Once again Father Geek is sorry for the lateness of this report. Its not SOTHA's, or his staff's fault, I was on the London book tour with Harry from Wednesday to Sunday and with all the appearances, and meetings with press and such just couldn't get to a PC to post my regular columns during that time, buuuuuut noooooooow I'm back at Geek Headquarters and here's Dr. SOTHA and Rigobert Song with their very interesting column ,a little tardy, but just as cool...

DR.SOTHA here for another Africa-AICN. Well looks like Will Smith and Michael Mann are in our neck of the woods for the premiere of ‘ALI’ on Sunday. I’ve promised both of them a tour of the labs (labelled by ‘The Medicine Reporter’ as a "…haunting look into human experimentalism…"). In fact, they’ll both be there to witness several ‘high-concept’ surgeries, including hawk feather intercourse, weasel re-activate therapy and vulture claw reversal. Mann remarked on the event, "It will be good to get away from boxing for a few hours. It’ll do me good". It’s my pleasure.

Contact Nurse Hollis for our electronic press kit on the event at africaaicn@hotmail.com

See you there…

SOUTH AFRICA

* A review of Lumumba by Baby Jake Matlala

We have Hybrid Films of Cape Town, the Film Resource Unit and Ster Kinekor to thank for bringing a genuinely African story to our local screens. Like A Reasonable Man and Breaker Morant, this is an event from African history, but more recent, more relevant to the present time.

In spite of knowing the end of Lumumba's life and what came after, the audience at the opening was held enthralled by this story of a local hero, a man of the people who rose through the resistance movement to become a leader of his country. From a persuasive beer salesman, Lumumba became a determined politician, without realising the potentially lethal enmities he was rousing by refusing to be diplomatic with the old boys of Belgian government or his supporters. His outspoken honesty and unwillingness to compromise, raised the ire of enemies.

Recent research has revealed the mealie-mouthed hypocrisy of US and UN in dealing with the Congo's leaders, their terror of Communist influence ! while refusing to help Kasavubu and Lumumba to unite the country. This lead to their backing Belgian double-dealing and local savagery, ending in Lumumba's murder and the destruction even of his body.

The movie is made without commentary, entirely dramatised and therefore with some creative reconstruction. Peck gets a couple of things wrong: the United Nations force, not the National Army, confined Lumumba to his home. But apart from this, the film will make an excellent set-work for school students of African history. Although the appalling history of the Congo is barely hinted at, the roots of the Congo's present ongoing tragedy are represented, if not illuminated, here.

Lumumba's character is rounded, illustrated by both his professional and home life. Actors have been cast for both their ability and resemblance to the original characters. Joseph Mobuto is particularly chillingly portrayed from ambitious student to resentful general, a handsome talented man ! losing his humanity as he is seduced by power.

One hopes that Hybrid and the FRU will continue to bring significant films to our screens, though one also hopes that the FRU will not again try to harangue the media into positive reviews as they very stupidly did in Johannesburg, compromising their credibility badly.

* It's a while since we had an American star and director come out to promote a film to local audiences. So it was good to receive the announcement from Anant Singh, Chief Executive of Videovision Entertainment and Mike Baard, Managing Director of Warner Nu Metro Film Distribution that actor Will Smith and director Michael Mann will visit South Africa next weekend for a promotional tour for the film Ali. We understand that former president, Nelson Mandela who is a big boxing fan will be guest of honour at a special screening of the movie. Some scenes in Ali, a film epic about boxing legend Muhammad Ali, were filmed in Maputo and a number of South African were involved. Ali stars Will Smith and is directed by Oscar Nominee Michael Mann. The film is an epic drama about boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Smith's performance in the role of Ali has earned him an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Actor. The film is budgeted at around $100 million and also stars Jamie Foxx, Jada! Pinkett Smith, Mario van Peebles and Jon Voight who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this role.

* Slavery of Love, the passionate TV film about slaves and settlers at the Cape in 1714, will be the special offering from SABC3 on Human Rights Day, March 21, when the channel will screen the film at 22:30. It was produced by Three Worlds Films and Afrikan Connection Productions, in association with the SABC.

Written and directed by John Badenhorst (now working in Dubai), Slavery of Love won him the award for Best Newcomer Director (Features) at Sithengi 1999. It was subsequently well-received at the 2000 Zanzibar International Film Festival, with a repeat screening in the largest festival venue, and last year also featured on a special screening programme highlighting international slavery, in Brixton, London.

Starring established artists such as Chantell Stander, Joanie Combrink and Denise Newman, this passionate tale of slaves and settlers at the Cape in 1714 introduces t! o the screen many new talents, including Zorina Malick (in the leading role of the slave, Tahira), Aldrin Hendrickse and Mark Bilbe. Sven Vosloo is the Director of Photography, John Caviggia designed the costumes and the late Ronald Petersen created the original musical score.

* Director Sechaba Morojele's Ubuntu's Wounds (US/ South Africa) won Best Short at the 10th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival which ended in Los Angeles on 18 February. Over 140 films were screened.

Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (US/ South Africa), produced by Desiree Markgraaff of Bomb and supported by SABC2 won a Special Mention. It was directed by American Lee Hirsch

2002 PAN AFRICAN FILM & ARTS FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best Feature:

• Karmen Gei (Senegal/France/Canada) Director: J. Gay Ramaka

Best First Feature-Director:

• Vanessa Middleton; Thirty Years to Life

Best Documentary:

• Two Towns of Jasper (US) Directors: Marco Williams & Whitney Dow

Best Short:

• Ubuntu's Wounds (US/South Africa) Director: Sechaba Morojele

Jury Award:

• Crazy as Hell (US) Director: Eriq La Salle

Audience Favorite:

• Harlem Aria (US) Director: Willi! am Jennings

Vision Award(s):

• Bilalian (US/Senegal/Canada) Director: Aminah Abdul Jabbaar
• Kali's Vibe (US) Director: Shari Carpenter
• Bloody Crisis (US/Liberia) Director: Gerald K. Barclay
• Sia: The Dream Of The Python (Burkino Faso) Director: Dani Kouyate
• Autonomous Soul (US) Director: Derek Shimoda

Special Recognition:

• Fidel (Cuba) Director: Estela Bravo
• Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (US/South Africa) Director: Lee Hirsch
• Ralph Ellison: An American Journey (US) Director: Avon Kirkland

Festival Award:

• All About You (US) Director: Christine Swanson

* Latest news from the South African box office is not so much that Ocean's Eleven (with big names Roberts, Pitt, Clooney & Garcia) has remained in the number one spot in its third week of release, but that The Lord of the Rings has slipped out of the top five and is at number 6. It is followed by the Valentine Day release, Serendepity (John Cusack / Kate Beckinsale). At the number 4 spot is the South African comedy, Mr Bones, which continues to hang in the top five after 12 weeks of release (go Bones go!!). It is followed by The Last Castle.

NORTH AFRICA

* A Rigobert Song special:

Hi readers. I wrote this review during my African American series of articles, but for some reason or other it slipped through the cracks and never got posted. Here it is then for all those looking for inspiration from the brilliant mind of the late Ralph Ellison. Remember to email me at rigobertsong@hotmail.com with African film discoveries.

Ralph Ellison: An American Journey

Produced, Written & Directed by Avon Kirkland -- 87 minutes

Ralph Ellison: An American Journey is the first documentary on one of the most gifted and intellectually provocative authors of modern American literature. It establishes Ellison as a central figure in contemporary debates over art, politics, race and nationhood. Narrated by Andre Braugher, the film brilliantly presents the first scenes ever filmed from Ellison's landmark novel, Invisible Man.

Ralph Ellison: An American Journey locates the origins of Ralph Ellison's artistic and intellectual aspirations in his upwardly mobile family who left the South for the relative racial fluidity of the newly ratified state of Oklahoma and named their son after poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison attended Tuskegee Institute on a music scholarship, but he found himself increasingly drawn to modernist literature and writing. He would later fuse elements of Eliot, Hemingway and Black folklore in the dizzying style of the jazz that he played and loved.

After Ellison moved to New York, he associated with the Federal Writers Project and became a protegee of Richard Wright, who encouraged him to choose writing over music. After publishing short stories, articles and reviews, Ellison typed the words "I am an invisible man" and began the seven-year journey that paid off in his masterpiece.

This richly symbolic, ironic, and often surreal novel describes a quest much like Ellison’s own to invent an identity independent of that imposed by society. Winner of the 1953 National Book Award, Invisible Man thrust Ellison not only into prominence but also into the vortex of the battles raging over the role of literature and art in politics, and specifically over Ellison's rejection of the "protest novel."

Black Arts activists of the 1960s and 1970s condemned Ellison’s integrationist stance and "disengaged voice." In Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Crouch, Terrance Rafferty and other cultural critics, reconstruct those debates and discuss the roles and responsibilities of a "Negro writer."

Ellison’s responses to his critics are collected in the essays in Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory. He held that American Blacks and whites, whether they know it or not, are entwined in building a common national experience. Perhaps it was the difficulty of achieving such a synthesis that led to Ellison's famous struggle on his never completed second novel, Juneteenth, published only after his death. In the film, friends and critics discuss the book, but it’s a poignant reading by Toni Morrison that brings the novel to startling life.

Quotes that testify to the profoundness of this film:

We are, reader and writers alike, buoyed and challenged by wave upon brilliant wave of Ellison's artistry. His essays and his masterpiece of a novel represent achievements like no others in the history of American literature." --Toni Morrison

"A richly layered portrait of Ralph Ellison and a sensitive examination of the relationship between race and Ellison's artistic aesthetic. The dramatized scenes from Invisible Man become strong visual reminders of the book's ferocity and beauty." --The New York Times

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Denzel Washington, up for an Academy Award for his starring role in Warner Bros.' "Training Day," will land a $20 million paycheck to star in the Carl Franklin-helmed thriller "Out of Time" for MGM and Neal Moritz's Original Films. Although Washington's deal is still being hammered out, including the back-end points, his $20 million salary has already been agreed upon, sources said. He will segue to "Time," which starts shooting at the end of May, after completing postproduction work on his directorial debut, "The Antwone Fisher Story," for Fox Searchlight. In the Dave Collard-penned "Time," Washington will star as a small-town police officer who gets caught in an affair between two women.

