Congo: Two Stories, Two Lives

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fisttap afroeurope & tomdevriendt

Roland Gust was born to a Congolese mother and a Belgian father. He grew up in Congo, believing he was White. That is, until his family decided to return to Belgium when he was twelve. Twenty years later, he made a film about his life: The Belgian Colour Bar.

As long as I kept it to myself, there was no problem. Not for the outer world, that is. I remained Roland, the perfectly integrated coloured. I didn’t want to come across as a frustrated black man who was ungrateful for what Belgium offered him. I didn’t want to be expelled after so many years of trying, because I was begging for a recognition of my Belgian identity. I had to serve Belgium and remain silent.After all those years of absolute and blind dedication to the country of Belgium I have now crowned myself a Belgian. I have earned my place in Belgium and no longer need the Belgian’s approval to be a Belgian. As a Belgian I make use of my freedom of speech to tell my Belgian story. I no longer lie awake about the potential repercussions following my critical discourse about Belgium and the Belgian identity.

- From 5 Questions for Roland Gust by Tom Devriendt from Africa is a Country - The Belgian Color Bar

fisttap @telamigo (tomdevriendt)

Kwa Heri Mandima (kwaheri means goodbye in Swahili and Mandima is a village/growth point in DRC) by Robert Jan-Lacombe is a short, biographical exploration of his early life in the Congo. He never expected to say goodbye, but conflict made it so. Like The Color Bar above, this film explores similar issues of identity, belonging and non-belonging, race, memory, migration and displacement, albeit from a different perspective. It provides a good juxtaposition.

Street Life in (Conrad's) Lagos

This documentary was recently aired on Al Jazeera on the programme Witness, a weekly show that aims to 'bring new stories to light they showcase the talents of a new breed of multi-skilled, frontline journalist.'  Street Life in Lagos is made by Joe Loncraine and it focusses on two migrants from Benin who go to Lagos, Nigeria in search of  a better life. As slum tourism is the in-thing among documentary filmmakers on African cities, this one fits right in. It raises the usual questions of who is telling Africa's story, how and why? How are these Africans telling their story within this documentary, what is it's framing? How is Lagos the city, it's slums and it's inhabitants represented on screen? By the looks of things, not very well. Unlike some of the commenters on AJE's site or the upset multitudes on Nairaland, I think it's really great that these stories are being told and I have no problem with Nigeria or any other country's poor being given a platform to speak. However, when it becomes fashionable for the world's media to tell only one particular kind of story about a city and this becomes the perceieved major, singular narrative of a city, I think it becomes probelmatic and especially so when that narrative (with all due respect to the filmmaker) isn't presented well. A city has many complex, interwoven stories.

The act of giving of voice to stories -by making a film, writing a news article - is as crucial as the telling because the framing, context and intent etc is what also (not solely) gives meaning to a story, determines audience reception and what genre the story falls into. This feels like a cross between observational anthropology and poverty porn, because, despite the filmmaker's most likely good intentions, the film doesn't create a bond with Makoko or many of its people seen throughout the film - they're fleeting, sometimes dragging stories, but the glue that binds a viewer to a character/story somehow isn't there. It feels like you're meant to just get a glimpse and move on. In the role of anthropologist armed with a camera, the filmmaker gives no introduction nor political or social context to Makoko or Lagos - instead the (international) viewer is thrown in the deep end. As a documentary film concept it might be all edgy and stuff, but unfortunately it doesn't work here. 

After the protagonists have told their stories of migration, the anthropologist/filmmaker goes to the school (around 4:00) where poor, non-speaking, inquisitive children are filmed. No explanation nothing, onto the next scene. And so it goes: lots of stories belonging to nameless, ageless people whose characters and circumstance you never really get to know... If Wole Soyinka was outraged by BBC's documentary, Welcome to Lagos, I can't imagine how he'll respond to this. It's a million times worse. And unlike the BBC's one which had the sickest afrobeat soundtrack, this one doesn't have much of that. Instead it invites us to observe (not engage with) the poor slum dwellers of Lagos, all filmed from behind a Conradesque camera lens.

Shake the Dust

The amazing clip above is a preview from an upcoming documentary, “Shake the Dust which features hip hoppers from all over the world. Made by emerging film director Adam Sjoberg, the film tells the story of b-boys, and girls in poor communities from Uganda to Yemen to Haiti who all connect through the universal language of hip hop. Acknowledging the universality of music, Sjoberg writes of hip hop culture: ”

"although separated by cultural boundaries and individual struggles, are intrinsically tied to one another through their passion for break-dancing and hip-hop culture....“Shake the Dust” uses b-boying to show commonality and humanity in cultures that are affected by war, disease, and poverty. It seeks to paint a picture of the struggles the characters have– but only as a backdrop to the real story: one of hope and beauty."

