mweshi

UPDATE: Unfortunately, TEDAfrica will not take place this September. An announcement came in last week about this and I’m sure it has made the rounds already. Really looked forward to attending this conference as it would have built on the momentum from TEDGlobal in Arusha.

Apple’s premier event of the year, the Macworld Conference & Expo, kicks off on Tuesday, 15th January 2008 at 9am PST or 5pm GMT for us on the African continent with Steve Jobs’ keynote or State of the Mac address! Anyone involved in any form of creative process whether it be film, art, design, music, photography, etc. will want to watch the keynote or at least read up on summaries. It’s a jam-packed session of all the new and shiny goodness to expect from Apple and other companies developing for the Mac platform in the year ahead and rarely disappoints, if at all!

There’s a lot of buzz around the net with several sites throwing their predictions into the hat on what new gadgets and software Sir Steve & company will be announcing. Some of the most comprehensive coverage can be found at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Wired.

What has transpired in Kenya since the election has been quite depressing to say the least. It’s sad to see a nation that was well and truly on its way to economic prosperity suddenly digress in that manner. The scale of violence has left me speechless, especially after getting firsthand accounts from friends caught up in areas that witnessed the worst of it.

Nonetheless, amid all of the political bickering that continues while lives are being ruined, cheetah innovation, ingenuity and passion shines bright as a group of friends and fellow TEDsters have come up with a new tool to help people chronicle/document incidents of violence, looting, etc. around the country called Ushahidi, Swahili for witness.

Thanks for the tip Hash.

I’m probably a bit late in blogging this, but do join the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and the Stand Up and Speak Out campaign set to kick off in the next few hours! Millions of people around the world will rally together from 21:00hrs GMT today, the 16th of October until tomorrow evening at 21:00hrs to speak out against poverty and inequality and for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Let’s help “break the world record so we can break the record of broken promises.”

Live jazz is hard to come by in Lusaka on a weekday, let alone jazz being played by one of Africa’s jazz legends for a great cause! Imagine my surprise when I heard that Hugh Masekela was playing at the Lusaka Golf Club on Wednesday night while having drinks with friends over at our favorite spot after what had already been a busy and hectic week.

A couple of friends had been talking about some tickets they had for this “music gig mid-week,” last weekend but they didn’t quite explain the magnitude nor the cause behind it; I figured it would include the regular lineup of guys I’ve heard playing ad nauseam over the past weeks so I wasn’t too bothered about it. The concert was set for 8PM and I was being told about Hugh playing around 8:30PM. Almost shot myself in the foot by thinking he’d be in town for the week, with the SADC summit currently taking place, and I’d be able to catch him on Friday night or something. In retrospect, I can only imagine what insults I would have been hurling at myself had I missed the concert.

After learning that it would be a one-night-only event, I went along with my friends and it was definitely worth it! Hugh played all his splendid hits to a very ecstatic crowd and everyone left the venue on a hump day high when the band finished playing around 12:30AM.

It was only when we got to the Golf Club that I learnt of the nature of “the gig.” The “African Solidarity Concert” was organized by the Darfur Consortium, an African and International Civil Society Action for Darfur of which Mr Masekela is a Goodwill Ambassador.

Proceeds from the concert will go towards

supporting the efforts of the women of Darfur to empower themselves, their families and their communities through support for the Belil Internally Displaced Persons Women’s Community Centre, in South Darfur

The Darfur Consortium

Very glad I went as it was a worthwhile mid-week outing. Good thing I also had my cam handy, more shots of Hugh on Flickr!

On Friday last week, I visited the Henry Tayali Visual Arts Council recently to check out an exhibit that I heard about over the radio. The artist exhibiting his pieces is none other than Lawrence Yombwe, one of Zambia’s prolific painters. His “Aesthetics for All” exposition is a revelation of his experiences and travels inspired by the Mbusa (initiation classes which cover such diverse topics as good governance, justice, love, hygiene, and respect for all) culture of the Bemba ethnic group. Mr. Yombwe’s paintings of acrylic on hessian have become a trademark of his work which has been collected by many prominent businesses and individuals in Zambia and around the world. This was the artist’s 11th solo exhibition and it ran through the month of July.

On display were paintings such as:

Mundu, Extended Family, Escort, and What is corruption?

The paintings also reminded me of an exhibition I had the chance to check out in 2004 called “Schematic Tantrums” by Kenneth “Zenzele” Chulu, another prominent contemporary artist in Zambia. Zenzele drew his inspiration for the paintings from rock art found around Zambia.

This past weekend I had the opportunity of participating in a day long medical outreach with a few members from my Rotary club, Maluba. We traveled to a remote area given to the Anglican Church by government about 68km from Lusaka, called Kansenga. Maluba in collaboration with the Anglican Church of Lusaka is working on building a clinic in the Kasenga settlement with the involvement of the community in the building process.

Saturday was the groundbreaking day and we traveled to the settlement with medicines donated to our club by businesses and clothing donated from Japan. We also carried some maize meal (used in making Zambia’s staple food nshima) for the orphans who live within the same community.

