FatherGeek here wishing happy holidays to Dr. SOTHA, his staff of fine foxy nurses, and Rigobert Song.(and of course all of you around the world who visit us here each week) You readers ought to drop them a line, or two too, to let them know you appreciate their efforts on this column. Fridays have never been the same since Africa-AICN was birthed this summer. I was afraid it might have been a miscarriage, but good old Doc SOTHA performed like a champ and has nurtured our babe into a real fine scrapping lad...
Hey lay off on the old brandy butter good readers, we've still got an
'aesthetically' pleasing New Years Eve to come. DR.SOTHA back for Africaaicn
#29. There's a new form of psychotherapy that I've been developing with the
ol' bastards up in psychiatrics : "a process where dead fungi cells are
injected into a madman's nostrils, which will allow him to become normal and
sane all in one squirt" Still in the development phases, but we've been
receiving good word of mouth on our guinea pig: one 'Tony Kaye'.
If you'd also like to be put back on the road to good mental health e-mail
us at Africaaicn@hotmail.com and we'll sort you out.
Nurse, It's Christmas not a Bachelor's party for God sakes.
SOUTH AFRICA
If you'd also like to be put back on the road to good mental health e-mail
us at Africaaicn@hotmail.com and we'll sort you out.
Nurse, It's Christmas not a Bachelor's party for God sakes.
SOUTH AFRICA
SOUTH AFRICA
* It seems the South African Industry has taken (yet another) hiatus this late December, still there are two tidbits worth mentioning: "BRAAI" tells the tale of a butcher who discovers his dad worked with the Nazi's in their pre-occupation of North Africa. His father is diagnosed HIV positive as he tries to unravel the truth within the week that he's got left to live. The project is set-up at Rhyder Entertainment
* "MARITZBURG" is about a group of tourists from Poland who descend on the Natal mountains to do a bit of sightseeing only to find that spirits inhibit the resting place of old Zulu Warriors. They must use their knowledge and teamwork to ward off the vicious force of nature that the spirits use against them. The film is written and will be directed by Jovoy Powkowski.
NORTH AFRICA
* On 25 and 26 January 2001, the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Africa (IDOGA), in collaboration with the Africa Association of the University of Ghent (AVRUG) and the Media Studies Group Burkina Faso (Ghent University), will organize a two-day workshop on: "Popular cinema in Ghana and Nigeria: producers, films, audiences". The workshop intends to attract a mixed audience of graduate and post-graduate students and researchers in anthropology and African studies, with research interests/experience in popular culture and media. The workshop is led by Birgit Meyer (Research Centre Religion and Society, Amsterdam) and Onookome Okome (Calabar University, currently visiting professor at the Research Group 'Medialitat, Kunst, Performance', University of Bayreuth). The programme includes introductory lectures, seminars, and film viewings. The approach is ethnographic and the focus both on production and reception of films. The full programme and a registration form are available at: Their Site.
* One of the largest international media events for the year 2001, the 3rd World Summit on Media for Children, will host the Kids For Kids Festival, to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece between 23 and 26 of March 2001. Children aged 13-15 from all over the world including Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon have been invited to create and submit their films/videos. The 30 finalists will be invited to the award ceremony and have the unique chance to attend the four-day Summit. The forthcoming festival will be held in collaboration with the Norwegian Film Institute within the framework of the 3rd World Summit and the Cultural Olympiad. It is expected to attract the interest and participation of many youngsters and media education professionals from around the world. Key players of the media industry such as BBC, Nickleodeon, NHK, INTEL and LEGO ARE some of the participants that will present their innovative programmes at the Summit. The youngsters will be competing in four different categories: fiction, documentary, animation and other (video clips/adverts/experimental) - the maximum duration of the videos must be three minutes. The submitted films/videos will be evaluated by a children's as well as a professionals' jury.
* Another blinder from Rigobert Song:
If its a mixture of fantasy and reality you're looking for, then look no further then my film choice of the day - a wonderful film from Madagascar.
"Quand les etoiles rencontrent la mer"
This film is one of the most magical to come out of Africa--hardly surprising since Madagascar is unlike anywhere else on earth. Raymond Rajaonarivelo follows his epic first film on the Malagasy liberation struggle, Taba Taba, with a very different, poetic film exploring the relationship between traditional and modern concepts of human freedom. He writes: "In French Magic and Image are made from the same letters... In this film, there will be Magic as long as man is dependent on mysterious forces that overwhelm him, and Image when man has acquired enough power over space, time, and himself to no longer be afraid of his life."
As the title suggests, Rajaonarivelo frames his film around three visual symbols or leit motifs, sky, sea and, by implication, the land marooned between them or life between birth and death. Set among the island's high mesas, all the major characters dream of escaping this parched interior to return to the oceanic mother, Rano Masina or "sacred water" in Malagasy. Rajaonarivelo characterizes life in the arid highlands, whether in the superstitious village or the corrupt city, as unremittingly predatory.A recurrent dream of a gently breaking surf turning into pounding cattle hooves symbolizes the human tension between infinite and earthbound.
Destiny, or vintana, plays a key role in the belief system of the Merina people of these high plateaus. The day and month of a child's birth are believed to determine its fate; a child born during a solar eclipse, a minimal time when sun and moon are at war, is believed to possess especially destructive powers. Tradition demands that its father must place it in a cattle pen where it will be trampled to death. The hero of this film is such a child; his mother died in childbirth but he is rescued from his fate by a young, childless woman and named Kapila, "the lame one," because of an injury he suffered in the corral. He grows into a kind but frightened young man, in effect, a stowaway in life, who supposedly can only bring evil on those around him. His adoptive mother weaves the shrouds in which the Malagasy bury, exhume and then rebury their ancestors and Kapila wears one until his ultimate liberation.
