Father Geek here, just returned to Geek Headquarters in Austin from 5 days at Minn./St. Paul's ConVergence fest, but the hotel's modem (gerbil powered) was operating soooooooooo slow, and we only had Harry's Mac laptop to share between he, Quint and I, plus we were working the convention 18 hours a day soooo we decided to put the Crusty SeaMan's and my E-mail backlogs on hold for a couple of days.

Sorry this is late... Here's SOTHA, Rigobert Song, Head Nurse Hollis and the rest of our fine Africa-AICN crew and last week's Friday column...

These are exciting times here at Africa-AICN headquarters. My findings on the deadly virus that is 'eternal euphoria' will soon be published in 'Diabolical Doctors' - the August issue.

For the time being I am permitted to disclose some of the symptoms associated with the virus, namely: diplopia (double vision), otorrhoea (discharge from the ear), tetraplegia (paralysis of all 4 limbs), nyctalopia (night-blindness)and stammering. Looking back on it, none of this would have been possible without Ghi Ghi, who put medicine before her own life.

Send your congratulatory comments to My Clinic/Lab, and let goodwill overwhelm you.

Nurse Hollis, your independent findings are not fit to print.

SOUTH AFRICA

The NTVA Avanti Awards...

* The nominees in seven categories in the NTVA Avanti Awards (South Africa's Oscars) has been announced by the judging panel. The NTVA Avanti Awards, one of the most prestigious events on the entertainment calendar, will take place over two nights (That's what they should do with the Oscar's split it into a 2 night event, thus avoiding the 5 hour marathon - DR.SOTHA) at Caesars Gauteng, in Kempton Park, on Friday 13 July (Narrowcast) and Saturday 14 July (Broadcast).

The nominees are:

1. Best Presenter

• - The Toasty Show - Kenneth Nkosi
• - Urban Brew Studios - YOTV
• - Red Pepper Pictures - "Jam Alley" Nimrod Nkosi
• - Red Pepper Pictures - "Phat Joe Live" - Phat Joe
• - etv - Debora Patta

2. Drama Series

• - Penguin Films - Khululeka IV Episode 1,2,7
• - Bobby Heaney Productions - Soul Buddyz-episode 21 - Siya & 23-Andre
• - The Bomb - Yizo Yizo

3. Drama One-off

- More & More Pictures - "Angels in a Cage"
• - Do Productions - "Queens Messenger & Malunde'
• - Yusuf Manjoo Productions - "Real Illusion"
• - Kobus Botha Productions - "Dr Lucille"

4. Music Video

• - Urban Brew Studios - Music Video
• - Devereux-Harris & Ass - Bayete, Oliver Mtukudzi & Lebo
• - Red Pepper Pictures - Kabelo & Mzambiya "Jezi#10" Music Videos
• - Threshold Collective - Kerkorrel: Die Ander Kant

5. Comedy Series

• - Penguin Films nominated for all four: "Scoop Schoombie," "S.O.S." "Madam & Eve" and "Big Oakes"

6. News Actuality

• - SABC nominated for 4: all "Special Assignment," "Bishop from Hyogy," "Benni Dog Unit," "Voices in the Dark," "Classroom Secrets" and "Emakhosikati"
• - Nicola de Chaude - Carte Blanche "Elder Abuse" and Carte Blanche "Death in Sierra Leone"
• - Susan Puren - Carte Blanche "Brother Reunions" and Carte Blanche "The Helderberg Conspiracy."

7. News Actuality Inserts

• - Sophia Phirippides Production - Carte Blanche "The Line" & "A Woman With A Mission"
• - Eugene Botha Productions - Carte Blanche "The Will to Live"
• - First Edit - "Code 14: License to Kill" & "Bucket Brigade"
• - e-tv - "Double Justice" by Sam Rogers & Faizel Cook
• - Ida Jooste (SABC) - "Mind Over Matter" & "First People of the South".

