African and Caribbean Cinema

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Articles : African and Caribbean Cinema

INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION AND SYMPOSIUM:

NOLLYWOOD RISING: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE NIGERIAN FILM INDUSTRY
Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City, June 13-17, 2005

www.nollywoodconventionusa.com

News : African and Caribbean Cinema

The world's audiovisual heritage, excluding cinema, is estimated at 200 million hours, divided equally between television and radio. (webremix.info)

From Critically acclaimed directors to fresh young talents, each film speaks to the Caribbean experience, on a global level. (webremix.info)

US actor Danny Glover, left, kisses US singer Harry Belafonte during the inauguration of a new center that promotes Caribbean cinema in Havana, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. Belafonte said he was disappoint... (webremix.info)

US actor Danny Glover, left, kisses US singer Harry Belafonte during the inauguration of a new center that promotes Caribbean cinema in Havana, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. Belafonte said he was disappoint... (webremix.info)

Published Date: August 13, 2009 Emerging and established filmmakers from the Arab world, Asia and Africa have two more weeks to participate in the 2009 Muhr Awards, the region's foremost film competi... (webremix.info)

Photo © Wildcat78 / iStockphoto. It's the stuff of low-budget sci-fi movies: rodents around the globe are growing ever larger at astonishing rates. But B movie it's not—as UIC ecologist Oliver Pergams has demonstrated, the trend is real. In a recently published report Pergams details how rodents are showing signs of rapid, worldwide changes in size and shape. Of course, the timescale and magnitude of this size change is not alarming enough to cause movie-goers to flee the cinema (we're talking about decades and millimeters here—and in some cases size decreases were observed). But it is significant enough to capture the attention of scientists and to merit further investigation into its causes. Pergams' curiosity about rodent size trends piqued after studying mice on California's Channel Islands and in the Chicago area. In both locations, Pergams noted signs of rapid, recent changes in the size of his study subjects and he began to wonder if these changes were unique to the California and Chicago study sites or if they might be played out elsewhere around the globe. So he applied (and received) a grant form the NSF and set about measuring rodents in museum collections around the world. It must have been painstaking work. Pergams made more than 17,000 measurements of 1302 rodents. He used digital calipers to make nearly a dozen cranial measurements on each specimen, recording such dimensions as the breadth of the braincase (BB), the greatest length of the skull (GL), the breadth of the rostrum (BR), the length from the supraorbitals to the nasals (ONL), and the zygomatic breadth (ZB). Pergams also measured four external aspects of each specimen—the total length, the tail length, the length of the hind foot and the ear length. Photo © Oliver Pergams / PLoS. Pergams gathered data on museum specimens from Africa, the Americas and Asia dating between 1892 and 2001. Most of the specimens came from two large rodent families: the Cricetidae (New World rats, mice, voles, and hamsters) and the Muridae (Old World mice, rats, gerbils, and whistling rats). When he completed his measurements, he took his findings back to the lab, crunched the numbers, and looked for trends. Pergams found an assortment of changes in each feature he had measured. In some cases, features were getting larger, in others they were getting smaller. Pergams notes though that there were slightly more trends towards larger size than to smaller size. The changes in the dimensions he measured were as great as 50 percent over 80 years. If evolution is driving these size changes in rodents, then it is doing so at a rapid pace. Of course, it is too early to positively identify the mechanism behind the changes Pergams observed, but Pergams suggests that factors such as human population density, current temperature, or trends in temperature and precipitation may be worth exploring further. Refs: Pergams, O., & Lawler, J. (2009) Recent and Widespread Rapid Morphological Change in Rodents. PLoS ONE, 4(7), e6452. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006452 (webremix.info)

Cinemax is the first movie hall to adopt the latest cutting edge digital technology — the introduction of East Africa’s very first 3D digital cinema. (webremix.info)

