booker Award for "literary profundity" over the course of his career and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was rewarded with the Orange Prize for fiction for her excellent Biafran examination "Half of a Yellow Sun". And the title of the article by Rosie Millard: " This is the Africa you don't hear about "encapsulates my viewpoint. It is important for Africa to find it's voice and allow it to ring loud and strong. It was once said that poets (and writers in general) are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" and these literary geniuses, with their continued brilliance could deflect attention from the struggling underbelly of Africa so that there is at least a balanced presentation of Africa and its numerous peoples. They could and should become a reflection of Africa's own artistic gifts which will compare favourably with anything and everything in the West, and take their rightful position as African leaders.
Not that this hasn't been happening, but it is important that it happens with
this kind of regularity. Achebe beat off competition from the likes of Margaret
Atwood whose work is a personal favourite and Chimamanda's work was standout favourite for the Orange prize and will probably go on to win a Booker. For her own part, Adichie intoned that: “On TV you never see Africans involved in helping Africa. It’s always some kind westerner. If I got my information only from American TV, I would think Africans were a bunch of stupid idiots...The Africa that you see on TV here is not the Africa I know. Africans don’t sit down, filled with despair, at least the ones I know don’t. They move on with life. Even in the poorest areas of Africa there are people who are showing initiative. There are other stories to tell.”
And it is our artists and writers, our talented performers in growing entertainment industries that will tell these stories in the right context, with the right sentiments and in a succesful light. Let's toast to more of this sort of coverage.
Caloo
-------
Thanks again, Nnamdi...look out for a piece on either Chimamanda or some more up-and-coming artists/writers in the near future! Also, for more "positive" portrayals of Africa, check out the award-winning documentary, "Africa Open For Business" which seeks to dispel the myths about business in Africa by showcasing ten entrepreneurs on the continent who tell in their own words their path to success.
--------
A friend of mine recently told me about a facebook group that was opposed to
what it's creator termed "development pornography" which refers to the pseudo-voyeuristic tendencies of those in the better-off world to display pictures of "suffering" and afflicted Africans to the world to earn their sympathy. Her argument was that the inundation of the world with these pictures- constantly depicting Africa's poorest and illest in the most visually- unbearable poses- will desensitize an already ignorant West to the problems of that part of the world.
I did not completely agree with Wendy (my friend). And our argument went on to cover several grounds of pet hatred which we young, vibrant students in diaspora (who are relatively free of "suffering") have to contend with day after day. These included the general portrayal of Africa as a single body, which is the single biggest mistake anyone can make seeing as our proud but tired continent is the embodiment of cultural proliferation and multiple ethnic identities. I generally agree that poverty should not be attached as an emblem to Africa nor should the West continue to be fixated on the immediate impact of horror stories but I definitely feel that Africa is not at a stage where it can debate such issues primarily because it is so dependent...on aid which is solicited by means of sympathetic stories. And nothing is so persuasive as "a picture of a shorty armless," as put so poetically by Kanye West in "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". With regards to the issue of Africa frequently referred to as a sum of its parts, we are unfortunate that we have to band together to summon as much bargaining power as most western nations can command individually. Chronic economic and political instability can tend to that. But that is not the subject of my writing.
I was overjoyed to see that two Nigerians had received literary awards in the last week. Chinua Achebe received international recognition with a Man Booker Award for "literary profundity" over the course of his career and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was rewarded with the Orange Prize for fiction for her excellent Biafran examination "Half of a Yellow Sun". And the title of the article by Rosie Millard: " This is the Africa you don't hear about "encapsulates my viewpoint. It is important for Africa to find it's voice and allow it to ring loud and strong. It was once said that poets (and writers in general) are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" and these literary geniuses, with their continued brilliance could deflect attention from the struggling underbelly of Africa so that there is at least a balanced presentation of Africa and its numerous peoples. They could and should become a reflection of Africa's own artistic gifts which will compare favourably with anything and everything in the West, and take their rightful position as African leaders.
