Father Geek here with Dr. SOTHA's column for this Friday. I found out today that SOTHA's experiments have been being held with the close aid of Brazilian DNA specialist Dr. Josef Mengele. It seems they've been sharing notes, burning up the internet air waves so to speak. Josef says the Curry, Doring, Harrington, and Wheellock boys are doing great and appear to be right on que to earn the good doctors a shared Nobel Prize in Medicine next year. Thanks for a job well done are in order for every one involved from Nurse Frieda Maloney, to Mundt, Strasser, and especially Professor Bruckner. Father Geek hopes we don't lose Doc SOTHA to the heady job of pure research any time in the near future. Our readers here have really come to depend on his counciling and tender touch... Well, here he is for this week, as usual, standing at the farside of the popular waiting room keeping an eye on his nurses' pre-exams...
Forget what you heard about the way I piss on clients for psycho-therapy and
lets focus on this weeks Africa-AICN. DR.SOTHA here for another week of
cogent African voodoo. Turns out that my 3 decade in the works brain
transplant hit a snag. De Palma is off doing pre-prod on his new film and
won't have time for the switch with Hitchcock's preserved (and always
twitchy why is that?)cranium. If I don't do it sooner or later, I might get
all the flak.
Nurse, add Hitch and you got the word right.
SOUTH AFRICA
Nurse, add Hitch and you got the word right.
SOUTH AFRICA
* As there seems to be a lot of African filmmakers attending this year, I thought I'd put this up. For the second consecutive year the Sundance Film Festival will play home to the House of Docs (Note: Don't mean to sound gutted, but what would a House of Docs be without DR.SOTHA on the panel?), a community space where documentary filmmakers can gather from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. each day to participate in panels, exhibits, roundtables, screenings and one-on-one discussions designed specifically to benefit documentary filmmakers throughout the 10-day festival. Launched last year to increase awareness of documentaries by giving nonfiction filmmakers a chance to interact, the House will feature several new programs in 2001, including a Work-in-Progress Lab, a House of Docs Gallery showing documentary stills, and The Reel Gem and Coffee Series, offering screenings of forgotten or never-seen documentaries. Docus appearing in the Reel Gem series will be presented by a guest documentary filmmaker at the House of Docs' Video Screening Room. The Sundance Film Festival runs Jan 18-28 in Park City, Utah. The House of Docs will be located at Gateway, across from the fest's Main Box Office.
* A script development fund is now open for HIV positive people to develop documentary treatments for the Steps for the Future collection of films on AIDS in Southern Africa. Twenty-seven films will be produced during 2001 (16x4mins, 8x26 mins, 3x52mins) and directed by filmmakers from all over Southern Africa. HIV+ people are encouraged to participate in this project and can apply for grants of R15 000 (about $1800) provided by the Open Society Institute of South Africa, to allow development of an idea for a film into a treatment which can be submitted to the Steps commissioning panel. HIV+ people who are not filmmakers but wish to participate can also use this grant to work on their idea together with a filmmaker or production company. The grant can be used to pay for research, professional assistance, travel and accommodation, and the writing of the documentary treatment. This should tell the story of the film, identify key characters and events, describe how the film will portray HIV/AIDS, the schedule, budget and delivery plan. There are eight grants available for this purpose for people applying from any country in Southern Africa. Selected applicants will be expected to develop the treatment during February 2001. For more details Email: dayzero@lesoff.co.za (Thanks to Dlamini)
* The Writing Studio's first workshop for 2001 will take place in Cape Town at the Nico Theatre on 27 and 28 of January. This will be followed by The Film Appreciation workshop on Sunday, 4 February. Subsequent workshops will be held in Stellenbosch, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Durban and in Venda. During the year 2000, The Writing Studio presented 14 creative workshops and became actively involved in outreach programmes, presenting workshops for the University of the 3rd Age - for pensioners and retired folk, as well as workshops for financially challenged writers in the community. The workshops cover all aspects of scriptwriting. For more information email aladan@mweb.co.za.