Leaving aside Nollywood films and their imitators, most African films actually have only a very small chance of being seen in the country where they were made. African cinemas have collapsed over the past several decades and have not had the resurgence of investment interest found elsewhere in the developed world. As a result, most of the African film industry lives without both box office revenues and secondary income from DVDs, most of which are pirated. Where support for national film-making does exist, it is almost exclusively focused on production and training. Russell Southwood talks to Aurelien Bodinaux of Cinetoile about what it's trying to achieve with its film distribution and promotion initiative. (webremix.info)

WHILE various organisations held different activities across the country to observe Day of the African Child (June 16), in Harare the Creative Writing Africa Trust in collaboration with Slum Cinema co... (webremix.info)

WHILE various organisations held different activities across the country to observe Day of the African Child (June 16), in Harare the Creative Writing Africa Trust in collaboration with Slum Cinema commemorated the day by screening films that had themes of the African child's plight followed by open discussion afterwards. (webremix.info)

The home to the musicians Lourdes Van-Duenm (Angola) and Miryam Makeba (South Africa) united on Friday evening, at Atlantico cinema, in Luanda, four voices and two countries, in remembrance of the two figures of the African music hall. (webremix.info)

MINUTE: The cast of the hilarious Looney Lahnee promise to keep you rolling in mirth in the Catalina Theatre in Durban where the play is running until April 5. The cast includes Ashwin Singh, Dhaveshan Govender, Kajal Maharaj and Shika Budhoo For a hilarious look at how Indians have adapted to change in South Africa, catch The Looney Lahnee in the ... (webremix.info)

Even with Africa's equivalent of an Oscar under their belt, filmmakers on the continent have a tough time getting their films seen by their own public ... not to mention abroad. Former winners of the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, the top prize at FESPACO, Africa's biggest cinema festival which wound up at the weekend. (webremix.info)

IN the time it takes for a lovingly crafted art house movie to emerge as winner of the top prize at Burkina Faso's pan-African FESPACO cinema festival, Nigeria's prolific producers will already have churned out another 50 films. (webremix.info)

A 30-man Nigerian delegation coordinated by Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, President of the Africa Movie Awards Academy (AMAA) joined thousands of visitors and tourists who poured into Ouagadougou, capital of the land-locked West African country, Burkina Faso to take part in the 40th anniversary of the Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television of Ouagadougou, FESPACO. (webremix.info)

Reuters - In the time it takes for a lovingly crafted art house movie to emerge as winner of the top prize at Burkina Faso's pan-African FESPACO cinema festival, Nigeria's prolific producers will already have churned out another 50 films. (webremix.info)

Films presented at the 21st edition of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) struggle to get production funding; even impressing the attendees may not help the films get screen time in cinemas. (webremix.info)

Nearly 20,000 people attended the opening ceremony of the 21st edition of the bi-annual Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Africa's biggest film festival, marked by a more upscale setting to celebrate its 40th year. (webremix.info)

Zum Vergleich / By Comparison From the program: "Bricks are manufacured in Africa, India and Europe and used to erect clinics, children's homes, schools and residential buildings. (webremix.info)

In the 1930s, Freetown was the first city in West Africa to get an air conditioned cinema, thanks to Swiss businessmen Worlds apart, there are seemingly few similarities between wealthy Switzerland and war-torn ...

"The Song of Sparrows," the latest feature by Iranian master Majid Majidi, is a film about people chasing after things - prizes that either elude their pursuers or else, once grasped, prove to be something other than they seemed. Selected for the Cinema of Asia-Africa section of the 2008 Dubai International Film Festival. (webremix.info)

Animated comedy Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa galloped to the top of the North American box office chart, according to early studio estimates. The film, which features the voice of Ben Stiller as Alex ... (webremix.info)

Animated comedy sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa gallops to the top of the North American box office chart. (webremix.info)

Africa in Motion, Britain's biggest African film festival, has opened in Edinburgh prior to going on tour in the UK - and apparently the Brits can't get enough of African cinema. (webremix.info)

By Mats Svensson
 
I had seen it before, a few days earlier. I had seen it on my way into one of the many homelands of the 21st century. I saw the woman who wasn’t let into the city Nablus, to go to the hospital with her sick child. I saw the woman who wasn’t allowed home to her village after giving birth to a little girl; saw the man on crutches being sent back to the city by frightened young boys and terror-struck young girls with automatic weapons and security equipment.
 
It was when the pianist on the cinema screen started playing to save himself from what he didn’t know. When I saw the wall being built, how thousands and thousands of families were pushed together in cramped houses, when I heard the voices from the past in the big cinema speakers and, at the same time, the screams of despair from today, from the present that I am now a part of. That’s when I left, and then I had to go outside and cry.
 
The things I saw on the screen and heard through the speakers, the things that weren’t real, that were acted out by the best and most expensive actors suddenly came close. I understood that it had happened, but that it’s in some small way also happening right now, and that I’m a part of it through my silence and my dissociation.
 
I watch, write, take photographs, mediate and try to understand. Day after day, I go through something that I have partly seen before. Everything is mingled. I try to think back and remember when I have seen it before, but it is just glimpses from my own past, from films, conversations and theatre productions.
 
At the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, soldiers tread on the stage in high boots, smash doors to pieces and destroy houses. A bleeding woman is giving birth on the stage floor. The husband is taken away; there are screams, beatings, collaborators getting burning tires around their necks, humiliation. Then I stayed. Then it was a part of history, a history that I was trying to understand and that I wasn’t a part of. Then it had happened a long time ago, then it was easy to watch to understand, then I didn’t have to leave.
 
Now the film sequences are coming back, they are shown on BBC and CNN. In Chile, the black glasses have been thrown away and he failed to get immunity. In southern Africa, two former enemies sit around the negotiating table and plan a common future. The tall man, who is not yet out of prison, speaks to those in power and that leads to a shift of power. They understood that ‘the other’ couldn’t be defeated. And I dream about new films, films describing how the lost country is reestablished, how walls are taken down and sold as souvenirs.
 
And I see the woman going into “sniper alley” at Eretz, a mother visiting her son who is in prison on the Israeli side. When she comes back she tells me about cold speaker voices, soldiers in concrete bunkers, dogs to close, automatic weapons pointed at her body, soldiers laughing, and humiliation.
 
I never saw the end of the film, The Pianist. I don’t know what happened, if there was a happy ending for the pianist or if he died together with the other millions murdered people. I also don’t know what happened to the woman giving birth, the woman who wanted to go home to her husband, the man on crutches. I don’t know what will happen to the soldiers; the girl and boy who stopped them.
 
But the soldier at Eretz, who I have never written about before, said that he had been there seven months and that he was going to stay a long time. ”I will stay if I can stay sane, look around,” he said,”it’s all crazy.” I think he will make it. He will hand over to his successor in a few years’ time; he will have personal experiences that will make him a complete human being. I believe he will be somebody who never will be silenced. I am meeting him in a couple of weeks, when he’s on leave. He has promised to tell me a story.

-Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine.  He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: isbjorn2001@hotmail.com.

Panama, Oct 18 The Panamanian capital welcomes the first exhibit of Caribbean Traveling Cinema, an action to open spaces to Cuban culture with the screening of several feature movies of the island, said ...

"Hey guys, Madonna's here!" Jason Biggs, of all people, sounded the alarm just before the Queen of Pop strolled into last night's Cinema Society premiere of her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, at Landmark's Sunshine Cinema. The star of the evening paused to note, approvingly, that she was back in the East Village, "where my struggle began." Then she let the mob of red-carpet photographers fight each other tooth and nail for a clear shot.

