Teatro Elinga em Luanda tem os dias contados

O edifício sede do teatro Elinga, em Luanda, que para além de acolher a companhia de teatro do mesmo nome, se transformou num verdadeiro pólo cultural da capital angolana, vai ser demolido. O edifício, construído por portugueses no século XIX, foi considerado como “testemunho histórico do passado colonial” em 1981, vindo a ser desclassificado pelo Ministério da Cultura angolano no final de Abril. O edifício vai agora ser demolido para dar lugar ao projecto imobiliário Elipark, constituído por um parque de estacionamento, escritórios e um moderno hotel.

Um dos fundadores do teatro Elinga, o actor Orlando Sérgio, lamenta o acontecimento, pelos “laços afectivos” e pela descaracterização progressiva da baixa da cidade – “o edifício e a forma como era vivido acabam por dar uma característica muito própria à baixa da cidade” afirma, “assim, qualquer dia, Luanda será igual a tantas outras cidades.” 
Orlando Sérgio, e outras personalidades da vida cultural angolana, defendem que é possível a coabitação entre dois tipos de arquitectura, uma resultante do passado e outra mais recente, que se tem vindo a expandir, segundo os críticos, nos pressupostos da especulação imobiliária. 
Para além do edifício, perde-se também um pólo cultural de características únicas, por onde passam regularmente artistas plásticos, bailarinos ou músicos, e onde se realizam diversos eventos ligados à arte e cultura. “Para além de existir uma informalidade nas relações ali que não se sente em mais nenhum lugar em Luanda”, afirma Orlando Sérgio. 
No despacho executivo que fundamentava a decisão, a Ministra da Cultura angolana apontava para a necessidade de implementar o projecto Elipark e de requalificar o conjunto arquitectónico localizado no largo Matadi. Ainda não se sabe onde será a nova casa do teatro Elinga. 

Vitor Belanciano, Público 28/10/2012

28.09.2012 | par martalanca | Elinga Teatro

RAIZ FORTE

 

A série web-documentária Raiz Forte apresenta relatos de mulheres negras que descobriram formas de lidar com seus cabelos crespos. Esta produção audiovisual emerge com o intuito de gerar discussões acerca das relações com o cabelo enquanto forma de pertencimento e de explicitação da ancestralidade africana.

 

 

 

O primeiro episódio da série web-documentária Raiz Forte aborda quais foram os rituais de manipulação do cabelo crespo durante a infância da mulher negra. CLIQUE PARA VER

 

 

O segundo episódio da série web-documentária Raiz Forte aborda como a mulher age diante das opções adquiridas durante a adolescência e juventude com as diversas técnicas de alisamento, até então não permitidos devido a faixa etária. CLIQUE PARA VER

 

Terceiro e último episódio em breve


28.09.2012 | par samirapereira | África-Brasil, Identidade, série documental

Luanda por Terra Água e Ar de Paulo Moreira _ Prémio Fernando Távora

Prémio Fernando Távora | Conferência do Vencedor da 7ª edição, Paulo Moreira | Lançamento da 8ª edição, 1 de Outubro de 2012, 2ª feira, 22:00
Salão Nobre da Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos


Após o final da guerra civil em Angola, em 2002, Luanda embarcou num processo irresistível de regeneração. As riquezas naturais do país atraíram um imenso investimento estrangeiro que, em consonância com a política de “progresso”, está a transformar irremediavelmente a ordem social e espacial da cidade.
Frequentemente, a estratégia oficial de planeamento parece desligada do contexto cultural e geográfico, pois tem ignorado a vitalidade dos territórios informais, preferindo substituí-los por modelos urbanísticos importados. Bairros inteiros são deslocados para as novas colónias de reassentamento, nas periferias, dando lugar a projetos de especulação imobiliária. 
Este filme propõe uma perspetiva de urbanidade diferente, mais inclusiva, percorrendo a topografia da cidade, por terra, água e ar. A partir de uma série de entrevistas a cidadãos comuns, moradores num dos bairros não-planeados mais centrais (e, por isso, em risco), apresenta-se a informalidade como uma possibilidade coerente, merecedora do seu lugar de direito no metabolismo de Luanda.
Os testemunhos apresentados apontam para um diálogo genuíno entre o bairro e a cidade (e o Mundo). Apontam para uma relação recíproca entre privado e coletivo, entre biografia e história. Desafiam o lugar-comum propulsor de uma “cidade global” (rica) rodeada por “bairros pobres” (desesperados). Luanda é muito mais complexa do que isso.