Not that this hasn't been happening, but it is important that it happens withthis kind of regularity. Achebe beat off competition from the likes of Margaret
Atwood whose work is a personal favourite and Chimamanda's work was standout favourite for the Orange prize and will probably go on to win a Booker. For her own part, Adichie intoned that: “On TV you never see Africans involved in helping Africa. It’s always some kind westerner. If I got my information only from American TV, I would think Africans were a bunch of stupid idiots...The Africa that you see on TV here is not the Africa I know. Africans don’t sit down, filled with despair, at least the ones I know don’t. They move on with life. Even in the poorest areas of Africa there are people who are showing initiative. There are other stories to tell.”
And it is our artists and writers, our talented performers in growing entertainment industries that will tell these stories in the right context, with the right sentiments and in a succesful light. Let's toast to more of this sort of coverage.
Caloo
-------
Thanks again, Nnamdi...look out for a piece on either Chimamanda or some more up-and-coming artists/writers in the near future! Also, for more "positive" portrayals of Africa, check out the award-winning documentary, "Africa Open For Business" which seeks to dispel the myths about business in Africa by showcasing ten entrepreneurs on the continent who tell in their own words their path to success.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Invisible Classics... In Nollywood? This Millenium?
I shamelessly stole this topic from Jeremy's Blog, but we can pretend he emailed the article to me as his first contribution to The Afro Beat :-)
The excerpts below are from an article by the BFI (which I presume is the British Film Institute? Correct me if I'm wrong J). The article exhalts the impressive and surprisingly long-running history of African cinema, and snubs (rightly I believe, but feel free to argue with me) Nigerian cinema completely.
Question: (its long, so please try not to get lost)
Nigeria is purportedly the base of the 3rd largest film industry in the world. Nollywood is despised by many, and adored by just as many, and its viewers extend beyond the cities of Nigeria to the country's hinterlands, its neighbours in Africa, other countries in the Caribbean, Asia etc. The Afro Beat so far has discussed the problems plaguing Nigeria, the roots of which, appear to lie in the mind-set/mentality/psyche of the Nigerian. Is it possible to argue that this mind-set manifests itself even in something as frivolous as our film industry, in which $$$ (i.e. quantity) seems to be the driver, rather than quality?
Does the new breed of movies like "Amazing Grace" (you know the one... Fred Amata and 3 white guys on the poster?) spell a wind of change for Nollywood? Will special effects and an actual plot or sense of direction become the norm in the future? Or will the majority of film producers continue to ignore the potential diamond-mine at their fingertips in favour of producing the trashy million-naira-making "home videos"?
--------------------
"African Cinema: Invisible Classics" by Mark Cousins
In this mental shadowland [Africa] lies a world of cinema: film-makers as significant as Martin Scorsese, as discrepant as Orson Welles; imagery as mythic as that of Sergei Paradjanov or Nicolas Roeg; life stories with the amplitude of Francis Ford Coppola's. These are films from a continent three times the size of the US, with more than 50 countries, over 1,000 languages, and nearly 300 film-makers in the Francophone territories alone. Many of us know something about Ousmane Sembène or Djibril Diop Mambéty...
Ousmane Sembène started as a bricklayer, became a Citroën factory worker and eventually a novelist... From 1966's La Noire de..., through the hilarious Xala in 1974, Sembène tackled gender. In Camp de Thiaroye (1988) he tracked the tirailleurs senegalais, the black African troops who fought for French colonial armies. Ceddo was ballsy in 1976, but consider its theme now: the arrival of Islam in 19th-century West Africa. Like Euro-Christianity, it brings violence and forces compliance; its advocates are fanatics, blind to cultural freedoms. The film ends with the local Wolof princess shooting an imam....
In Mauritania in 1970 Med Hondo had made Soleil O, the first, greatest, incandescent film about African immigrants. Safi Faye's feature debut, the first film by a black African woman, was the beautiful Letter from My Village (Senegal, 1975).
In the same year Algeria won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina's Chronicle of the Years of Embers, shot on 70mm. Still in 1975, Hailé Gerima's Godardian Harvest: 3,000 Years not only put Ethiopia on the film-making map but, with lines like "Is there anywhere in the world where there are no flies or Europeans?", turned African cinema white hot...
[We must not] leave out Senegalese man of the theatre-turned-director Djibril Diop Mambéty... At the age of 28 he made a caustic road movie, Touki Bouki (1973), Africa's equivalent of Easy Rider or A bout de souffle... Mambéty, like his polar-opposite Dakar visionary Sembène, was calling forth a here-and-nowness for Africa, a cubist, layered modernity, a filiation untouched by revenge but bustling with recovery...