* The sentimental Nicholas Cage / Tea Leoni release, The Family Man, has ousted the horror film spoof, Scary Movie, from its number one position at the South African box office. The Family Man made R1,6M in its first week, while Scary Movie has notched up R4.3M since its release on 15 December. Another new release, 102 Dalmations made R1,3M in its first week. The high grossing Charlie's Angels is now in fourth place, having amassed a total of R11.3M during its five weeks at the local cinemas. It is followed by 6th Day. (Great I bet we'll get Crouching Tiger by the end of the year - DR.SOTHA)
NORTH AFRICA
* "JAKE JAKESON" fills us in on the 9th Annual Pan African Film & Arts
Festival:
The 9th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival unspools an impressive list of films from Thursday, 8 February through Monday, 19 February, 2001 at the Magic Johnson Theatres and the adjacent Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles. The Pan African Film & Arts Festival, America's premiere Black History Month event and the largest festival in the United States dedicated to the exhibition of independent Black films. The opening night will sparkle with a special presentation of Fox Searchlight's new comedy, "Kingdom Come" starring Whoopi Goldberg, LL Cool J., Jada Pinkett-Smith, Vivica Fox, Cedric the Entertainer, Toni Braxton, Darius McCrary and Loretta Divine. Sponsored by Target and promising to be a spectacular event, the opening night gala screening and reception will be held at the new Hollywood Entertainment Museum and the adjacent Galaxy Theatres located at 7021 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. This year's closing night, sponsored by Mervyn's of California, will feature the US star studded motion picture, "The Brothers," directed by Gary Hardwick, starring Tatyana Ali, Bill Bellamy, Morris Chestnut, D.L. Hughley, Tamala Jones, Jenifer Lewis, and Shemar Moore. Over a 12-day period, The Pan African Film Festival will screen over 80 films. This years' impressive list of films features South Africa's award winning "Christmas at Granny's" by director Dumisani Phakatithe. Also screening is the much talked about "Battu" starring Danny Glover directed by Cheick Sissoko from Mali. PAFF will also showcase Senegal's "Faat Kine," a new film directed by Ousmane Sembene, one of the world's great directors. For the first time, PAFF hosts a selection made in Japan. The powerful action drama "Brother," stars Japan's leading actor, Takeshi Kitano and the popular African American actor, Omar Epps ("Love and Basketball" and "The Wood"). Fairing from Zimbabwe, the quick-paced "Yellow Card" offers audiences a view of modern, urban Africa. Newton I. Aduaka of the United Kingdom presents "Rage," a stunning visual of young people obsessed by a dream. PAFF's selections also include "Bar B-Q Peugeot," from Benin, directed by Jean Odoutan and "Konate's Gift" directed by Fanta Narco of Burkina Faso. Jazz buffs and music lovers will thrill at the opportunity to enjoy "On the Road with Duke Ellington," a rarely seen 1968 documentary recently restored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. PAFF will also premiere "The Country Preacher, Keep Hope Alive," the first comprehensive documentary on the life of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, from his childhood to his challenge of the Florida vote count which threw out over 27,000 African American votes in the Bush-Gore election. In a major coup, PAFF will present a special screening of the epic, "Addangaman," directed by Ivory Coast director, Roger Gnoan M'Bala. Focusing on the slave trade from the African point of view, "Addangamon" has sparked controversy and discussions with international audiences. Saint James, creator of the US postal Service Kwanzaa stamp. Entitled "Ndebele Mother and Child" the South African themed poster will be a limited edition signed by Ms. Saint James. The Festival will also showcase the works of world famous Sculptress Tina Allen and internationally acclaimed batik-artist, Nike Olaniya Davies from Osoghbo, Nigeria. An additional highlight of the PAFF art show is the intricate and unique works of famous Haitian artist Prefete Duffaut, a sure crowd pleaser. Other confirmed artists participating in the 2001 fest are Aziz Diagne, Marvin Sin, Akosua Bandele, Damali, and Charles Rucker, just to name a few. The multi-faceted PAFF includes panels and forums focusing on the entertainment industry and the art business. Audiences will have an opportunity to interact with American and international filmmakers, artists, actors, critic and academics. Each year PAFF's StudentFest attracts thousand of local high school, middles school and upper-elementary school students who participate in specially programmed films and discussions held as part of their school curriculum. StudentFest includes a guided art tour during which students can meet artists and discuss their works. Thanks to a grant arranged by California Assemblyman Herb J. Wesson, Jr., the sponsorship of Sony pictures Entertainment and grants from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Arts Commission StudentFest is free to California students.
Besides Target, PAFF 2001 is sponsored by Mervyn's of California, Washington Mutual, KABC TV Channel 7, Walt Disney Company, The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fox Searchlight Pictures, BET Movies, Blockbuster Entertainment, Sempra Energy, Pacific Bell, Air Afrique, Air France, South African Airlines, The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, The California Arts Council, The Los Angeles Arts Commission, the State of California, and the Black Employees Association.
* RIGOBERT SONG chimes in with a mini-review
Didn't have a lot of time this week to post a more expansive review of this film, but I think you'll get the general impression, and hopefully go and see it (where available.)
"Rouch in Reverse" (Producer: Parminder Vir Director: Manthia Diawara in French and English with English subtitles)
Rouch in Reverse is the first film to look at European anthropology from an African perspective. Malian filmmaker and New York University professor, Manthia Diawara's provocative new film critiques visual anthropology through the work of Jean Rouch, perhaps the most distinguished ethnographic filmmaker living today. The resulting cross-cultural encounter is alternatively affectionate, strained, personal but always insightful - a film no one committed to a truly multi-cultural social science can afford to miss.
In this film, Diawara pioneers what he calls "reverse anthropology" - where the subjects of investigation study their former investigators. He explains: "I made this film on Rouch as a rite of passage for myself. Rouch has played such a key role in the representation of Africans on film. I wanted to pass through Rouch in order to render visible new African voices and images: the ones that defy stereotype and primitivism."
