Father Geek here along with Dr. SOTHA and Rigobert Song with another of our Africa-AICN columns for the on coming weekend. It looks like our good doctor will be traveling to the South of France soon the aid in the covering of the CANNES film festival. You may remember all those great interviews he scored for us at the Rotterdam International Film Festival a while back, well prepare yourselves for more of the same as he get turned lose on the grandest fest of them all...
In an era where we have seen man walk on the moon, the advent of television,
film becoming an economic force, and George Bush Jnr becoming American
President, you'd think the South African Medical Society would be head over
heels in love with my new medical contraption: The Mati-extractor - a device
that single handedly elicits human (or any other mammal for that matter)
eyeballs at the touch of a button. You wanna know what they said, "it's
unsolicited material, and therefore we cannot accept it as an authentic
piece of equipment. Get yourself a lawyer and/or medical agency, and try
again". That's 10 years of work and thousands and thousands of dollars down
the can. I don't know whether to shelve it, and move on, or put in a high
priced court appeal.
Send your petitions in support of the Matia-extirpate to My South Africian Clinic.
Nurse, that's a strange form of appeal.
SOUTH AFRICA
Send your petitions in support of the Matia-extirpate to My South Africian Clinic.
Nurse, that's a strange form of appeal.
SOUTH AFRICA
SOUTH AFRICA
* I got this great e-mail from Hallie on an exciting soundtrack in the works by local South African band The Springbock Nude Girls: "Hey DR.SOTHA,I just saw your article on the Ain't It Cool News. I'm a HUGE fan of the Springbock Nude Girls and wanted to send you some info. I'm friends with the band's manager, and the SNG have just signed contracts for their music to be used in the US indie feature film "LOSING HOPE". I've been told the film is a cross between "Roshamon and Raising Arizona" and is a terrific new comedy. I was really excited to hear from you. I checked out the company's webpage and did lots of research. Just Go Here , or this link takes you directly to the "Losing Hope" section Just Click Here .
It's an independent film that starts shooting in May. I emailed the director, Tony Urban for more information and he described the film like this: "A tale about a poor mother, desperate to get her daughter plastic surgery;her God-fearing but not too bright husband; his food obsessed brother andtheir ancient, horny grandfather. Losing Hope is a comedy of desperate people doing desperate things, all of which end badly."
The actors are: LG Taylor (Celebrity, The Gypsy Years), Chip Hajel (Sex and the City, High Point), Andy Sims (The Pizza Wars), Jaime McCoy (Children of the Living Dead). The director, Tony Urban has written "Poor White Trash" which stars Sean Young, Jaime Pressly, Jason London and others. He made his directing debut last year with "High Point", wrote and directs "Losing Hope" and will direct "R.I.P." later this year.
* After his exhilarating first film, 'ANGELS IN A CAGE' (A tale of twin brothers hatching a plan to outwit the local force with the reluctant help of a femme fatale), Marc Harrison is developing 'In Whom I Trust' with partner David at More & More Pictures. It tells the story of a man on the run framed for a murder he didn't commit. The more he delves into the crime the more he realizes he's become the nucleus of an intricate conspiracy involving a volatile extremist group of powerful shady characters, who are have deep seated motives to overturn any obstacle in their path. Marc is hoping to lure Mickey Rourke to play the lead character (somebody needs to revive a great career - DR.SOTHA) and Nick Nolte for the role of Van Wyk - a cop out to solve the riddle.
* Taken from www.screenafrica.com: "KUNSKAFEE" is a magazine programme about the arts, which aims to reflect art in such a way it will become accessible to all viewers, but at the same time not disappoint art connoisseurs. All of the arts are featured: film, theatre and sculpture, architecture and landscape design, classical music and pottery, ballet and modern dance, fine art end street painting, literature and installations, computer art and the Internet, photography and cartoons. Anything from profiles, happenings in the art world to up to date round-ups. "Kunskafee" is not recorded in a studio. The backdrop is always a different location - a theatre, movie set, an exhibition, a gallery, an interesting garden or innovative architectural design, etc. Although the programme is presented in Afrikaans, local and international artists are also featured in the line-up. In the book section Hettie Scholtz discusses Eleanor Baker's new book "'n Ou begin", "The pianist" (the story of a man's survival in Warschau between 1939 and 1945) and "Intellectuals, Paul Johnson's discussion of the contribution by intellectuals through the ages. In the Western-Cape the spotlight falls on the Afrikaans Word Festival in Stellenbosch, a Jazz festival with 33 contributing artists and "Vagina monologues" currently on at the Baxter theatre.
