Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 646
May 17, 2011
'The Price of Gold'
From photographer Robin Hammond's images of Zimbabweans working at small scale, illegal gold mines in neighboring Mozambique.
The full set on his website, which also includes series on South Africa, the DRC, and the mentally ill in South Sudan.
H/T Jonathan Faull
The first Afrikaans film at Cannes
Finally a teaser for the film "Skoonheid," billed as the first Afrikaans film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, by Cape Town director, Oliver Hermanus, is now online. Earlier today the film also finally screened at Cannes, which means the first mainstream reviews are in. They're mixed. Here are some excerpts from the reviews as well as links:
Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter:
A closeted homosexual has the hots for his brawny nephew in Skoonheid, a plodding South African drama that feels like a short film stretched into a feature, and fails to find its rhythm despite a decent lead turn from Deon Lotz. Basically a one-idea, one-plot-point movie that tries to provide grandeur via ineffective widescreen cinematography, writer-director Oliver Hermanus' slim exploration of repressed desire and sexual angst will be of most interest to LGBT fests and distribs … though Lotz has a strong screen presence, it's not enough to make Skoonheid the parable on stilted South African machismo that it was surely meant to be.
Lee Marshall in Screen Daily:
The film's dramatic tension lies not in the explicit content of many of the scenes but in the set of the protagonist's mouth and his alert, needy but downcast eyes; or in little details in the corner of the scene, often out of focus – a mixed-race couple on the beach, a happy gay couple flirting in a gay bar where Francois sits drinking, filled with self-hatred – or the archive newspaper cutting on the wall of a restaurant that reads FREE AT LAST. It's still a testing ride for the audience, and Hermanus doesn't quite know how to end the film; but his is a refreshing new voice in a territory known up to now more for its township dramas, at least on the international festival stage.
Melissa Anderson at Artforum's blog
An overcooked, protracted tale of a married, self-loathing, dangerous top, the twenty-seven-year-old South African director's sophomore film is vying for the second "Queer Palm" (the inaugural award went to Gregg Araki's Kaboom last year) …
Robot Artists
"Robot Artists" is a short documentary by African Cartel showcasing a group of Zimbabwean artists who's marketplace and livelihood is a traffic light intersection in Cape Town, South Africa.
Moonwalk
Last month Kevin-Prince Boateng, the AC Milan midfielder and Ghana international, promised that if his team won Italy's Serie A, he would perform a Michael Jackson dance routine in full costume in front of the club's thousands of fans. This weekend the club did just that and post-match Boateng kept his promise. Then an Italian football pundit decided he'd challenge Boateng.
War Photographer
New York magazine has a series of 29 images of and by war photographers, including Joao Silva, the South African photographer who lost his legs after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan. Silva, is "… taking steps on his new prosthetic legs and hopes to be home in Johannesburg and working again soon, though likely not again in conflict zones."
Buy Zimbabwe on eBay
Actually old Zimbabwe dollars. It's a fad and collectors are paying thousands of US dollars for it.
May 16, 2011
Crazy Bald Heads
In case you missed it, The New York Times carried a story this weekend about how Eric Prince, former founder and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, the company that dominated private contracting in Iraq and whose men have been accused of murdering innocent Iraqis, is working with the royal family of the United Arab Emirates to form a mercenary army: "… The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts … Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest in their crowded labor camps or were challenged by pro-democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year." The US government, as usual, is ambivalent about the mercenary force and the royal family are big US allies.
But there's a small detail that caught my eye. They're mostly recruiting from former US soldiers and those who served in the armies of dictatorships like Apartheid South Africa: "… some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s."
You can read about it in The New York Times.
May 14, 2011
Paul Kagame Spins Youtube
I just wasted 47 minutes watching Youtube's much hyped interview conducted by Khaya Dlanga, the South African blogger and "Youtube partner" with Paul Kagame, Rwanda's Life President. The interview is part of a series by Youtube. Previous interviewees include David Cameron and the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero. Billed as "… the first YouTube World View interview with an African leader" and since forwarded around the web (with little comment by bloggers who I doubt even watched it), watching the interview is like seeing paint dry. But that's probably the point with the whole thing. Kagame basically gets away with saying nothing. And as we know he is good at that. Dlanga never got Kagame to answer any real questions whether about regime's destructive role in the neighboring DRC (violence against Hutus or his generals' mining interests) or the persecution and assassination of political opponents back in Rwanda, among other things. It felt like the questions–submitted online–were prescreened. They were all softballs. Kagame gets asked questions about "the future of Africa," the diaspora, "the youth," what advice Kagame has for "undemocratic leaders" (he also wins elections with plus 90 percent of the vote) or for countries "like Nigeria, Libya and the DRC divided along ethnic lines." Finally about 20 minutes in, a viewer gets to ask Kagame about stepping down after his second term ends only in 2017, but even Dlanga gets an annoyed Kagame to get away with it literally. And then this: "The final question: If you could dine with one person … who would it be and why?" Kagame has a strategy for being elusive in interviews (just say a bunch of platitudes and smile), but we have to ask what Dlanga and the producers were up to here. Did Dlanga actually prepare for this interview? Or was Dlanga, knowing how Kagame's supporters deal with his critics, just wise.
Sean Jacobs's Blog
- Sean Jacobs's profile
- 4 followers