Diawara locates Rouch at the epicenter of 20th century ethnography as a collaborator in the Présence Africaine group with Michel Leiris and Marcel Griaule and as a founder of the cinema vérité documentary movement. The two filmmakers discuss their sometimes contrasting views of clips from such seminal but rarely seen works as Rouch's Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters), Moi, un noir (Treichville) and Chronique d'été (Chronicle of a Summer). Reflecting on Rouch's forty films, Diawara notes that the same European technology which preserved and appropriated traditional African cultures on film destroyed these same societies.
A cross-section of African intellectuals living in Paris discuss the difficulty of developing identities, simultaneously African and modern, in a society which persists in seeing them as "primitive." Rouch in Reverse enters into a vigorous intertextual dialogue with 20th century ethnography to decenter these familiar images so contemporary Africans can create their own version of the past and the present. It, like many of the films I have reviewed on the site, has an acute sense of deconstructing colonisation and understanding just what that word means. Diawara's film reframes an important and controversial figure in African cultural studies, raising crucial questions of race, culture, identity and film." I know I've been accused of being too Academic with my reviews, but you will find that if you see these films, they are valuable educational tools as well as engaging ones.
E-mail me at Rigobertsong@hotmail.com and lets talk African Film
AFRICAN AMERICAN
* Just when you thought it couldn't get any better/worse? Along comes more casting news on ALI: Jada Pinkett Smith and her real-life husband Will Smith will play the roles of husband and wife in Columbia Pictures' big-budget biopic "Ali" for director Michael Mann and producer Jon Peters. With Smith in the title role as Muhammad Ali, Pinkett Smith has joined the cast as Sonji Roi, Ali's first wife. Roi, a cocktail waitress and model, married Ali in 1964, shortly after they met. But her conflict with his extreme loyalty to the Nation Of Islam was blamed for the end of their marriage less than two years later. Pinkett Smith will shoot her role in "Ali" prior to jetting to Australia in March to join the second and third installments of Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Pictures' "The Matrix." She next stars in Fox Searchlight's "Kingdom Come."
* Michael Clarke Duncan has sprained his ankle on the set of Planet of the Apes. The larger-than-life actor, who plays a primate in Tim Burton's remake of the 1967 movie, was over vigorous in a running scene at Sony Studios, Hollywood on Monday morning and twisted his ankle. Duncan star was sent straight to hospital where he was treated for a sprain. The movie's stars Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter and Kris Kristofferson are having to spend hours in make-up to transform themselves into apes. Bonham Carter has to get up at 1am to have her Ape Princess make-up applied and all the actors, with the exception of Mark Wahlberg who plays the human role played by Charlton Heston in the original, have to wear special teeth. Heston, on the other hand, will have to wear the teeth in his cameo as an ape.
* Commercial helmer Peter Darley Miller is in negotiations to make his feature directorial debut with the Walt Disney Co.'s Anthony Hopkins-Chris Rock starrer "Black Sheep" for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Shooting is slated to start in March. Written by Jason Richman, "Sheep" will star Rock asa streetwise man whose identical twin brother is a Harvard-educated secret agent. When his twin is killed by the enemy, Rock is called in by the CIA to finish his brother's job. Hopkins will play a veteran CIA agent who heads the operation that involved Rock's twin and now must mentor Rock's character.
* MTV is planning to produce a "hip hop" version of the opera Carmen as an original TV movie, which it plans to air in the second quarter of this year, the Viacom-owned music channel said Wednesday. Carmen: A Hip Hopera, which is set to go into production immediately, will star Beyonce Knowles of the group Destiny's Child and Mekhi Phifer (Clockers). In a statement, Maggie Malina, who heads up the original movies for television division of MTV, described the film as "the first hip-hop musical --a contemporary, urban retelling of the classic opera Carmen, where drama is found in verse, and emotions spill out in song." It is being produced by Robert Townsend and was reportedly suggested by the 1954 movie Carmen Jones which starred Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey and Olga James.
* UK's Loud Mouse Productions are developing an adaptation of Brit-African novelist Eze-Anyika cult book 'Canteen Culture'. It revolves around 5 Metropolitan beat cops who are tired with the way they are treated like doorsteps by the public. They find a million quid of drug money in the back of a car they pulled off the road. They decide to take it, but then everything falls apart when the team don't know who to trust. 'A Simple Plan' meets 'Trainspotting' set in London.
AFRICAN COAXIAL
* Videovision Entertainment, the exclusive South African rights holder of the hit TV game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has announced that the programme will return to South African screens in 2001. This is despite the fact that pay-TV station M-Net has not renewed the contract for the third series. Says Videovision's Anant Singh, who also produces the show: "We are disappointed that we were unable to conclude an agreement for the third series with M-Net, however, there is considerable interest and discussions are currently underway on continuing the series on one of South Africa's other free-to-air channels". Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is currently being broadcast in all of the more than 40 countries where it was launched. South African host Jeremy Maggs is considered to be one of the top five "Millionaire" hosts around the world (Oh what a ringing endorsement - DR.SOTHA) and will continue in this role in the next series.