Interestingly, there's a side story that developed out of making "Shake the Dust" in Yemen Sjoberg met up with some Somali hip hoppers who dropped some rhymes about the futility of war, their ancestry and forced migration.





For more on Yemen's b-boy crews, I recommend Tom Finn's article, on Sana'a's breakdancers. Apart from insight into how hip hop as universal livelihood and source of creativity for Yemen's youth, the different class mix and multi-cultural dancers stood out for me. The main group featured in this article is The Blast Boyz who are described as "a motley bunch of refugees and expatriates, harking from Canada, Tanzania, Iran, Somalia and America." This is an important thing to remember at a time when there's so much political focus on Yemen. It is often presented as a monocultural and monracial society and yet Yemen like many other Arab countries is visibly multicultural and thousands of years of interaction with countries on the Horn of Africa. Depending on what you believe, modern humans are said to have migrated out of Africa through Yemen and milleniums later, the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba (Makeda) ruled over the then south Arabia and parts of the East Africa. Presently there are at least 700 000 Somalis in Yemen as its one of the closest countries for people fleeing conflict or seeking a better life. Obviously, migrants are in the minority (23 million pop.), but they're some of the small everyday stories which are part of the current, mass anti-government protests which will hopefully topple Ali Abdullah Saleh. On the impact of the protests on hip hop and family life, Finn writes:

"Social stigma, the b-boys say, is the only thing stopping them from joining the ranks of protesters who have been camped outside Sana’a University for the past two months calling for Yemen’s ruler for the past thirty-three years, President Ali Abudallah Saleh, and his family to leave power. “My father would disown me, simple as that,” says Danny Al-Basry, another Iraqi considered one of the crew’s most talented members. “But if things get much worse here, I will have to join them.”

Like many others, the boys say they feel alienated by social expectations that are no longer achievable as a result of the deteriorating economic and political situation. For some of them, b-boying is not only a means of expression but also a vital way of escaping from these looming pressures as well as the monotony and tedium of everyday life in Yemen."

b-boy in yemen

fotocred: adam sjoberg

jacked from www.jonatascouto.com

fisttap @tomwfinn

Is This The Best We Can DO?

fisttap sirnige

If someone gave you the chance to a make a movie about young people in Zimbabwe and its Diaspora, what kind of movie would you produce, what story would you want to tell and to whom? How realistic would you want it to be? If I were a film maker tasked with making a a comedy based on a Nollywood/ African bling culture style film, I'd do my best to represent reality through fiction in the funniest, most creative and most humanistic way possible. There are some good Nollywood movies that I'd model my film on and I'd borrow some ideas from some of my favourite directors. But that is my overly ambitious film, not Joe Njagu's. Njagu's film is Lobola and this film offers its own expression of Zimbabwean life and this is a positive thing. A blockbuster type flick is a great change from the 'failed state' type narratives churned out by the documentary industry some of which are good (e.g Zimbabwe's Forgotten Children) and others just plain crap (e.g Mugabe and the White African). 
While this film has its pluses and I know I'm criticising a preview not a whole movie, but since the trailer is the main selling point of the movie I'm entitled to point out the things I find troubling and problematic like: characters shouting 'I'm going to Africaaaa!' or youngsters saying n!99@ to an elder - why? Because it's unrealistic and it is offensive, not for the more obvious reasons of using derogatory language, but it is offensive to the basic intelligence of Zimbabweans; am I really supposed to believe a Shona girl, no matter how urbanized she is - even moreso a girl from the township like this character, Christine - goes to her roora with her breasts out popping out of her dress? Am I meant to just nod in blind agreement that T-Bone has lived long enough in the States to have the street bravado/stupidity (delete as appropriate) to call his uncle 'n!99@' and the uncle overlooks this until the kid pushes it and calls him 'boy'? C'mon now, get real. We are not stupid. This is not how we behave.

These things take away from the quality of the story which looks like a good one. 

Lobola premiers  tonight in Harare at the 7 Arts Theatre, Avondale; Rainbow City Cinemas, R. Mugabe Rd; Easy Ticket, Fife Ave Shops at $5 and $25 for VIP.