* I found this great article on the state of cinema exhibition in South Africa, and it's a sorry tale, but here it is in all it's shameful glory: "If the SA cinema exhibition business were dramatised in a movie, it would have to be 'Dazed and Confused'. Attendences have regressed to 1993 levels - 18% below the 27m peak of 2 years ago. The industry's top 30 cinemas rake in 80% of attendances. A 2-year price war has fizzled without putting more arses on seats. Ster Kinekor's plans to cut prices to R18 (about $2.50) hasn't worked. Content and access far outweighs price. Nu Metro allowed cinema goers to pay R60 (about $9) and watch as many movies as they liked in November. It doubled attendance that month, but Ster-Kinekor complains it cut the Industry's December numbers and average prices to R7. Fortunately, sanity has returned to expansion plans. Bulging with over-capacity, Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro will open no more new theaters (Fortunately and sanity are not the words I would use - DR.SOTHA). In fact, Ster-Kinekor are looking at an extensive closure program. The emerging black market remains an enigma. Ster-Kinekor is researching triggers to boost black attendance., like making some cinemas more affordable, but will it work. Only time will tell. (If anybody on the outside is reading this please pump in billions of dollars to fix this crisis, somebody needs to - DR.SOTHA)
NORTH AFRICA
* Ghanaian writer, Ambar Suluku is collaborating with animation artist Zolmon Buku on a live action/animated film called 'Jupiter Umbrella' about a team of astronauts (two of them being African) that explore the surface of Jupiter in the year 2078. After picking up a scent, the team track an alien lifeforce responsible for destroying Saturn and Mercury from the stratosphere. They must battle the assailants before they take their vengeance out on Earth. If the film comes to fruition it will be one of the biggest budgets in history for African film, valued at a pricey $20m. The script should be done by early next year, and hopefully with that a production date.
* Lay back for another knockout review from Rigobert Song:
Hello readers. Well I'm back to reviewing films after my brief rundown on African television. I've got a great social comedy for you today called Taafe Fanga. But before I get started remember to e-mail me with your African musings at rigobertsong@hotmail.com
Taafe Fanga (Skirt Power) Producer/Director: Adama Drabo, Mali, 95 minutes In Kaado and Bambara with English subtitles
Director Adama Drabo has devised a gender-bending farce set among the 18th Century Dogon to make some serious points about the status of women in Africa today. This prophetic tale about a comic revolution in which women's and men's roles are reversed was, in part, inspired by the actual role women played in Mali's 1991 revolution. Drabo surprisingly found the germ for his domestic comedy from a program on Dogon mythology he heard over Malian radio. He then wrote a script which provides a stunning illustration of Marcel Griaule's observation that, "In the Dogon system of myth, social life must reflect the working of the universe, and conversely, the world order depends on the proper ordering of society." (Griaule, Marcel and Germaine Dieterlen 1954 "The Dogon", in African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples, edited by Daryll Forde, P. 83.)
Therefore Taafe Fanga's story of sexual politics in a Dogon village necessarily involves the inter-penetration of cosmogeny, history and the still unfolding present. The Dogon believe that all difference in the universe began with the splitting of the primal seed into an ever-expanding spiral of space-time which can only be held together by a careful balancing or "twinning" of opposing energies. In Taafe Fanga, this tension reappears in the parallel stories of four women who challenge male supremacy among the Dogon's legendary elf-like andumbulu spirit ancestors; their semi-historical human descendants, the indigenous, cave-dwelling Tellem; the Dogon who invaded and massacred the Tellem in the 17th century (leaving them a place only in folklore;) and finally their present-day listeners to this tale.