[In the 1980s] Senegal was still a centre but Burkina Faso and Mali came to the fore. Their film-makers asked new questions: not ‘What do we do now that the colonisers have gone?' but ‘What were we like before they arrived?' The Maghreb film-makers of the north and the black African masters Sembène, Mambéty and Hondo were joined by three new directors of world class: Burkina Faso's Gaston Kaboré and Idrissa Ouédraogo, and Mali's Souleymane Cissé....
I watched my first African film, Yeelen, in 1990 and it changed my taste in cinema... I began to see what a feast African cinema in the 1990s was turning out to be. In the Maghreb, Morocco's Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi made the delightful comedy Looking for My Wife's Husband (1994). Tunisia fired out Férid Boughedir's Halfaouine (1990), about a 12-year-old boy negotiating the difference between female and male culture as he becomes a man; Moncef Dhouib's bleak semi-response to Boughedir's film, The Sultan of the City (1992); and Moufida Tlatli's The Silences of the Palace (1994). And from Algeria came Merzak Allouache's Bab El-Oued City (1994). These last five all challenge the reactionary elements of Islam."
-----------------
I counted well over 8 African countries in Cousins' article, with dates of movies stemming from as early as 1970. Nollywood, several decades behind, only began to make waves in the middle to late 1990s. Even so, has it yet challenged anything? Or ever made anyone contemplate anything beyond the realm of black magic, forbidden love, thuggery, or extreme misfortune and subsequent happiness after a dramatic conversion to Christianity?
Is Nollywood even trying to keep up with its remarkable African predecessors we've just learnt about in Cousins' article? Or (as I asked at the beginning) is it all just about raking in the $$$ right here and right now?
What is HE supposed to be? A medieval chief?
The excerpts below are from an article by the BFI (which I presume is the British Film Institute? Correct me if I'm wrong J). The article exhalts the impressive and surprisingly long-running history of African cinema, and snubs (rightly I believe, but feel free to argue with me) Nigerian cinema completely.
Question: (its long, so please try not to get lost)
Nigeria is purportedly the base of the 3rd largest film industry in the world. Nollywood is despised by many, and adored by just as many, and its viewers extend beyond the cities of Nigeria to the country's hinterlands, its neighbours in Africa, other countries in the Caribbean, Asia etc. The Afro Beat so far has discussed the problems plaguing Nigeria, the roots of which, appear to lie in the mind-set/mentality/psyche of the Nigerian. Is it possible to argue that this mind-set manifests itself even in something as frivolous as our film industry, in which $$$ (i.e. quantity) seems to be the driver, rather than quality?
Does the new breed of movies like "Amazing Grace" (you know the one... Fred Amata and 3 white guys on the poster?) spell a wind of change for Nollywood? Will special effects and an actual plot or sense of direction become the norm in the future? Or will the majority of film producers continue to ignore the potential diamond-mine at their fingertips in favour of producing the trashy million-naira-making "home videos"?
--------------------
In this mental shadowland [Africa] lies a world of cinema: film-makers as significant as Martin Scorsese, as discrepant as Orson Welles; imagery as mythic as that of Sergei Paradjanov or Nicolas Roeg; life stories with the amplitude of Francis Ford Coppola's. These are films from a continent three times the size of the US, with more than 50 countries, over 1,000 languages, and nearly 300 film-makers in the Francophone territories alone. Many of us know something about Ousmane Sembène or Djibril Diop Mambéty...
Ousmane Sembène started as a bricklayer, became a Citroën factory worker and eventually a novelist... From 1966's La Noire de..., through the hilarious Xala in 1974, Sembène tackled gender. In Camp de Thiaroye (1988) he tracked the tirailleurs senegalais, the black African troops who fought for French colonial armies. Ceddo was ballsy in 1976, but consider its theme now: the arrival of Islam in 19th-century West Africa. Like Euro-Christianity, it brings violence and forces compliance; its advocates are fanatics, blind to cultural freedoms. The film ends with the local Wolof princess shooting an imam....
In Mauritania in 1970 Med Hondo had made Soleil O, the first, greatest, incandescent film about African immigrants. Safi Faye's feature debut, the first film by a black African woman, was the beautiful Letter from My Village (Senegal, 1975).