27.09.2012 | par franciscabagulho | Luanda, urbanismo

Mort d'un théâtre à Luanda, victime des promoteurs

Haut lieu de la culture angolaise, le théâtre Elinga va disparaître, comme tant de maisons anciennes du centre-ville de la capitale

 



Le rideau va bientôt tomber sur la scène du théâtre Elinga de Luanda. Définitivement. Ce haut lieu de la culture angolaise, berceau d’artistes contestataires, va en effet bientôt disparaître, ses murs roses réduits à l’état de gravas, écrasés par les bulldozers, et ainsi connaître le sort de tant de maisons anciennes du centre-ville de la capitale angolaise, livré aux promoteurs immobiliers attirés par les fragrances de l’or noir du deuxième producteur de pétrole d’Afrique subsaharienne.Le théâtre avait pourtant des atouts pour échapper à ce sort funeste. Au-delà de la réputation internationale de ses créations dans le domaine de la danse et du théâtre, le bâtiment était classé monument historique par le ministère de la culture. Qu’à cela ne tienne ! Cette ancienne école construite par les colons portugais au XIXe siècle a tout simplement été déclassée en avril par le ministère de la culture. ” Du jour au lendemain, il n’y aurait plus eu de raisons historiques pour maintenir le classement. C’est la seule explication que l’on a bien voulu me donner. Risible si cela ne sonnait pas le glas du théâtre “, se lamente son directeur et auteur de pièces José Mena Abrantes.La vraie raison est financière. Tout le quartier va être rasé pour y construire un parking et des bureaux. Un investissement de quelques dizaines de millions de dollars portés par de mystérieux financiers liés au pouvoir, qui espèrent bien obtenir un retour sur investissement rapide en louant les locaux à quelques multinationales du pétrole américaine, française ou brésilienne, ou à des banques.Le calcul n’est pas idiot. Luanda est la deuxième ville la plus chère du monde pour les expatriés, derrière Tokyo, selon le classement 2011 réalisé par le cabinet de consultants Mercer. Le prix des bureaux bat des records dans cette ville où le loyer mensuel d’une maison pour expatriés tourne aux alentours de 20 000 dollars (15 500 euros).Depuis le boom pétrolier du milieu des années 1990 qui a fait exploser la croissance du pays (15 % en moyenne dans les années 2000), Luanda est saisie par une fièvre constructrice. Les chantiers éventrent la ville, sur lesquels des ouvriers chinois travaillent sans répit. Les vieilles pierres n’y résistent pas. ” Les Angolais, si fiers de vivre dans une des capitales les plus anciennes d’Afrique noire, n’auront bientôt plus de quoi se vanter. Il ne restera plus rien d’ancien dans la ville “, observe José Mena Abrantes.Presque sous ses fenêtres, passe une corniche de 200 millions de dollars, inaugurée la veille de sa réélection, le 28 août, par le président José Eduardo dos Santos, au pouvoir depuis trente-trois ans. Une corniche débarrassée des vieilles maisons qui se donne des airs californiens avec ses joggers et ses amateurs de musculation en plein air. Et même des rollers, incongrus dans le reste de cette cité aux trottoirs défoncés. Les gratte-ciel, eux, poussent comme des champignons et délogent vers les faubourgs, à coup de bulldozers sauvages et de matraques policières, les musseques, ces favelas angolaises sans eau ni électricité dans lesquelles s’entassent la plupart des quelque 6 à 7 millions d’habitants de Luanda. ” Les autorités entendent faire de Luanda le Dubaï d’Afrique australe, rappelle Claudia Gastrow, urbaniste et universitaire de Boston étudiant la capitale angolaise. Mais on ne voit pas la logique urbanistique ni la coordination. Le centre-ville n’est qu’une façade. “Copier le modèle Dubaï ? Jusqu’à projeter de construire, comme dans le Golfe, des îles artificielles au large de Luanda. Une idée portée par un certain José Recio, un ancien réparateur de pneus qui a fait fortune dans l’immobilier. Les plans furent bloqués par le président en conseil des ministres. Mais pour le théâtre Elinga, les dés sont jetés. José Mena Abrantes, par ailleurs conseiller en communication du président, n’était pourtant pas le plus mal placé pour éviter l’irréparable. Mais rien n’y a fait. Ni les pétitions, ni les interventions discrètes. Elinga deviendra un parking.