Parallel to his protective adopted mother, Kapila encounters at key moments a wrathful, blind old woman, who taunts him that he cannot avoid his destructive destiny and gives him a staff of vengeance. She may be a bilo, a dead spirit possessing Kapila's body, or the ghost of one of his ancestors (perhaps his dead mother) or just a "mpaamosavy" or sorceress. No doubt, she also represents a repressed part of Kapila's psyche, a shadow self, enraged that society has stigmatized him as the source of calamity. As in any quest narrative, Kapila must embark on a journey to discover his true identity and purpose in life. Rajaonarivelo's crippled hero has resonances with other myths, most obviously Sundjata and Oedipus. Kapila leaves his mother and flies on the wings of a hawk over a vast wasteland to his natal village. There he confronts his father, The Poet, a madman who believes he can fly away from human cruelty and his own guilt. He tells his son: "Nature is as beautiful as a woman yet she has something against us; she inhabits us and forces us to do things we find revolting".(I hope my ex-girlfriend is reading this - DR.SOTHA) Your powers too are only an instrument of her will."
The villagers, led by a hypocritical Christian priest and a traditional diviner, hunt Kapila like an animal. He survives again through the love of another young woman, Fara, a beautiful, fair-skinned métisse, an outsider marked by difference like himself. Disgusted with the cycle of hate, Kapila climbs the mountain of the ancestors, of tradition, and throws away the sorceress' cane, the source of his magical powers. This unintentionally unleashes a purifying deluge which destroys the village.
In thus rejecting his destiny Kapila has ironically fulfilled it. His and Fara's love and commitment to living literally and symbolically annihilate the old cycle of destiny; the villagers by clinging to their belief in destiny insure that it comes true. In the closing sequence reprising the opening, Kapila's father again tries to kill his son by stampeding the cattle, but when they see Kapila embracing Fara they turn upon his father trampling him to death. As he wished, he is cremated in the same corral where Kapila was wounded, freed at last to rejoin the wind and the stars. In the film's final shot, Kapila and a visibly pregnant Fara at last stand on the shore, the threshold between land and water and between destiny and desire, the place where the stars and the sea meet. Kapila has paradoxically discovered his own identity only by rejecting his connections with his past - his adoptive mother, his father, even his ancestral homeland. His destiny has, in a sense, been to break free of destiny. He and Fara, outsiders joined by love not custom, have given birth to a new world governed not by magic and fate but by love and imagination. This weaves a grand enchanting spell over you in embellishing mythical folklore, astounding visual sorcery and a majestic score. In some respects it reaches the dizzying heights of Boorman's "Excalibur" and that comparison should already have you foaming at the mouth. Pulled this out of the Variety archives which I think rings true:
"This trim, accesible yet visionary film fascinates in its unflinching realism and its spiritual dimension questioning the role of chance in human life." Keep on e-mailing me at Rigobertsong@hotmail.com
AFRICAN AMERICAN
* Don Cheadle, who co-stars in Universal Pictures "The Family Man" for director Brett Ratner, reteamed with the helmer on a cameo role in "Rush Hour 2," in production for New Line Cinema. Last week, the actor wrapped a two-day stint on the film, which stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. "It's a cameo," Ratner said. "He plays a guy who owns a Chinese restaurant that is really a front for a (Chinese crime cartel), but he's really big into kung fu. And a crazy guy, you know?" Cheadle, who also is part of an ensemble cast in Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," and is touted for a best supporting nod in that film.
* I'm sure everyone knows this already but Steve Martin and not CHRIS ROCK or EDDIE MURPHY will be hosting next years Oscars. Agile "He's everything. He's a movie star, he's funny, he's classy, he's literate -- he'll be a wonderful host." That was the way Oscar show producer Gil Cates described Steve Martin as he announced Monday that the onetime Not Ready for Primetime Player would host what is usually the biggest primetime show of the year. Although he himself has appeared in numerous movies, he has never been nominated for an Oscar, something that Martin alluded to in a statement Monday: "If you can't win 'em, join 'em," Martin said. Next year's Oscar telecast has been set for March 25. (Still think Jim Carey was a better choice, but at least we didn't get Whoopi again next year? - DR. SOTHA)
* Wesley Snipes is set to take up filming half naked - in the manner of Scottish heartthrob Sean Connery. Snipes, who starred with the suave James Bond star in Rising Sun, says Connery's top tip for staying cool in scenes where you're only shot from the waist up, is to remove your trousers. Snipes says, "When you're doing scenes in a car, you can actually do the scene with your pants off, just in your shorts or your underwear. "Because the camera usually never sees below the steering wheel, and you're usually dressed to a tee. The car is usually hot. This way you can be cool but have a tux up on top." He adds the advice was a revelation in the way he sees Connery's films. He says, "Chances are if you ever see Sean in a long scene where he's sitting at a table to sitting in a car, he's probably in his underwear." (This is what has become of Wesley Snipes - sitting solemnly and recounting vignettes about previous conquests? - DR.SOTHA)
* John Schultz has been tapped to direct 20th Century Fox's comedy "Seven Spells," and "The Original Kings of Comedy" quartet of D.L. Hughley, Steve Harvey, Bernie Mac and Cedric the Entertainer are in negotiations to reunite for the project. Principal photography could start as early as February. "Spells," written by Scott Sanders, is about a group of ex-cons who attempt to save a casino from being bought out by Russian mobsters. In "Kings," the comedians showcased their stand-up acts in four individual segments. "Spells" would be the first time the group would act together in an ensemble piece.