In the same year Algeria won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina's Chronicle of the Years of Embers, shot on 70mm. Still in 1975, Hailé Gerima's Godardian Harvest: 3,000 Years not only put Ethiopia on the film-making map but, with lines like "Is there anywhere in the world where there are no flies or Europeans?", turned African cinema white hot...
[We must not] leave out Senegalese man of the theatre-turned-director Djibril Diop Mambéty... At the age of 28 he made a caustic road movie, Touki Bouki (1973), Africa's equivalent of Easy Rider or A bout de souffle... Mambéty, like his polar-opposite Dakar visionary Sembène, was calling forth a here-and-nowness for Africa, a cubist, layered modernity, a filiation untouched by revenge but bustling with recovery...
[In the 1980s] Senegal was still a centre but Burkina Faso and Mali came to the fore. Their film-makers asked new questions: not ‘What do we do now that the colonisers have gone?' but ‘What were we like before they arrived?' The Maghreb film-makers of the north and the black African masters Sembène, Mambéty and Hondo were joined by three new directors of world class: Burkina Faso's Gaston Kaboré and Idrissa Ouédraogo, and Mali's Souleymane Cissé....
I watched my first African film, Yeelen, in 1990 and it changed my taste in cinema... I began to see what a feast African cinema in the 1990s was turning out to be. In the Maghreb, Morocco's Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi made the delightful comedy Looking for My Wife's Husband (1994). Tunisia fired out Férid Boughedir's Halfaouine (1990), about a 12-year-old boy negotiating the difference between female and male culture as he becomes a man; Moncef Dhouib's bleak semi-response to Boughedir's film, The Sultan of the City (1992); and Moufida Tlatli's The Silences of the Palace (1994). And from Algeria came Merzak Allouache's Bab El-Oued City (1994). These last five all challenge the reactionary elements of Islam."
-----------------
I counted well over 8 African countries in Cousins' article, with dates of movies stemming from as early as 1970. Nollywood, several decades behind, only began to make waves in the middle to late 1990s. Even so, has it yet challenged anything? Or ever made anyone contemplate anything beyond the realm of black magic, forbidden love, thuggery, or extreme misfortune and subsequent happiness after a dramatic conversion to Christianity?
Is Nollywood even trying to keep up with its remarkable African predecessors we've just learnt about in Cousins' article? Or (as I asked at the beginning) is it all just about raking in the $$$ right here and right now?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
"ABC, How Dare You?" by Oluseyi Sonaiya
Oluseyi Sonaiya lives in New York, and is a member of The Afro Beat. He sent the following letter to ABC's 20/20, the New York Times and a variety of Nigerian and pan-African news organizations.
----------------
In his recent report for ABC's 20/20 (Friday, December 8, 2006), Brian Ross carelessly characterizes the attitudes of Nigerians, suggesting that the advance fee fraud is, I quote, "so widely accepted that there is a hit song celebrating ..." the scam. In his report, Mr. Ross says that the scam "industry" involves thousands of mostly young men - this in a country with a population north of 150 million people - yet he sees it as "so widely accepted."
Particularly bothersome is his description of Lagos as a "corrupt, crime-ridden disgrace of a city." How dare you, Mr. Ross? A disgrace?! In what way is Lagos - which, incidentally, describes a state, in the context in which Mr. Ross uses it - any more corrupt than New York or Washington, D.C.? Like those two it is a highly populated center of industry, attracting newcomers from less industrialized areas of the country seeking gainful employment. Like those two it is overpopulated, taxing resources and infrastructure, meager as they are, beyond their limits. Consequently, like New York and Washington, D.C., there is a fair amount of crime, much of it born of poverty and desperation, though sustained by greed.
The true problems of Nigeria are hardly ever identified in these various "exposés" and "special reports." Instead Nigeria is painted as casually corrupt, as though avarice were a choice willingly made by the majority of Nigerians. The desperate poverty of the majority of the populace, thanks to decades of mismanagement by military dictatorships and veritable plundering by multinational corporations such as Shell Petroleum, who along with competitors Chevron and Mobil have collectively helped to devastate the traditional fishing waters of the Ogoni people in their search for crude oil, means that there is a shortage of opportunity for the bright, hardworking and industrious young people of Nigeria. Those who are not able to secure jobs then do what their kind have always done - they turn to crime.