The situation is quite dire for the people of the Kasenga settlement. To get any sort of medical services or attention, people have to walk 25km to the nearest clinic in Kasisi; the catchment area has about 2000+ people who need assistance; most of the people suffer from malaria,conjunctivitis, anaemia, worms, etc.; on our way back to Lusaka around 7PM, we had to take a young mother and her sick baby into the city so she could medical attention for the child. I sat next to the mother and child in the car and every time the baby’s head rested on my arm, my arm felt intensely hot, the baby’s temperature must have been close to 40 deg. Celsius. Our rotarian doctor suspected it was meningitis hence the urgency in referring the mother and child over to the UTH (University Teaching Hospital) in Lusaka for urgent medical attention for the child.

By the time we left Kasenga, we had registered, administered medicine, vitamins, and referrals as well as clothing to about 255 people from the community. For me, this was one of the most fulfilling days I have had as a rotarian and seeing the smiles on the faces of the people there in the midst of all that goes on around them on a daily basis was quite a humbling moment.

Kasenga is one of our club’s new projects for the year, though we have a few other projects including a school (Bauleni Primary School), a clinic (Bauleni Clinic) both of which the Maluba club helped in building, and the Bauleni SWAAZ family support home for orphans who’s parent(s) died from HIV/AIDS that we support monthly by giving food and clothing.

You can view a few more photographs in my Zambia photoset on Flickr

Back from a semi-self-imposed boycott of my laptop over the four-day weekend, blogging drought, and continuing along the conversation of film, here’s a link to a short animation project Patrick Algaé of Treelion had talked to me about during TED Global called “The Return of Liaram.”

The Return of Liaram is an animated short film project directed by awarded Caribbean director Joel Cimarron who won in 2003, the International Competition Project Award of Annecy International Film Festival.

The film has a duration of 9’30 and will use a special animation paintings technique created by Joel Cimarron.

The influence comes from “Notebook of a Return to my Native Land” (1939), the early master work from surrealist Caribbean Poet Aimé Césaire Godfather of the Negritude movement whom surrealism movement’s founder Andre Breton said of “Notebook of a Return to my Native Land” : “this poem is nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our times”.

The Return of Liaram is an attempt to make him a tribute.

To get a feel for the special animation paintings technique, it’s best you watch the film’s teaser trailer. I was fortunate enough to get an amazing explanation from Patrick that had my imagination doing acrobatics from the sheer passion in his description of the project!

Hat tip to Afromusing for the Return of Liaram link

Coincidentally, Pictoon is an animation outfit based in Dakar, Senegal (founded by Pierre Sauvalle, an animation director from Cameroon and Aïda Ndiaye, a Senegalese businesswoman) and under Patrick Algaé’s Treelion distribution umbrella that produced Africa’s first ever animated television series, Kabongo the Griot. Pictoon’s currently working on a project that will coincide with Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa called, “The Invicible Lions.” True African superheroes in the making!

While getting my weekly dose of Studio 53 on MNet’s Africa Magic this evening, I learnt of the passing of one of Africa’s greatest artists (film director, producer and writer) and the man considered to be the “Father of African film,” Ousmane Sembène (1 January 1923 — 9 June 2007).

I read Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood (originally written in French under the title Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu) while attending high school in Addis Ababa. At the time, it was one of the best African books I had ever read and till today it remains on top of my list.

It’s books by writers like Ousmane, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, and others that have influenced the strong desire in me to be part of the African Cheetah Renaissance and what I hope to accomplish while I live, breathe and traverse this boat we all call life.

To M. Sembène Ousmane, I say, rest in perfect peace Sir and thank you for putting Africa on the world’s map in your own unique way.

PS: Be sure to read this great article on the man and his work.

Armed with a few thousand dollars, digital cameras, and some lights, Nigerian directors have created a $250 million industry, thousands of jobs, and a sense of hope on a continent better known for blight and despair…

- This is Nollywood website

While at TED in Arusha, I had an interesting conversation with three film directors from Nigeria about the state of Nollywood and what may done to improve the quality of film making on the continent. Andrew Dosunmu (photographer and filmmaker) and Newton Aduaka (winner of the grand prize at FESPACO 2007 for his film “Ezra”), both based outside of Nigeria and making films of a different caliber than Nollywood and with bigger budgets, and Bond Emeruwa a Nollywood-based filmmaker featured in Franco Sacchi’s documentary “This is Nollywood.”

The question put on the table was whether Nollywood movies can be made with a higher quality of production; Andrew and Newton challenged Bond that they could produce good quality feature films with the same budget, equipment, crew, and actors.

Now, I have watched a number of Nollywood productions some good-some poor and I appreciate the fact that a lot of them have showcased stories of concern to Africans by overcoming several barriers and embracing digital film production. Granted, Nigeria is a 10lb. gorilla in terms of the number of films produced every year and no country on the continent can compare. However, I still believe the production quality can be improved and streamlined even with the budgets some of these films are made on.

In an earlier discussion with Bond, we talked of some sort of capacity building projects for aspiring film makers from around the continent to travel to Nigeria to learn from Nollywood and with the experience of Nollywood and perhaps an improvement in production quality, we might have an extremely powerful pan-African film movement highlighting all of this rich continent’s great stories, kingdoms, cultures, languages, and civilizations.

I can’t recall the last time a feature film was made in Zambia, but it seems we’re on the way to having our very first feature titled “Bad T!ming.” While doing some research online, I came across a project that was started sometime last year to document the production of Bad T!ming on the Film Zambia website and apparently the film is now in post production. One film every two years is certainly a far cry from the 1,000 to 2,000 that Nollywood would have produced during the same time, but I guess it is a start…