* Grahamstown will host an arts festival in 2002 but the event will have to "find a new form", said Festival committee chairman Mannie Manim at a media reception on Sunday. There will be "radical change" for Festival 2002 as the lengthy partnership between the Festival and the Grahamstown Foundation comes to an end. The most likely replacement for the existing arrangement would be a Section 21 company that would run the festival, renting venues from the Foundation, which would act as "landlord", in Manim's terminology. He stressed that the event would remain in Grahamstown for the foreseeable future. Mannim also reiterated longtime title sponsor Standard Bank's continuing support, indicating that it would make "smaller but substantial funding" available for next year. Sponsorship from other sources would also be sought.

* With pay-TV broadcaster M-Net currently in pre-production on a South African version of the Big Brother reality series, Videovision Entertainment's Anant Singh has succumbed to the lure of Survivor and secured the rights to produce a local version of this hit reality show. It is believed that the series will be broadcast early next year and will feature South African contestants only. (Will contestants be stationed in Soweto or the center of Johannesburg? First one to avoid death wins - DR.SOTHA)

* South African screen starlet Charlize Theron believes that her looks have nothing to do with the success she has enjoyed in Hollywood. There has been a recent trend of models-turned-actresses (Mtas) landing movie roles, but Charlize doesn't see herself as fitting into this category. She reveals, "I really don't understand why anyone would think that you have to be physically perfect to be in movies because it's so not true. When you look at the amount of Mtas that are successful it's a minute proportion. You might get in the door for a couple of years playing the beautiful girl, But then Hollywood is going to be done with you." (Ummm, I'm thinking Elle Macpherson - DR.SOTHA)

* For those with a sense of humour: The South African Box Office.The animated feature film Shrek has gone to the top of the South African box office in its first week of release, having made R2 911,195 (about the price of a packet of beef jerky in North America - DR.SOTHA). It is followed by The Mummy Returns, Pearl Harbor, The Mexican and Sweet November.

NORTH AFRICA

* Egypt's Supreme Mufti has issued a fatwa (religious condemnation) against the country's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (Top prize is one million Egyptian pounds, the equivalent of $255,000.) The edict, issued Monday, quoted from a passage in the Koran admonishing Muslims to avoid gambling as an abomination and the handiwork of Satan. (So I'm guessing 'Millionaire' will be pulled? - DR.SOTHA)

* Another blinder from Rigobert Song:

Hello good people. I've decided to take a break from African film for a few weeks and focus on some unsung African-American features that may have gone under the radar when they were initially released. This week I look at 'At The River I Stand' and go back in time to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Remember to e-mail me at The Archives with your thoughts on African film.

AT THE RIVER I STAND Directed by David Appleby, Allison Graham & Steven Ross - 56 minutes

Memphis, Spring 1968 marked the dramatic climax of the Civil Rights movement. 'At the River I Stand' skillfully reconstructs the two eventful months which transformed a local labor dispute into a national conflagration, disentangling the complex historical forces which came together with the inevitability of tragedy in the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The 58 minute documentary brings into sharp relief issues which have only become more urgent in the intervening years: the connection between economic and civil rights, the debate over violent vs. nonviolent change, and the demand for full inclusion of African Americans in American life.

Memphis's 1300 sanitation workers formed the lowest caste of a deeply racist society, earning so little they qualified for welfare. In the film, retired workers recall the fear as they took on the entire white power structure when they struck for higher wages and union recognition. But local civil rights leaders and the black community soon realized the strike was a struggle for economic justice for all African Americans. Stirring historical footage shows the community mobilizing behind the strikers, organizing mass demonstrations and an Easter boycott of downtown businesses. The national leadership of AFSCME put the international union's full resources behind the strike. One day a placard appeared on the picket lines which in its radical simplicity summed up the meaning of the strike: "I am a man."

In March, Martin Luther King came to Memphis as part of his "Poor People's Campaign" to expand the civil rights agenda to the economy. The film recreates the controversies between King's advisors, local leaders, and younger militants which led to open conflict. When young hotheads turned King's protest march into a violent confrontation with the brutal Memphis policy, King left the march.

