Forty-two kilometres from Umthatha, the former capital of Transkei in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is kuTsolo. It’s a small town with a name which means pointed, referring to the shape of the hills characterising the rural landscape. It is far from the scintillating big city lights, and it is home to the young and […]

Here are another 10 films we’re hoping to see in the (near) future. First, three “fiction” films. ‘Winter of Discontent’, a film by director Ibrahim El Batout is set against the backdrop of the 2011 Tahrir Square protests, zooming in on the the lives of activist Amr (Amr Waked), journalist Farah (Farah Youssef) and state […]

Yes, I’ve been listening to pop music a lot. You get work done and don’t have to think too much. First up above is Nairobi’s Camp Mulla and their generic rap pop.

‘O Grande Kilapy’ (“The Great Kilapy” — ‘kilapy’ is Kimbundu for ‘scheme’, or ‘fraud’), the new film by director Zézé Gamboa, portrays the last decade of Portuguese rule in Angola through the story of Joao Fraga (played by Lazaro Ramos): The film’s facebook page has some clips. Also check this production video for the images […]

This was done for GQ Magazine. He also raps half-heartedly. I suppose, we should be “tril(led).” He should’ve asked Shabazz Palaces* about what you can do with a mbira. * BTW, watch out for Shabazz Palaces’ new mixtape next week.

This music video for Big Frizzle’s ‘All Black Everything’, produced by London-based media house GlobalFaction made me wonder about GlobalFaction’s politics, and their use of imagery. I’m struck by the flood of historical images featuring in recent Congo-related music videos. Congo, in many music videos, gets often used as a stand-in for ‘Africa’ in general. […]

‘Grand comme le Baobab’ (“Tall as the baobab tree”) is a film told through the voice of Coumba (in Pular language), who tries to avoid her 11-year-old sister from being sold into marriage to settle a family debt in rural Senegal; shot mostly with a local cast.  

Rounding up some music videos we’ve been tweeting over the past weeks, this is your Friday Music Break. Produced by the hardest working rapper in Kinshasa, Lexxus (that’s him in the video, scouting for new talent in Kinshasa’s streets), ‘Bo tia K’ is the first outtake from Bawuta Kin’s upcoming album Ba Wu. Great video too:

On Thursday, July 26, the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town had an opening: Mo(u)rning. Photographic and other works by Zanele Muholi. Muholi had lost much of her work a couple months earlier in a more than suspicious burglary, and so the exhibition was a meditation on mourning, the processes of receiving and releasing the […]

http://youtu.be/tLyhZlgWIpM This is a random selection of ten films we don’t know much about, yet, but which we hope to see once completed or screened at the nearest film festival. ‘The Door of No Return’ (La Puerta de No Retorno) follows Santiago Zannou who accompanies his father, Alphonse, to his homeland, Benin, 40 years after […]