News & Events, January '09

Chimurenga Online

"On November 4th, 2008, the American people perpetrated a cruel hoax upon themselves and the world by voting in a crypto-fascist regime magnificently disguised as a shining path forward toward a more human nation, and the fulfillment of a dream too long deferred..." Read Eric Darton's The Bell.

Filmmakers Against Racism (FAR) – an initiative launched last year in response to the wave of xenophobic violence hitting South Africa - have released Reflecting On Xenophobia, a DVD featuring a selection of their recent films. More here.

"Since the administrative change, there have been multiple arrests and acts of intimidation against the film industry and related entertainment businesses in Kano. .... " Carmen McCain, Nazir Ahmed Hausawa and Ahmed Alkanawy on the Current Censorship Crisis in Kano, Nigeria.

Youtube videos, documenting Palestine, writing Africa

Watch Ben Williams, BOOK SA editor, give an Appendix 1 to South African Literary Magazines...featuring Chimurenga.

And Binyavanga Wainaina's "How Not to Write About Africa", is now up as a YouTube video narrated by Djimon Hounsou.

In The Guardian (Nigeria) Gregory Austin Nwakunor considers the Sighs, smiles of the literary landscape in 2008, as: "something unreal: sweet soulful melody..." More here. 

Chronicles of a Refugee is a 6-part documentary film series looking at the global Palestinian refugee experience over the last 60 years. Starting with 'al-Nakba' (catastrophe) in 1948 (part I) and continuing through repeated community and individual expulsions (part II) and enduring discrimination by virtue of being Palestinian (part III).

Tinashe Mushakavanhu launches MAZWI, a new online journal that aims to develop a new creative, intellectual and cultural movement for Africans on the continent and elsewhere. And Baobab 2, now available featuring Niq Mhlongo, Lindiwe Nkutha, Emmanuel Dongala and others.

South African jazz/electronic/ethnic musician Alex van Heerden died tragically in a car accident on January 7. van Heerden started out playing with Mac McKenzie’s goema-rock outfit, the Genuines at age 17, before moving to Cape Town to join the Hilton Schilder Quintet. He sebsequently played with Robbie Jansen and the Winston Mankunku Quintet before exploring his own electronic jazz sound. More here. And listen to a track from his last live recorded gig last month at the artscape arena. He laughs at the start...

Mapping Gaza, Cuban Revolution & fire breathing

Ushahidi ('testimony' in Swahili) was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the 2008 post-election fallout. Now Al Jazeera is deploying the alpha-level software to map the attacks in Gaza. You can see it here.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. What's been achieved? A quick look at some 'before and afters' here.

Read The 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution Reader featuring papers presented at a seminar held in Havana last year. And Kabelo Mohibidu and Khaye Nkwanyana reflect on FOCUS, the political program attended by more than 23 countries representing the Left forces across the world in the historic 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

'The claim to innocence is an acknowledgement that there is a legacy to apartheid, that that structure brought its force to bear on the intimate lives of even its beneficiaries. How does one transcend a legacy of innocence? Can we transcend it?' Read Rustum Kozain's Dagga Part One, Part Two & Part Three.

Moving images

AFRICOM: The expansion of US military interests on African soil. Watch Resist Africom: the movie. 

Israel’s amnesia: View the trailers of Waltz with Bashir film-maker Ari Folman fictionalised docu-autobiography 2008 animated film exploring the massacres of the 1982 Lebanese war.

Check out the Farafina 16 webvert.

Also Paradoxes and Oxymorons an animated poem read by DJ Spooky over at the Poetry Foundation.

And pics from The Pan Africa Space Station's African Space Program featuring DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid & Funafuji in Cape Town are online here.

Calls & new resources

Ikon South Africa want short documentaries that challenge the boundaries of conventional factual filmmaking for their second season on SABC. For more info mail info@ikonsouthafrica.com.

Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies invite articles exploring the ways cultural and media studies think about themselves in terms of critical dialogues generated within the South-North relationship, and with special reference to Africa. More info here.

Contemporary India-East Africa relations: shifting terrains of engagement conference, 27 - 28 April 2009 Nairobi, Kenya is looking for papers on India's changing relations with one region of sub-Saharan Africa. Details here.

GBV Prevention Network (activists committed to preventing gender based violence in the Horn, East and Southern Africa) launch a new website featuring an extensive online library, events info, online discussions and resources.

Also pan African social justice publisher Fahamu Books go online here. View their call for book proposals.  And the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network (SLRAN), a new FAHAMU global project puts out a call for volunteer researchers to become part of a virtual movement.

Lit mags

The new issue of Witness, Dismissing Africa includes a portfolio, inspired by a discussion between Wole Soyinka, Chris Abani, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alexandra Fuller, and Chenjerai Hove.

Also check out Sable LitMag Issue 13: Word from Africa.

And Wasafari Issue 56, African Europeans features work by Bernardine Evaristo, Patrice Nganang, Jean Khalfa, Agnès Agboton, Jamal Mahjoub and more.

World Literature today: The Food Issue features Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s “Africa Is Not a Proverb” and “The Five Names of. Tatamkhulu Afrika: Africanness, Europeanness,. and Islam in a South African Autobiography” by Gabeba Baderoon. Get it here.

New dvds & books

"When the lights go out, am I a good-looking dead body?" Nástio Mosquito, Angolan artist and poet’s new DVD, DZzzz is available. More here. 

Abahlali baseMjondolo, the grassroots South African shackdwellers’ movement release A Place in the City, a DVD laying out their case – against forcible eviction; for decent services – is available. Get it here.

Francophone African author Alain Mabanckou’s new novel Black Bazar is out this month. More here.

'I have an antenna in my beard/ and a blood duct that keeps secrets/ I have a bone flute that whistles/ and an arrow headed temper/ that can shave the treetops/ . . . in the jungle . . .' Poet, novelist, academic and musician Anthony Joseph’s innovative diasporic anthology of autobiographical poems, Bird Head Son is available here.  

Originally conceived for Dak’art, Diaspora Memory Place looks at notions of racial stereotyping, memory, language, and a shared past in the work of David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Pamela Z.

Performing artist, poet and activist Natalia Molebatsi edits We Are, a new anthology of poetry about experiences felt and expressed by South African artists, mainly women.

Cartooning in Africa includes papers: 'From Slavery to Freedom: A Comic Book from Angola'; 'A is for Algeria (or Afghanistan)'; 'The Satirical Press in Francophone Africa'; 'Nigerian Cartooning Pro and Con: An Exchange between an Editor and Two Cartoonists'; 'South African Cartooning and the Politics of Liberation' and more.

Deals

Jozi art rock crew Blk Jks sign to American independent record label Secretly Canadian. Watch a documentary on the band here . And see them live @ Pan African Space Station 08 here.

Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah signs to Faber and Faber in a joint deal by the publishing giant’s UK and US houses. Also watch out for Italian, Finnish, French, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian translations of her collection of short stories An Elegy for Easterly in 2009. More here.