King and the nation realized his leadership and his non-violent strategy had been threatened. King felt obliged to return to Memphis to complete a nonviolent march despite the by-now feverish racial tensions. The film recaptures the driving sense of foreboding as King delivered his final "I have been to the mountain-top" speech. The next day, April 4. 1968, he was assassinated.

Four days later, thousands from Memphis and around the country rallied to pull-off King's nonviolent march. The city council crumbled, and granted most of the strikers' demands. 1300 sanitation workers had shown they could successfully challenge the entrenched economic structure of the South. The fires of Los Angeles, endemic inner city unemployment and the growing disparity between rich and poor make clear that the issues Martin Luther King raised in his last days have yet to be addressed. 'At the River I Stand' succeeds in showing that the causes (and possibly the solutions) to present racial quandary may well be found in what happened in Memphis. Its riveting portrait of the grit and determination of ordinary people will inspire viewers to rededicate themselves to racial and economic justice. The film won the 994 Erik Barnouw Award for Best Documentary, Organization of American Historians.

Ultimately, this is an eloquent and powerful work of history, offering new insight into the intersection of race and class.

* Due to requests, NACOP (The National Aids Coordination Programme) has produced a 55-minute video for Namibian children together with financial support from the European Union and co-produced by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation. 'Feeling Yes, Feeling No' is adapted to equip the children of Southern Africa with vital life skills. The video teaches children of primary school age to keep their bodies safe from abuse and disease, how to identify feelings within themselves, how to deal with negative feelings and also how to deal with possible situations of sexual abuse and molestation, rape, good and bad secrets, invitations from strangers and living with HIV/AIDS. The video encourages children to say NO if the feeling experienced is a NO feeling. Children are also encouraged to share their feelings with someone they trust.

For more info email ssmith@mfdi.org.

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Sanaa Lathan ("Love & Basketball") is in early negotiations to star in Fox Searchlight Pictures' feature "Brown Sugar" for director Rick Famuyiwa. Shooting is scheduled to begin this year, sources said. The project marks a reteaming of Lathan and Famuyiwa. The actress starred alongside Omar Epps, Taye Diggs and Richard T. Jones in Paramount Pictures' 1999 film "The Wood," which Famuyiwa wrote and directed. "Sugar," described as a black "When Harry Met Sally ...," centers on a romance between two urban professionals, with Lathan set to play a magazine editor who falls in love with an A&R executive for a hip-hop record label.

* With the success of such soundtracks as "The Nutty Professor," "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps," "Rush Hour" and most recently "The Fast and the Furious," the Island Def Jam Music Group is launching a soundtrack division to centralize film music operations across its labels. The unit, to be overseen by Island Def Jam Music Group president Lyor Cohen and Def Jam Records president Kevin Liles, will focus on film soundtracks and placing Island Records, Def Soul and Def Jam artists' songs in films. Additionally, Island Def Jam will provide film studios with music supervision and special marketing services. On the music supervision front, Cohen said more film studios are calling Island Def Jam to place music in films as well as release a soundtrack. "This (new division) is really a music supervision company," Cohen said. "We will provide our music supervision role, and we have access to our entire catalog of Def Jam acts to license inside the movie." The synergy of Def Jam's urban acts making the crossover into film gives Cohen leveraging power regarding how the label's artists are marketed to the public. A slew of Def Jam artists, including DMX, Jay-Z, Method Man and Redman, have simultaneously graced the screen and soundtracks on several films.

* Will Smith saved a young fan from choking to death after a surprise birthday joke went wrong. The rapper and movie star was shopping in Los Angeles when a fan spotted him and asked him to surprise his girlfriend, who was dining nearby. Smith agreed and sneaked up behind the burger-munching teenager and started singing 'Happy Birthday' to her. The poor girl was so shocked she started choking. Smith performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and the girl spat the lodged burger onto the counter of the burger joint. He then signed autographs and completed his 'Happy Birthday' song before making his way out of the diner.

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT