AfricaIs aCountry

Design Short

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Design Short

By
Sean Jacobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lhzd1vgtBk

Time to promote some continental filmmakers again. The young ones.

The organizers of Design Indaba, an annual design fair held in Cape Town (this year’s edition was last week), recently commissioned six local filmmakers to make short profiles of the country’s designers. Not an original idea, but the subjects are interesting. Here’s two of the films I like. The profile above is of illustrator and graphic designer Daniel Ting Chong. The film’s director is Alasdair McCulloch.

Here’s one more on graphic artist and rapper, Mr Fuzzy Slipperz by filmmaker Rio Allen:

http://vimeo.com/19663251

You can watch all six short profiles here.

H/T Sean Drummond

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.