The Western Journalist in Africa
The question for Western journalists is this – when it comes to Africa, why do you not tell the whole story of the humanity at work even in times of extreme violence?
Kenya
Kenya is More than its Election
The Kenyan people have voted. The Kenyan elections have come and not quite gone. The foreign press offered its readers a veritable smorgasbord of dreadfully decontextualized representations, and now that the actual polling has passed, you can just about taste the collective disappointment at the absence of spectacular violence. As the local Kenyan press noted, […]
Africa is a Country TV is back: We interview Kenyan supergroup Just a Band
Apart from seeing our logo superimposed on a building in downtown Johannesburg, this is a good way to celebrate AIAC TV’s return to Youtube. We (well Dylan Valley) attended STR.CRD in Johannesburg last year. STR.CRD is South Africa’s leading (and maybe only) street culture festival and expo. Dylan sat down with Kenyan “geek afro pop” […]
How not to report on Kenya’s elections
Reporting ahead of Kenya’s election by the international media can basically be placed in two general categories: optimism and, of course, no surprise, pessimism.
Rethinking mental illness
The diagnostic parameters need to be completely overhauled as they embody a Western mode of understanding which itself is culturally bound.
Mozambique, the new frontier of global capitalism
What is being cultivated at the new frontier of global capitalism—and for whom?
The Kenyan Finns
What would happen if you made a film about a key figure in Finnish history and cast Kenyan actors in the lead roles?
Kenya’s #purplezebra Spring
Political springs, as in social movements that topple and/or transform political regimes, occur when the youth of a nation get on the move. And that may be what happened in Nairobi this past Monday. A harbinger of spring.
My favorite photographs N°8: Sydelle Willow Smith
Among the most striking portraits in South African photographer and filmmaker Sydelle Willow Smith’s online portfolio are those taken in the Western Cape, reflecting much of what Cape Town and the wider province stand for: the engaging (solidarity and protest marches; parades; a reportage about Blikkiesdorp, no longer just a “temporary” village echoing the crudest […]
Chop Cassava
Five filmmaking collectives from the African continent that are reinterpreting and reinvigorating notions of collaboration and distribution.
The Very Best Politics
What's the story with The Very Best's video for the single "Kondaine," where they teamed up with an American NGO and shot it in very rural Kenya.
New Media and Activism in Africa
The limitations of working in the online space, given the small percentages of people with online access (despite the expansion of mobile technology).
Mutua Matheka and the Cityscapes of Nairobi
Matheka, through his photographs, aims to instil in Kenyans, and eventually all Africans, pride in their cities and pride in their place within them.
The loneliness of the Kenyan long distance runner
How the death of a very talented Kenyan marathon runner points to structural problems in the country's national running industry.
No room for ambiguity
Kenyan activists raise their voices, placards and fists over US$500 million allocated but not yet spent for anti-retroviral medications. That’s a lot of money, drugs, and lost lives.
African Men
The video, "African Men. Hollywood Stereotypes," made by an American NGO, is part of the "Brand Africa" discourse that's all the rage now.
In Praise of Jeffrey Gettleman’s Pulitzer
Pulitzer awarded Gettleman $10,000 for "his vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa."
Film Review: “The Education of Auma Obama”
Republican party propaganda wants to paint President Barack Obama’s Kenyan family as alien to America. In this propaganda, Barack Hussein Obama Snr and the old man’s supposed “anti-colonial” and left-wing biases. In this propaganda Kenyans are reduced to anti-American zealots. Yet the strongest impression one gets from the Obama family in Branwen Okpako’s beautiful, and substantive documentary of Obama’s half sister, Auma Obama, is how familiar and American (i.e. the values Republicans proffer of hard work and guile) the Obamas are.
Coke and cynicism
I won’t bother to unpack this commercial, but this is exhibit A for the case against uncritical boosterism and identity politics. Coca Cola Kenya hijacks “the Africa is booming” discourse to sell more soft drinks. Here’s their cynical sales pitch:
The talented Tajdin sisters
They're making a film about "a love story set in Cape Town South Africa that chronicles the life of Leila, a young Cape Malay girl who falls in love with an American boy, Derek, who happens to be black."