We are asked to sympathize with gullible Americans who fell for second-grade quality schemes due to their own greed, but in the same breath, we are asked to vilify equally greedy Nigerians?
What is most embarrassing to an ostensible news gathering organization like ABC is that the local economy in Nigeria is tremendously improved. Communications infrastructure, in the form of cost effective GSM cellular telephones, is spreading like wildfire, while the relative stability of eight years of democratic rule and a hopeful forthcoming smooth transition are gradually restoring facilities. Nigeria is making its own way out of poverty through almost entirely internal means, but this doesn't register on the radar of the ABC News organization. Only scandal and disaster matter to them, and they will, at least in the form of Mr. Ross and his team, summarily dismiss the whole on the basis of the part.
That is the real "disgrace."
Oluseyi Sonaiya
Brooklyn, NY
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The following is a charge to Nigerians, Africans and black peoples universal by Oluseyi:
"Realize that this is neither a coincidence nor an error. In particular, it is NOT FUNNY. Too many Africans are so Eurocentric that they will laugh at their own being insulted, like the nerd desperate to hang out with the jocks who sees their abuse of himself as "just joking." The insidious attitude expressed in actions and words like these is the inherent inferiority, criminality and unworthiness of the African. The objective is to denigrate us, and by extension to denigrate all those of African descent. Reject it. Fight it. Do NOT tolerate it."
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
"Fact or Fiction" by Kome Ajegbo
Kome is a student at Stanford University, and she is a member of The Afro Beat. She sent us this link to a This Day newspaper article on Friday - Its really worth having a look at, if you can.
But for the lazy ones amongst us ;-P here is a snippet of MEND's response to the CNN documentary aired last week.
"On Monday January 22, 2007, we were approached by Mr. Jeff Koinange... He requested we stage some scenes for a very important CNN programme which was supposed to air in the first week of February. We stated clearly we would not be disposed to fit into his tight schedule. Our struggle is much more to us than parading before everyone willing to film fighters.... What CNN has presented as the truth to its unsuspecting viewers, is a collection of thugs, pirates and bunkerers put together by Jeff Koinange and CNN to meet up with the deadline given to Mr. Koinange by his editors in CNN. It is far from the truth. The band of criminals paraded by CNN as MEND have nothing to do with MEND... It is astonishing that a network of high repute such as CNN would descend this low in its search for a sensational story. We are reluctant to release our correspondence with Mr. Koinange but will circulate this if our claims are refuted."
We asked Kome to share her response to this turn of events, with The Afro Beat, and she kindly agreed to do so.
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Fact or Fiction
Whenever I hear of a crisis, disaster or anything with the title "breaking news", my knee jerk reaction is to tune into CNN or Sky News. Not because I have been told that they are the best, but because I believe that they are the best at what they do. Yes there is a difference between the two - the difference between telling a story first and articulately, versus telling the story a little later without having to make any revisions to it. CNN falls into the first category for me because I like facts as quickly as possible, but I often have to chew through the sometimes-outlandish opinions to decipher my own.
After watching the CNN documentary on the Niger-Delta last week, my reaction on hearing the analysis of the MEND solution, left me feeling rather dejected - not because Nigeria was once again warranting publicity (good or bad... this case is debatable), but because we as a country have left many of our citizens to lead such desperate and pathetic lives.
I didn’t for a second doubt the authenticity of the footage of the MEND militants or of the Niger-Delta region, but as usual I was very critical of the view points expressed.
Two days later, I read an article in This Day Newspapers, expressing disgust and dismay at the false portrayal of the MEND organization by CNN. The allegation that the footage was staged at the request of CNN boggles my mind, and has left me questioning not only CNN, but the indigenous Nigerians who were a part of this folly.
To what lengths will media corporations, or desperate Niger-Deltans go to get their message across? What matters more - the message or the messenger? I wish I had the energy to follow up on CNN and write complaints or demand some form of public apology, but although that's a great idea in principle, what about the real issue at hand?
While we spend time discussing the gravity of CNN's actions, are we to also question Thisday, MEND, the MEND imposters,etc; or are we to put this down in the books as a shameful act, and steer on towards solving a problem so great that it has led to such deception?