Chico and Rita

Chico and Rita is the latest animated film from Spanish director Fernando Trueba about a young Cuban couple who meet in Havana in 1948. Chico’s a talented jazz pianist and song writer, Rita’s a sultry singer. They both dream of making it big and the film traces their intense, sexy but turbulent love affair from Havana to New York to Las Vegas.

With an original soundtrack by legendary Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita captures a definitive moment in the evolution of jazz music. The film features music by jazz legends Thelonious Monk, Cole Porter,Dizzy Gillespie and Freddy Cole (brother of Nat King Cole).

Chico and Rita is out on 19 November and is showing all over London. Check www.chicoandrita.co.uk for more info.

info from Wikipedia and The Telegraph

I Am Slave

For those of you who missed it earlier tonight, I Am Slave is available on Channel 4 Catchup, but those outside the UK, this snippet & background info, jacked from the Channel 4 website, will have to do for now, till some technologically-advanced, kind soul uploads it onto YouChoob or Vimeo:

From the director of Death of a President and the writer of The Last King of Scotland, and inspired by real-life events, I Am Slave is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for freedom from modern-day slavery.

I Am Slave, starring incredible international talent Wunmi Mosaku, is a powerful story of imprisonment, cruelty and despair, but also one of hope and humanity. The story begins when 12-year-old Malia, from the Nuba Mountains, is snatched from the arms of her father during a Muharaleen raid on their village. Sold into slavery, she spends the next six years of her life working for a Sudanese family. Then, aged 18 years old, she is sent to London where the brutality and inhumanity that she experiences continues, only under a different roof.

Hidden in plain sight, Malia's desperate situation goes unnoticed or uncared for by everyone she comes into contact with. Stripped of her passport and living in terror of what might happen to her family in the Sudan should she speak out, Malia is trapped in a ruthless, alien environment.

Despairing of the life to which she has been condemned, Malia calls on all her strength to make a dramatic escape back to Sudan to the father who never gave up hope that she was alive and who never stopped searching for her.

Haile Gerima: Teza

Directed by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, Teza is set in the late 1970s Ethiopia just after HIM Haile Selassie I is dethroned by Haile Mariam Mengistu and his military troops.

From the blurb: "Set in Ethiopia and Germany, Teza examines the displacement of African intellectuals, both at home and abroad, through the story of a young, idealistic Ethiopian doctor -- Anberber. The film chronicles Anberber's internal struggle to stay true, both to himself and to his homeland, but above all, Teza explores the possession of memory -- a right humanity mandates that each of us have - the right to own our pasts."

fisttap theliberator

An Interview with Haile Gerima

Who Killed Captain Alex?

Produced by Ramon Film Productions in Kampala and described as Uganda's first and greatest action movie, this flick prolly beats any wild action flick coming out of Nollywood and even Hollywood gotsta bow down to this! Who Killed Captain Alex? is set in Kampala shorty after a police raid in which Captain Alex and  drug dealer's brother are murdered and both the gangsters and police seek to avenge the deaths. According to the Ugandan Newspaper, The Observer, the film cost 8 million shillings (US $3500) and the police refused to provide the filmmakers with any support apart from uniforms - on their request list were guns, tankers and helicopters. (lol!)

From The Observer: It is a well scripted movie, but the visuals are too graphic. Nabwama says, he just wanted to produce an action movie, acted, produced and directed by Ugandans. But he can’t be forgiven for using toy guns and pistols in the production.

“When we approached CPS about the project, we were told that we [film industry] are not yet at that level. They could only provide us with police uniforms,” he says. “But we had asked them to provide us with helicopters, guns, tankers and access to army barracks. So we had to settle for the computer.”

...Apparently there's a sequel on the way.

fisttap PetinaGappah & GeekSystem

Welcome To Lagos

Welcome to Lagos from Oo Nwoye on Vimeo.

Welcome to Lagos is a three part documentary that was aired on BBC2 quite recently in the UK. It follows the lives of several slum dwellers in this Nigerian megacity and shows how resilience and resourcefulness are key to survival in the slums. Admittedly, when I first read the series byline on iPlayer I was put off and thought 'here we go again: let's glamorize these piss poor Africans', but I recently saw a piece in The Guardian in which Wole Soyinka is reported as being highly critical of the show. Soyinka argues that the show reinforces colonialist stereotypes of Nigerians which in the 21st century show the people to be primitive and extremely impoverished. This criticism prompted me to watch all three shows this morning but primarily because the dreamwell had run dry at about 5 a.m and sleep could not be summoned back.