Myth, storytelling and now film, link past and future, as symbolized in the opening scene by the arrival of a traditionally robed griot at a contemporary urban compound. He flips off a television program (some fatuous Hollywood musical) and decides to tell a Dogon tale about the "battle between the sexes," when a proud woman pushes aside an arrogant young man to sit in the "men's section" of the courtyard.
Ambara, a village elder, impulsively decides to marry a younger woman because his wife, Timbe, hasn't gathered firewood to heat his bath. Her younger friend, Yayémé, is beaten by her husband, Agro, when the other men accuse him of being "a woman's slave" for bringing home the firewood. An infuriated Yayémé defies his warning about the evil Andumbulus and sets off in the dark to forage for brush. There she encounters and overwhelms what she takes to be one of these bush spirits and makes off with its powerful mask.
Yayémé has unwittingly stumbled onto the rare Sigi ritual, and has stolen the mask from a young Tellem woman, Yandju, who in turn has stolen the mask to protest women's exclusion from the ritual. The Dogon believed the Tellem held the Sigi ritual every 60 years to expiate the transgressions of their andumbulu forebearers. This woman who stole the earth's powerful raffia skirt, stained red with its menstrual blood or mud, thus brings death on her husband and all her descendants. In the Sigi ritual, (which women are still strictly forbidden to view) men dressed as women in these red fiber fertility skirts bind the dangerous spiritual energy unleashed by death which threatens to rip apart the normal spiral of life. The ceremony is presided over by the powerful Albarga mask which symbolizes social harmony and the proper balance between the sexes.
Timbe convinces Yayémé that the mask has been sent by Anma, god of justice, in answer to her prayer for revenge against Ambara and all male arrogance. The next day Yayémé, disguised in the mask, demands that the terrorized Dogon men from now on exchange roles with the women. Drabo exploits the full comedic possibilities of this "triumph of the skirts over the shorts" as the men prove predictably clumsy homemakers and are so exhausted by the end of the day they feign sleep to stave off their wives sexual advances. These scenes are met with uproarious responses from African audiences, because traditional gender roles remain largely unchanged.
The women soon recognize that their purpose was not simply to perpetuate gender stereotypes and injustice in reverse or to imbalance the world in the opposite direction. Timbe says: "Men and women are here to complement each other. Let's use our power now to bring equality among us. Let's share everything: work, happiness and misfortune." Later in a pointed reference to contemporary African development, Timbe points out that both sexes will be needed for an irrigation project which can again make the earth fertile: "The purpose of taking power is to make a better world...No nation is built without hard work - but it can't be done by excluding men" - or women.
In Taafe Fanga, Drabo has revised the Sigi myth (which seems originally to have expressed male anxiety over female control of fertility) into a myth about women's right to resist patriarchy, in the griot's words, "to fight for the right to be different and equal. This film, along with Drabo's 1991 feature Ta Dona provide important examples of how contemporary African artists are freely reinterpretting traditional belief systems to illuminate pressing social issues. As well as being an important deconstruction of the sexes in a male dominated society it is, also a genuinely funny take on gender politics. Seek this one out, you will not be disappointed. Here's a quote from Variety to wet your appetite: "This blend of folklore and social realism, bolstered by spirited acting, doesn't skirt the issues or bang viewers over the head with them...Solidly entertaining."
AFRICAN AMERICAN
* Director Spike Lee is turning his attention from movies to newspapers - after agreeing to write a sports column. The Atlanta-born man responsible for Summer Of Sam and He Got Game has accepted an invitation to write a monthly column for Gotham magazine. Spike is set to spark controversy (No Really? - DR.SOTHA) in his first column, where, according to New York's Daily News website, he cites the late Baseball legend Babe Ruth as being a black man. (Next thing he'll be telling us that Wayne Gretsky is African-Canadian - DR.SOTHA)
* Newly launched indie distributor Urbanworld Films has acquired worldwide distribution rights to writer-helmer Patrik-Ian Polk's "Punks," a production of Edmonds Entertainment Group's independent production arm e2 Filmworks. Urbanworld is eyeing a fall theatrical release for the project, a music-driven romantic comedy set in West Hollywood that follows a quartet of homosexual black men searching for love and happiness. The project was budgeted at less than $1 million, and Urbanworld snapped up the rights for mid-six figures, sources said. The film stars Seth Gilliam, Rockmond Dunbar, Vanessa Williams, Loretta Devine, Renoly Santiago and Dwight Ewell and was produced by Polk with Tracey Edmonds and Michael McQuarn. Executive producers were Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Stacy Spikes, the latter of whom founded the New York-based Urbanworld Film Festival.
* The eighth installment of "Sistas Are Doin' It for Themselves" - a showcase of short films made by emerging black women filmmakers -- will be presented March 31 at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles. The showcase, which is sponsored by the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, will feature short films by several filmmakers, including Yvette Freeman ("The Blessing Way"), Desha Dauchan ("Episodes") and Layla Mashavu Sewell ("Through Thick and Thin"). Filmmaker Carol Mayes will moderate the discussion after the screenings. Mayes wrote and directed "Rituals," a lighthearted look at love and voodoo, and "Commitments," her first feature, a romantic drama that was produced by BET Pictures and will air May 4 on BET. For tickets, call (323) 957-4747.
* Karen Kaufman has been tapped to head development at George Tillman Jr. and Robert Teitel's Fox 2000-based State Street Pictures. Kaufman will be responsible for bringing in new material to the company as well as overseeing all projects in development, including the feature adaptation of the nonfiction book "Final Confession: The Unsolved Crimes of Phil Cresta," with Tillman attached to direct, and the big-screen version of the novel "Dark," described as a black "Catcher in the Rye," in development at Fox Searchlight. The company also has in development at MGM the comedy "Barbershop."
* Paul Giamatti (Man on the Moon) and Amanda Detmer are set to join Frankie Muniz in Universal Pictures' "Pay or Play" (aka "Lost and Found") for television-turned-feature helmer Shawn Levy, who is making his feature debut on the project. Shooting is scheduled to start March 28. "Play" is about a young boy (Muniz) whose school essay erroneously finds its way into the hands of a Hollywood producer (Giamatti) who takes the idea and turns it into a hit film. The boy then travels to Los Angeles to claim his credit. Detmer would take the role of Monty, the producer's assistant. Isaiah Washington (True Crime) is also in negotiations to join the cast.
* Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman has been honored by officials in his home town - delighting the three-time Oscar-nominee. Freeman left his home state of Mississippi in the 1950s to pursue his acting career. But when lawmakers in Jackson, Mississippi, paid tribute to his acting achievements on Monday, Morgan admitted to being overjoyed to have returned home. He says, "One of the smartest moves I've made in life is to come back home. I'll remember this always. I think maybe the best thing would've been if my parents had been able to see where their encouragement got me." Freeman graduated from Greenwood's Broad Street high school in 1955, when schools were segregated. He settled back in the state a decade ago. Senator David Jordan, who graduated alongside Freeman, says, "Morgan was the type of person who was in every play. Each time we had a parade for homecoming, Morgan would be riding a bicycle backward along the lines of the parade until the principal would finally pull him over. We knew from the beginning that Morgan Freeman was destined to be an actor." (Spoken like a true friend - DR.SOTHA)
* BET, the black entertainment cable channel, fired 65-70 employees at its New York and Washington DC offices on Friday, the online Electronic Urban Report said Monday. A source at the television company told EUR: "It was absolutely crazy. The normally chill atmosphere at BET was replaced with shock and dismay and people standing in hallways crying. You would think that it was a bombing that happened. I guess it was. Viacom dropped a major bomb." Viacom acquired the company last November for about $3 billion. According to EUR, BET COO Debra Lee assured fired executives and staffers in a memo: "Our plan calls for severance packages, benefits extensions, outplacement service and other assistance, including opportunities to pursue positions elsewhere among Viacom companies."