Trust in the media is something that I have come to realize is a very dangerous thing. The media should not be there to tell us what to think or, matter of factly, how to think. It is the responsibility of any journalist through its network to relay the facts, and this is where it often gets complicated. Relaying the facts is easy enough, but how one passes along this information is what sets aside NTA from AIT, or Sky from CNN. Sensational News is what keeps the media in business and the $$ rolling in. It is also what keeps us tuned in. So, WHO therefore is to blame when they go too far?
To be clear, there are two important issues that I would like The Afro Beat to discuss...
1. What is the role of the media, both locally and internationally, and where do your loyalties lie?
2. Does it matter that CNN had to fabricate such an encounter to get the message across that the people of the Niger-Delta are suffering, even if it is shining a brighter light on a great injustice?
----------
Thanks Kome!
But for the lazy ones amongst us ;-P here is a snippet of MEND's response to the CNN documentary aired last week.
"On Monday January 22, 2007, we were approached by Mr. Jeff Koinange... He requested we stage some scenes for a very important CNN programme which was supposed to air in the first week of February. We stated clearly we would not be disposed to fit into his tight schedule. Our struggle is much more to us than parading before everyone willing to film fighters.... What CNN has presented as the truth to its unsuspecting viewers, is a collection of thugs, pirates and bunkerers put together by Jeff Koinange and CNN to meet up with the deadline given to Mr. Koinange by his editors in CNN. It is far from the truth. The band of criminals paraded by CNN as MEND have nothing to do with MEND... It is astonishing that a network of high repute such as CNN would descend this low in its search for a sensational story. We are reluctant to release our correspondence with Mr. Koinange but will circulate this if our claims are refuted."
We asked Kome to share her response to this turn of events, with The Afro Beat, and she kindly agreed to do so.
----------
Fact or Fiction
Whenever I hear of a crisis, disaster or anything with the title "breaking news", my knee jerk reaction is to tune into CNN or Sky News. Not because I have been told that they are the best, but because I believe that they are the best at what they do. Yes there is a difference between the two - the difference between telling a story first and articulately, versus telling the story a little later without having to make any revisions to it. CNN falls into the first category for me because I like facts as quickly as possible, but I often have to chew through the sometimes-outlandish opinions to decipher my own.
After watching the CNN documentary on the Niger-Delta last week, my reaction on hearing the analysis of the MEND solution, left me feeling rather dejected - not because Nigeria was once again warranting publicity (good or bad... this case is debatable), but because we as a country have left many of our citizens to lead such desperate and pathetic lives.
I didn’t for a second doubt the authenticity of the footage of the MEND militants or of the Niger-Delta region, but as usual I was very critical of the view points expressed.
Two days later, I read an article in This Day Newspapers, expressing disgust and dismay at the false portrayal of the MEND organization by CNN. The allegation that the footage was staged at the request of CNN boggles my mind, and has left me questioning not only CNN, but the indigenous Nigerians who were a part of this folly.
To what lengths will media corporations, or desperate Niger-Deltans go to get their message across? What matters more - the message or the messenger? I wish I had the energy to follow up on CNN and write complaints or demand some form of public apology, but although that's a great idea in principle, what about the real issue at hand?
While we spend time discussing the gravity of CNN's actions, are we to also question Thisday, MEND, the MEND imposters,etc; or are we to put this down in the books as a shameful act, and steer on towards solving a problem so great that it has led to such deception?
Trust in the media is something that I have come to realize is a very dangerous thing. The media should not be there to tell us what to think or, matter of factly, how to think. It is the responsibility of any journalist through its network to relay the facts, and this is where it often gets complicated. Relaying the facts is easy enough, but how one passes along this information is what sets aside NTA from AIT, or Sky from CNN. Sensational News is what keeps the media in business and the $$ rolling in. It is also what keeps us tuned in. So, WHO therefore is to blame when they go too far?
To be clear, there are two important issues that I would like The Afro Beat to discuss...
1. What is the role of the media, both locally and internationally, and where do your loyalties lie?
2. Does it matter that CNN had to fabricate such an encounter to get the message across that the people of the Niger-Delta are suffering, even if it is shining a brighter light on a great injustice?
----------
Thanks Kome!
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