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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — The much-awaited pan-African film festival opened on October 16 in Burkina Faso's capital city of Ouagadougou at the Palais des Sports with dancers, acrobats and celebrities, including Senegalese Grammy nominee Baaba Maal.
This year’s theme was Cinemas of Africa and the Diaspora: New perspectives, new challenges.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information News
NEW YORK (IDN) — Rooted in healing rituals and Sufism, the hypnotic sounds of Gnawa music have attracted artists and musicians of all stripes—from Jazz Age poet Claude McKay to Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman and the legendary Randy Weston.
Dar Gnawa—or Gnawa House—is a one-of-a kind three-story Moorish-style building built in Tangier, Morocco, in the 1850s. It’s a cultural center for Gnawa music, making it the first officially recognized center devoted to celebrating and preserving the music of the descendants of slaves in Morocco.
Viewpoint by Timothy Noël Peacock
Dr Timothy Noël Peacock FRHistS is a Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow, founder/co-director of the Arts interdisciplinary Games and Gaming Research Lab (GGLab), and a Visiting Fellow at the British Library Eccles Centre. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
GLASGOW (IDN) — As I sat in a darkened cinema in 1998, mesmerised and unnerved by the opening nuclear bomb explosions that framed the beginning of Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, it felt like I was watching the most expensive special effect in history.
By Niba Mirza*
COLOMBO (IDN) — Sri Lanka which from time immemorial is linked to South America through the Indian Ocean is now also connected through Joint Movie/ Documentary co-production and audiovisual exchange.
The Asociación Latinoamericana de Comunicación Audiovisual Parlamentaria, ALCAP, or the Latin American Parliamentary Association of Audiovisual Communication, signed a MOU with TTV Media Hub of Sri Lanka so that bridges between Sri Lanka and South America can be diversified and strengthened via enhanced Audiovisual exchange and Joint Movie Production.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Belgium is the latest European country to promise to return artworks plundered from its former Congolese colony, as it seeks to confront its brutal colonial past.
Belgium’s Africa Museum has said up to 2,000 works, including statues, musical instruments and weapons, were acquired illegally during the colonial rule of a swathe of central Africa, mostly the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Two anthems, one country. Such was the inspiration for President Nelson Mandela in 1994 to declare that both "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" (Lord bless Africa) and "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" (English: "The Call of South Africa")—the state anthem inherited from the previous apartheid government—would be the national anthems of the new South Africa.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — South African anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was the representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland until her murder outside of ANC offices in Paris in 1988. Despite an array of clues, her killer was never identified and the story of the 52-year-old activist drifted into oblivion.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — For her “ability to capture and communicate vital truths even amidst times of upheaval”, Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga will receive the PEN Pinter prize in memory of the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter.
Dangarembga is the author of Nervous Conditions, which she wrote when she was 25, and which was described by Doris Lessing as one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
By Asia Pacific Report News desk
TAHITI (IDN) — A collective of community groups in Tahiti, trying to preserve a historical-cultural icon at Tautira, have condemned the Tahitian government for “deliberately trying to destroy our heritage”.
The iconic Tahua-Reva is the community’s sacred mountain on the southeastern tip of Tahiti-Iti, the smaller section adjoining the main island of Tahiti.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Popular exhibits at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and other legacy museums are barely surviving and may close over funding shortfalls due to COVID-19.
A pair of boxing gloves worn by Nelson Mandela at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, one of the most popular exhibits, is now covered with dust in a darkened room, according to Mfuneko Toyana, writing for Reuters.
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