I co-sign with Soyinka to an extent, but I also appreciate the docu for what it reinforced about the power of community, faith and culture. Significantly, the indomitable survival spirit of the Lagos slum dwellers is an observable truth that resonates in the narratives of poor people all over the planet. The docu also made a very salient point about the crucial importance telling one's own stories. Nigerian writers, Chris Abani and Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie both convincingly argue that there is not one story that is truth, but many stories and stories that must be told by their owner. Given that Nigeria and its Diaspora has established media streams like BEN TV and Nollywood so why is there a continued dominance of others telling the stories of Nigerians? I find it hard, if not false to believe that there are no upcoming Nigerian documentary filmmakers (post Akin Omotoso's generation) interested in these sorts of social issues, and I find it even harder to believe that these narratives would be of no interest and/or are un-marketable to BEN TV or Nollywood. I hope I am very wrong about that.

What I found patronising about the show is voice of the narrator, David Harewood. His script and his happy-go-lucky tone are ever-so condescending and it grated on me throughout each episode! Another criticism I would make is that it felt suffocating seeing Lagos through slum eyes, like there was nothing else to the city - yes I know watching this film 3 hours straight can be a li'l 1xtra - but because there are so few documentaries on present-day Nigeria, it would have been nice to see other parts of it.

This Is Africa drops this gem of truth:

If the only documentaries about the UK seen by the world's TV viewing audience were about poverty and teen pregnancies in places like Salford, or about the country's prison population, or about football hooligans and the far-right doing Nazi salutes, I don't think the UK government would be particularly thrilled. So it is understandable that Nigeria's federal government has lodged a formal complaint against the BBC for portraying Lagos as a slum. 

Co-sign 100!

Continuous, singular narrativization of a nation as diverse and as dynamic as Nigeria, however well-meaning, is not accurate representation; potraying poverty through different lenses is still poverty porn and this has got to change. In the politrix of representation, more native playas need to step-up and assume the role of storyteller, not character and dominate these MSM platforms. I'd like to see how if presented with the opportunity Soyinka, having been involved in several documentary projects, might alternatively represent the slums of Lagos, places home to +-7 million of the city's 11 million and growing.

Best of all iLoooved the soundtrack. A few choons here n there coulda been missed, but there is some excellent Naija music out there, oh! Some of the characters and the poverty situation, I could relate to with my own country, but those gory slaughterings - JAAAH! That was much too much for me. At times some of the scenes felt invasive and glamorised these abject conditions - almost naked Black bodies bathing in a scrapyard mmm poverty porn, much? One blogger, Bunmi Olurontoba has accurately described this sort of film trend as slumsploitation, of the Slumdog Millionaire type, and unlike him, I certainly wouldn't include City of God or The Wire on that list.
But, I digress. I also wondered about the impact of all that activity on the enviroment especially episodes 2 and 3, the narrator never addressed that nor did any of the people.

I'm not pushing for a follow-up series, well maybe without David Harewood's voice, but I'd be interested to know what happened to each of the main speakers. Finally I'd like to know how the Beeb will respond to the Nigerian government's complaint...

iMagine Africa in the Future

Pumzi, directed by Kenyan, Wanuri Kahiu, is Kenya's 20 min Sci-Fi film. In a futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III (“The Water War”), nature is extinct. The outside is dead. East African survivors of the ecological devastation remain locked away in contained communities, but a young woman in possession of a germinating seed struggles against the governing council to bring the plant to Earth’s ruined surface.

Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the mail containing soil, she plants an old seed in it and the seed starts to germinate instantly. Asha appeals to the Council to grant her permission to investigate the possibility of life on the outside but the Council denies her exit visa. Asha breaks out of the inside community to go into the dead and derelict outside to plant the growing seedling and possibly find life on the outside.

from the Liberator Blog & Wired.com

Oscar the Farce

The Academy Awards are total bull$@%&. As an accolade, its function is to give the okay to bourgeois audiences to do some chin-stroking rumination with one hand, while they dig for dollars in the wallet with the other. It has nothing to do with the reality of global cinema, but rather the incestuous world of Hollywood boys’ club ego-fluffing and the perpetuation of its own delusions of grandeur – and, ordinarily, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass which person takes home which Golden Phallus. Even a cursory glance at the anatomy of the awards reveals quite clearly how The Oscars is tied up with dodgy American imperialist, WASP-ish values. So to win an Oscar is something of a dubious pat on the back when you ask yourself who’s doing the patting and why...

*Cut* And that's Wrap(!) because the rest goes on to give a nice-ish, PR, liberalist review of The Hurt Locker and that's not my point here.

Article by Sarah Dawson on www.mahala.co.za