Madonna didn't reveal too much about the film she directed and co-wrote, except to say that "there's a part of me in every character." No kidding: The dramatis personae include a young woman (Vicky McClure) obsessed with helping children in Africa, a ballet dancer (Holly Weston) who enlists at a strip club, and a wannabe pop superstar from Ukraine (Eugene Hutz) who makes a living as an S&M majordomo. So what was it like working with the icon? "She knew exactly what she wanted. There was no in-between," McClure said. "She was on set before us!" chimed in Weston.

Lindsay Lohan, Jerry Seinfeld, Naomi Watts, and Brooke Shields were among those who turned up for the Dolce & Gabbana-hosted screening. Most of the stars, including Madonna, stuck around for the after-party, held at the brand-spanking-new Thompson LES hotel. Marc Jacobs was there, even though he'd seen her live at Madison Square Garden the night before. Wasn't that an awful lot of Madonna? "I've had a lot of Madonna all my life, actually," he corrected. Malin Akerman, meanwhile, waxed nostalgic about the singer's legendary Blond Ambition tour. "I got ice cream cones and put them on my boobs," she sighed. "I wanted to be just like her."

Borat as Captain Jack's brother in "Pirates of the Caribbean 4"? Possibly maybe, says Cinema Blend, who heard it from their anonymous Hollywood "proven informant" and stressed the rumor should be taken "with a grain of salt and a dose of pepper."... (webremix.info)

Berlin - German President Horst Koehler is to open African Screens - New Cinema from Africa to be presented in (webremix.info)

By Stuart Littlewood – London

The pantomime season will soon be upon us and the British government can always be relied on for amusement. This year a Foolish Fairy in the Foreign Office plans to move the British embassy in Tel Aviv from a decent spot on the seafront to a brooding tower block owned by Africa-Israel Investments and occupied mostly by Israeli government departments.

The British Foreign Office is evidently so in love with the Israeli regime that it wants to ‘shack up’, and never mind the gossip. Here in London the same Fairy is making the Foreign Office’s magnificent Locarno Suite available to the Zionist Federation for “a Champagne Reception and Commemorative Lecture at the Foreign Office in honour of the 91st anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917”.

What sane person would dream of commemorating an individual who wrote, in all seriousness,

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land"?

The sheer arrogance of Balfour’s Declaration created a bitter rift between East and West which, 91 years later, is getting worse not better. Why is the Foreign Office, of all people, involved in perpetuating this stupidity?

The Africa-Israel company, by the way, is chaired by mega-rich diamond mogul and real estate baron Lev Leviev, who has amassed vast riches while not caring too much about legal niceties or human misery caused in the process.

Leviev is reported to be a major backer of the Jews-only settlement programme on stolen Palestinian lands. It seems Africa-Israel owns a company that carries out settlement construction in the Occupied West Bank, and Leviev and his brother in-law own another one that’s building the Zufim settlement.

And word is that Leviev is a donor to the Land Redemption Fund, which obtains Palestinian land by fair means or foul – mostly foul - for Israel's squalid army of settlers.
 
Settlements Violate International Law, But Who Cares?

The settlements, and the infrastructure serving them, are instrumental in robbing Palestinians of their best agricultural lands and precious water supplies. They effectively block access to East Jerusalem and divide up the remnants of the territory into disconnected enclaves that stand no chance of forming a viable Palestinian state. The aim is quite simply to annex strategic territory to Israel, further disrupt and impoverish Palestinian society, and make the Occupation permanent. The settlements violate international law, but who cares? Not Leviev, not the Israeli government and definitely not the supine international community or the pussyfooting Quartet.

And least of all the British Foreign Office.

I read that UNICEF has blacklisted Leviev and will accept no more contributions from him because his alleged profiteering from illegal settlement building is too controversial. But here's the British government eager to do business with the man, despite our prime minister’s announcement in Bethlehem recently that,

"settlement expansion has made peace harder to achieve…. it erodes trust, it heightens Palestinian suffering... I think the whole European Union is very clear on this matter: we want to see a freeze on settlements."

Earlier this year Leviev, an Israeli citizen who grew up in the Soviet Union, moved into a brand new $70 million 7-bedroom fortified mansion in Hampstead, a posh suburb of north London. It is said to be equipped with a swimming pool with gold plated mosaic tiles, a gym, a sauna, a private cinema and a hair salon. Here Leviev can relax behind a bullet-proof front door and 25 security cameras, which he can also monitor from his yacht.

He has also opened a diamond store in London's sumptuously exclusive Old Bond Street. Across the Atlantic human rights campaigners kicked up a big fuss when Susan Sarandon attended the gala opening of Leviev's Madison Avenue store in New York, which has been the focus of ongoing protests.

For the last decade the British government has operated an open-door policy for Albanian gangsters, West Indian drug barons, East European sex traffickers and all manner of undesirables from around the world, as well as goods produced by Israeli settlers on confiscated Palestinian land. No surprise, then, that Leviev was allowed to carve out a slice of British real estate and make himself at home. But would I, for example, be permitted to buy a nice plot of land in Israel and go live there? I don’t thinks so.

But back to the prospect of British diplomats being subjected to the improper attentions of Israeli officials within the cosy confines of Leviev’s Kirya Tower… This letter from Foreign Office minister Kim Howells hints that the Foreign Office is back-pedalling:

"There is an internal process under way looking at potentially relocating the British Embassy in Tel Aviv. We are considering a number of options. However, at this early stage in the process no decision on a site has been taken and no leases have been signed.

"The Government has made its position on settlements very clear: we believe that settlements contravene international law and are a significant impediment to progress on the peace process. Should we decide to relocate the Embassy, we will make clear the intended location once a decision has been reached."

Has our pantomime Fairy finally seen sense? Will the fair maid Britannia be spared an unspeakable fate locked up in the wicked baron’s tower?

- Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

European film aficionados are noting a resurgence in North Africa's film industry.

Links : African and Caribbean Cinema

Wild Cinema Film Festival Namibia

Wild Cinema Windhoek International Film Festival brings international and national screenings to the Namibian public

blackmovie

Black Movie remains the only film-related event that echoes a cosmopolitan Geneva: a contemporary festival reflecting the amazing diversity and wealth of movies from Africa, Asia and South-America.

African,Ghanaian,Nigerian Movies and Films

African movies showing young talent in music and movies depicting the African culture past and present. Free African film previews to see online and reviews to read.

MediaRights

MediaRights is a community organization dedicated to maximizing the impact of social-issue documentaries and shorts. We help adult and youth filmmakers reach audiences, educators and librarians bring films into their curricula and nonprofits and activists integrate media into their campaigns.

Youth Media Distribution

YMDi's mission is: to improve the distribution of independent youth created film, video, radio and new media. YMDi.org provides information and tools that are essential to increasing the visibility of youth made media. The short of it is YMDi will help you find your audience.

Pan African Film & Arts Festival

Pan African Film & Arts Festival is the largest and most prestigious Black Film Festival in North America. It is also the largest Black History Month event in the United States, with over 150 new industry and independent Black films and more than 100 fine artists and craftspeople from the United States, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, the South Pacific and Canada. In addition to films and artists, PAFF showcases musicians, poets, storytellers and performance artists.

Images Of Black Women

Images of Black Women is an international film festival celebrating and promoting African Caribbean women on screen and behind.

Caraïbe Films

Caraïbe Films Compagnie - Christian Lara

African Film

Films from Africa and the African diaspora

Annual African Diaspora Film Festival

New York Annual African Diaspora Film Festival

Fespaco

Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) is the largest African film festival.

Festival del cinema africano

Since 1991, the "African Film Festival" has been held in Milan in March for a period of seven days. In 2004 the Festival took the name of African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival, extending the selection to include films from these three continents. Parallel events, or taking place immediately afterwards, are scheduled in other Italian cities.

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