Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
“To be an artist is to believe in life.” |
Back from the FESPACO Film Festival
Just back from a week at FESPACO – the largest film festival on the continent held in Burkina Faso every two years. I went with two friends, Saheed and Judith, and we snaked our way up through Ethiopia, stopping in Niger, then arriving Ouagadougou.
I didn’t expect what I found there. A film about a Senegalese family torn between Italy, the US, and back home – halfway through the film I can’t breath, gasping at a sense of my own dislocation. Another film, the story of a young boy who in the fervor the Marxist revolution in Burkina Faso dresses up as a super hero and believes he’s invincible – until he learns the bullets don’t discriminate and I connect back with my own boyhood dreams and realize how many lay in shreds. Another film, a young man on the run for murder, cycling through his past lives – apprentice to a rainmaker, money collector for a fat woman freak show, leader of a revolutionary youth group, and as I walk out of the theatre I’m crying as I remember all the lives I’ve lived and how they make no sense – magic show cult member, rancher/farmer, civil rights activist, mining executive, writer lost in the deep crevices of race – and yet all of these lives are me and I need a way to cycle back through, just like the man in the film.
I went to FESPACO once before, and I go to the movies often, but this experience was different. Maybe it was being with friends: hours in the queues, talking through the films, discovering together. Or maybe it’s the place I’m at in life: desperate for stories to make sense of my reality. In any case I know I found my heart, in perhaps the most unlikely place, the deserts of Burkina Faso.
Peace and love, Alex
Favorite FESPACO Films 2015
Here are five of my favorite films from FESPACO 2015 – the biennial African Film Festival that takes place in Burkina Faso each year. Just came back from a week of viewing, and my heart is full.
1. Run – by Philippe LaCote (Ivory Coast)
An Ivorian man kills the prime minister and journeys backwards through his lives that brought him there.
Love for its surrealism, humor, and bravery.
2. C’est Eux Les Chiens (They are the Dogs)– by Hisham Lasri (Morocco)
A man released from prison after 20 years finds himself disoriented in the middle of the Arab Springs ,while all he really wants is to find his wife and child.
Love for its extraordinary camerawork and brilliantly told story
3. Timbuktu – by Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania)
Jihadists arrive in Northern Mali and cause a rupture the cannot heal.
Love for its the moments of beauty, cruelty, and humor that only Sissako can capture.
4. Des Etoiles (Under the Starry Sky) – by Dyana Gaye (Senegal)
Intersecting stories of African displacement in Senegal, Italy, and the USA.
Love for its beauty and immense suffering captured all at once.
5. Twaaga – by Cedric Ido (Burkina Faso)
At the dawn of Burkina Faso’s Marxist revolution, a young boy believes he has captured the power of a super hero.
Love for its sense of wonder and complexity . . . .
21 February, 2015
Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
|
Master Writing Class Finished
For 5 weeks I have hosted a group of 10 writers at my house, teaching a Writing Master Class. The class was mostly professionals in the industry, an amazing group – sometimes things just work.
Each week we’d read, theorize, do exercises, and discuss a new topic: Structure, Tension, Character, Language. The class was so smart that we’d quickly jump to the next level of complexity: Yes, we get 3 act structure, but how do African story forms pull against this? What are the alternatives to heavily Judeo-Christian moral resolutions?; What ways can we break apart language, departing from a heavy tradition of naturalism in South African theatre, to speak about our fractured, post-apartheid lives?
Perhaps most striking from the group was that we created a community of writers/artists who share the similar values and now a common language. A diverse group: Nigerian, Zambian, British, Congolese, American, South African – yet connected by a desire for new and fresh art – to break out of our cages. We’ll keep meeting. Watch this space.
14 February, 2015
Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
“In the morning there are lovers in the street, they look so high. You brush against a stranger and you both apologize”
|
Je suis Nigeria . . .
Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep and was reading about Charlie Hebdo and I posted an article on Facebook called “Everyone is talking about the French massacre, but 2,000 people just died in Nigeria.” I almost stopped myself (in part because I have french friends grieving and marching) but I didn’t, I was angry, devastated, confused at the scale of tragedy around the world and the inordinate attention that 12 deaths in France are garnering.
In the morning a few more radical black friends had made comments (I almost expected this) but what I didn’t expect were friends commenting from Pakistan, India, Turkey, a white woman from South Africa, a few white friends from the USA.
You see I’ve been struggling this days – feel like I’m painted into a corner around race, mostly around pieces of work I’m writing. I often divide the world into two parts – a group of more radical black people (in a few countries) whom I trust and converse with – and the rest of the world. I bump into race / racism all day long, watching its long fingers curl its way around the necks of friends, and I retreat in anger and incredulity. But maybe allies, connections, comfort, resistance is in more places than I realize . . .
7 February, 2015
Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
““Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not.”
|
31 January, 2015
Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
“Like a Calgon commercial I’m gonna get up out of here.” |
24 January, 2015
Listening to: |
Reading: |
Quote of the week: |
 |
 |
“Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” |