* F. Gary Gray has signed on to direct the action feature "V-8" for Artists Production Group. The project is expected to go into production this year. Described as an extreme motor sports film, "V-8" is set in an apocalyptic future in which a muscle car-bound messenger discovers that the package he is delivering can save the world. "V-8" was written by Dario Scardapane, who sold the project to APG as a pitch in October 2000. Gray, next directs New Line Cinema's "Diablo," starring Vin Diesel. His credits include "The Negotiator," "Set It Off" and "Friday."

* Tony Shalhoub and Tim Daly have been cast in lead roles in Paramount Pictures/Franchise Films' "Against the Ropes" a biopic on the life of female boxing manager Jackie Kallen that will mark the feature directorial debut of actor Charles S. Dutton. The project beings shooting at the end of March. "Ropes" stars Meg Ryan as Kallen, a hard-nosed manager from Detroit who has guided the careers of several boxers and is now the commissioner of the International Female Boxers Assn. Daly will play Gavin Ross, a reporter with a struggling local sports station in Detroit who tracks Kallen's career but also has feelings for her. Shalhoub will play boxing promoter Sam Lasalle.

* In interviews appearing in the New York Times, African-American activists have expressed concern that given the high visibility of black actors at the Oscars this year -- three of the nominees in the best actor and actress categories are black, as is the emcee of the show, and Sidney Poitier is due to receive a special award -- audiences may conclude that the issue of racial discrimination has been solved in Hollywood. "That's a real fear here," NAACP President Kweisi Mfume told the newspaper. Darnell Hunt, director of the Center for African-American Studies at UCLA questioned whether the prominence of blacks at the awards may simply be "a symbolic gesture." And TV and film producer Suzanne De Passe told the Times: "The fact is we have an inherent problem, and it goes well beyond who gets nominated. It goes to which projects get made and who gets hired."

* The NAACP Image Awards selected ALI as best film of 2001. At Los Angeles ceremonies on Saturday, the organization dispensed its best actor award to Denzel Washington for Training Day and best actress award to Halle Berry for Swordfish.

* Reese Witherspoon is attaching herself to star in Universal Pictures/Jersey Films' action-comedy "Original Gangsta Bitches." There is no director on board yet. Terms of the actress' deal are being negotiated, sources have confirmed. The project, described as a cross between "Thelma & Louise" and "Rush Hour," is a female heist picture about a mild-mannered white woman (Witherspoon) who teams with a street-smart black woman who teaches her how to use her God-given talents to get what she wants from men and the world. "Gangsta" was originally picked up for Jersey by Universal as a pitch from Lisa Schrager, who subsequently wrote the material. Larry Kennar also is producing with Jersey. Universal Pictures production president Mary Parent and production vp Tim O'Hair are overseeing. Witherspoon, repped by WMA and Talent Entertainment Group, next stars in the Walt Disney Co.'s "Sweet Home Alabama" and Miramax Films' "The Importance of ! Being Earnest." Jersey next produces New Line Cinema's "Simone" from writer-director Andrew Niccol.

* American hospitals are fearing a rush of "waiting room terrorism" in the wake of Denzel Washington’s new movie John Q. In the film, currently at the top of the American box office, Oscar-nominated Washington plays a desperate father who takes over a hospital after learning his health insurance isn't enough to save his dying son. And, a week after the film's release, health officials are concerned about the risk to doctors, nurses and patients should people decide to follow the examples they see in the flick. Rick Wade of the American Hospital Association says, "Terrorism has never saved anyone's life. Some of our members are concerned this film might provoke copycats. Our emergency rooms are violent enough without having somebody plant the idea that the way you get what you need is to hold a gun in a doctor's face." (If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about…right? – DR.SOTHA)

* Danny Glover has learned to conquer his epilepsy by controlling his seizures. The actor, who was diagnosed as an epileptic when he was 15, claims the nervous disorder needn't be a life sentence for sufferers. He says, "I had to take medication for 20 years. I remember one trip my family made from San Francisco to Georgia when I was 15 and I had six seizures in one night. I was going on stage about 25 years ago and I felt a seizure coming on. I told myself, 'I will not have this seizure.' I didn't have the seizure, I went on and when I came offstage I said, 'Grab me, I'm about to have a seizure.' I'm living proof that with proper medication you can live pretty normally and they begin to stop."

* The families of two men who were killed in the same small-plane crash that took the life of singer-actress Aaliyah have sued Virgin Records, which chartered the plane for a video production in the Bahamas. The suit also names video director Harold "Hype" Williams; Virgin's affiliated TV production units Instinct Productions, Big Dog House Films, and Blackground Records; Skystream, the plane's owner; and Blackhawk International Airways, the charter air company hired by Virgin. The lawsuit, filed by the families of hair stylists Eric Forman and Anthony Dodd, charges that the aircraft was overloaded with passengers and equipment when it took off from the Bahamas on Aug. 25. It also raises questions about the qualifications of the pilot.

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT