Well, Father Geek's back with our African crew of reporters/reviewers to present this Friday's issue of Africa-AICN. Sadly the good doctor (SOTHA) will not be with us today. Down with some obscure jungle fever I suppose. However, one of his well trained, and endowed, assistants is more than prepared to stand his watch, attending to your every need, or at least that what she told me earlier. At any rate here's this week's dosage for what ailes all you African cinephiles out there...

DR.SOTHA has been sick over the last few days(damned Ebola), and he asked me to 'fill' in for him, me being his fetching Nurse Pout. Don't worry, he has plenty of "toys"... errrr, "tools"... errrrrrr, make that medical devices lying around to get that job done, even though physically I may have a few "Shortcumings" depending on your personal "needs."

Let me see, he usually starts with some absurd invention that he's working on, so I'll just say I've hand embroidered my own nurse uniform. Sewn myself in. The fabric is practically bursting against my supple skin. I've used a mauve/dark blue color with white satin fittings, and have just decided to change my name to Brandy Alexander. My peers think I look like Carla Gugino, but I always shout back Paula Marshal more like.

Send me vignettes of your own very worst fashion moments to DR.SOTHA's private treatment office's address: Down in Capetown and the doctor or I will give them our full attention.

Why... DR.SOTHA you're up already, is that a double serrated bone saw blade bursting out of your pant's pocket, or are you just that glad to see me.

SOUTH AFRICA

* South African Exhibitor Taking Movies To The People. South Africa's biggest exhibitor, Ster Kinekor, has begun a campaign to introduce movies to the country's millions of township dwellers who have never seen motion pictures. The Johannesburg Financial Gazette reported that Ster Kinekor has sent mobile cinemas across the country to screen U.S. blockbuster films free to villagers. "Our return on this investment is that in the years to come, the young people you see around here, as they urbanize they will want to see a movie and pay the ticket price," Pat Pillai, managing director of Ster Kinekor Mobile, told the publication.

* The rights to the acclaimed South African novel 'SHARKS EGG' seem to have been optioned by South African producer Jeremy Nathan. The book follows a young girl in Cape Town who comes to terms with her identity when she discovers dark secrets about her fellow students. The novel is laced with sexual undertones, and has been earmarked as one of the best South African debut novels of its time.

* 'LOVE IN THE KAROO' is a film set to star Jimmy Link (Bordella) and Isabella Masikuso (Lullaby) about an out of town drifter who happens upon a small town con in the Karoo. He ends up falling for the group's leader, Sheika, but it turns out he's a cop with a bounty on his head from the local Mafia. He must steal R50,000 in 4 days if he is to save his own life, and win Sheika over. Brendan Makelele will direct from a Shane Dermont script.

* In an unprecedented ruling, British automaker Land Rover has been ordered to halt an advertising campaign in South Africa that includes a commercial showing an African woman whose long breasts are blown sideways in the tailwind of a Land Rover. The country's Advertising Standards Authority on Monday ruled that the ad was "irresponsible, exploitative and constitutes racial stereotyping and violates human dignity" and "makes a mockery of African culture." (Don't forget sexist - NURSE POUT)

NORTH AFRICA

* Egyptian music video director Amed Musaks is set to make his directorial debut in 'BLOCK', a psychological thriller that follows a Scottish paleontologist who uncovers a deadly secret locked underneath one of the age old pyramids. The secret threatens to change the course of history when it contradicts passages out of the Old Testament. The world as we know it, is a blind lie to the masses. Ahmed is set to start principal photography at the end of April (i.e. This month, aren't I clever? - NURSE POUT)

* Los Angeles-based producer Paige Simpson has signed a three-picture first-look deal with Artists Independent Network, the London-based management and production company said Tuesday. Simpson, a co-executive producer of "Leaving Las Vegas," will relocate to London in May and stay for at least a year to co-produce the first film of the newly struck deal, AIN said. The project, "The Last Face," written and to be directed by Erin Dignam ("Loved"), details the story of AIDS workers in Somalia. The film is budgeted at about $10 million and is expected to be financed by AIN and a mix of other investors.

* Over to Rigobert:

I've got a condensed review for everyone today, as I have been accused in the past of rambling on 'pretentiously'. Point taken, so I'll try and make my reviews more compelling from here on in. What I've found is that people immediately recoil when they think of reading a review on African film. I think this is a very narrow-minded perspective from film fans. If you actually took 5 minutes to read some of the films I've highlighted over the months, you might find yourself taken with one or some of them, just like any other American mainstream film, but that's just me. Enough preaching and onto the review:

"THESE HANDS" Directed by Flora M'mbugu-Schelling - Tanzania - in Swahili and Kimakonde with English subtitles

Who would have suspected that a 45 minute documentary about women crushing rocks, without narration or plot, would offer one of the most unforgettable and rewarding experiences of recent African cinema? Flora M'mbugu-Schelling's quiet tribute to women at the very bottom of the international economic order ultimately deepens into a mediation on human labor itself. "These Hands" will stimulate viewers to rethink documentary and to question their own role as consumers in a global economy.

In "These Hands", the camera acts as a compassionate witness to a day in the life of Mozambican women refugees working in a quarry outside Dar es Salaam - the relentless toil, the tender childcare, the nostalgic songs and joyous dancing at day's end. We slowly come to recognize that these women are, in fact, parts of a giant machine, not just the quarry but the international economic system as a whole. The rocks, the women, the scarred landscape, are being constantly ground into the common currency of industrial civilization. As the film unspools, we, the viewers, look on powerless and complicit, realizing we too are enmeshed in this global mechanism of social, economic and ideological reproduction.

Director Flora M'mbugu-Schelling has explained why she refused to interpret or romanticize these women's story, to reduce them to a simple political pose or anthropological point. "Certain things you can say with words and certain things you cannot find words for...The time has passed when we can use the classic documentary style. I don't want to offend my audience by telling them what they should see or feel." It is precisely this refusal of premature closure that makes viewers so much more aware of their relationship to the film and its protagonists. Deeply poignant and dripping with pathos, you'll not want to miss this one. Some quotes to coerce you into seeing it:

"In looking at lives that in most ways seem hopeless, These Hands discovers a communal warmth and flashes of joy." -- New York Times

"A rare film which depicts ordinary life with extraordinary clarity." -- Village Voice

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Australian newspapers are reporting that production in Melbourne of "Psychic" has been indefinitely postponed because of the looming American actors' strike. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Gary Oldman had reportedly signed to co-star in the movie, while producers were attempting to land Sean Connery and Demi Moore as well. The Melbourne newspaper The Age reported that the movie's production office in Melbourne has been closed and quoted a publicist for the movie as confirming that the project had been put on hold because of the threatened SAG strike. The newspaper also said that production of the sequel to The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves, has also "run into problems" and that it is doubtful that it will be completed before the strike is due to hit next month.

* The writing team of Marianne and Cormac Wibberly has been hired to rewrite "Bad Boys II" for Bruckheimer Films and Columbia Pictures. The sequel to the 1995 action comedy "Bad Boys" has been in development for years; it was originally planned to lens in 1996 and has since gone through several incarnations. No director or talent is attached, though the original film's stars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith have expressed continued interest. The Wibberlys recently worked with Columbia on the upcoming "I Spy," to be produced by C-2 Pictures and directed by Betty Thomas with Eddie Murphy attached to star, and last year's "The 6th Day" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Executive vp production Doug Belgrad is overseeing the "Boys II" project at Columbia. (The only thing that excites me about this project is the thought of Tea Leoni returning to her brown roots - NURSE POUT)

* Actor Steven Seagal is recording his debut album in Kingston, Jamaica, alongside Fugees star Wyclef Jean. Exit Wounds star Seagal has recorded some songs with the Grammy Award-winning reggae star Beenie Man and also covered Bob Marley's classic Redemption Song. Seagal says, "Doing movies took up all of my time, but music has always been my first love." The album is expected to be released later this year. (Somebody tell me this is just a sick joke? -- NURSE POUT)

* Actor Morgan Freeman is following in the footsteps of Puff Daddy and Johnny Depp - by opening a club. The 63-year-old star is launching his blues music club this summer and promises to have the best blues artists America has to offer performing at weekends. Oscar-nominated Freeman describes his new club as "a traditional blues gut-bucket juke joint a la Robert Johnson or whoever else." And he says of the club, which will open in his hometown of Mississippi, "This is where the blues supposedly originated - we have people coming here from all over saying 'Where can we hear the blues.' There are already a couple of places, but they're not set - you may or may not get music on a particular night. So we're going to open a juke joint." Freeman adds, "We're going to run the blues into the ground until two o'clock in the morning. We're going to have guest groups come and an in-house band."

* Lions Gate Films has acquired from Dimension Films the North American distribution rights to Tim Blake Nelson's controversial feature "O," a modern-day retelling of "Othello" set in high school. The distributor is planning an August release on 1,500 screens. The move comes after several attempts by Dimension to release the film. The first bow was scheduled for 1999, but the film was pulled back in the wake of shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School and the subsequent Federal Trade Commission report on teens and movie violence. The film, which stars Julia Stiles, Mekhi Phifer, Martin Sheen and Josh Hartnett, has a bloody, tragic end in which four of the students are killed and one wounded.

Well it's been fun filling in for DR.SOTHA, but I've gotta go now and fix my cleavage rash (he'll kill me if he knows I posted this.)

NURSE POUT LOVING AND LEAVING YOU.