 quantas madrugadas tem a noite?quantas madrugadas tem a noite?

José Mena Abrantes appartient au premier cercle du pouvoir mais il ne s’est pas enrichi “, confirme Antonio Setas, journaliste d’opposition que l’on ne peut suspecter de mansuétude à l’égard d’un membre du MPLA (ancien parti unique, au pouvoir). Même le rappeur et figure de proue anti-régime Luaty Beirao ne trouve rien à redire contre le directeur du théâtre.Né en 1945 en Angola de parents d’origine portugaise, il fait ses études au Portugal d’où il s’est enfui au début des années 1970 pour échapper à la conscription qui envoyait les jeunes Portugais se battre dans leur colonie contre les indépendantistes. Il rallie le MPLA en Allemagne, sans pouvoir rejoindre la guérilla. ” “On ne veut pas de Blancs !”, m’ont-ils dit. “Une sourde lutte secouait alors le MPLA où une partie du mouvement voulait ” africaniser ” la rébellion.Il revient à Luanda au moment de l’indépendance, en 1975. La guerre civile déchire le pays. Une lutte à mort entre le MPLA, le FNLA et l’Unita qui fera 500 000 victimes et 4 millions de déplacés jusqu’en 2002. ” C’était la guerre et, moi, je voulais faire du théâtre ! “, se rappelle-t-il. Il devra patienter plus de dix ans durant lesquels il crée l’agence de presse officielle Angop d’où il finira par se faire licencier pour ” non-coopération avec la sphère idéologique “. Les alliés du régime angolais sont alors soviétiques et cubains. ” Mais dès le milieu des années 1980, dos Santos réfléchit à une réforme du système, avant la perestroïka “, affirme-t-il.Il choisit le théâtre, ” pour ne rien avoir à faire avec la politique “, dit-il. Petit à petit, le marxisme est enterré au profit d’une économie de marché confisquée par une clique d’officiers, tel le général Helder Vieira Dias ” Kopelina “, directeur du juteux Office national pour la reconstruction. ” Beaucoup se sont enrichis à l’époque “, regrette-t-il, avant même le boom pétrolier.José Mena Abrantes est un idéaliste. Fidèle à dos Santos plus qu’au MPLA, il se dit convaincu que le président a entendu les mouvements de contestation qui agitent la capitale depuis plus d’un an. ” Il fallait reconstruire les infrastructures avant de s’attaquer à la politique sociale. Il doit maintenant investir ce terrain-là. “ Sur les murs du théâtre, un petit graffiti proclame :” Ce chaos est en train de me tuer. “ Il a eu la peau du théâtre.

 

Christophe Châtelot© Le Monde

 

27.09.2012 | par martalanca | Elinga Teatro

Where the Equator meets the Greenwich Meridian...

It is our pleasure to invite you to the opening of an exhibition by artists from São Tomé e Príncipe, the small island group in the middle of the world.

Clifford Chance is involved in Africa, in terms of business but also as a supporter of local development in Africa. It supports a number of projects in São Tomé e Príncipe, the small country located in the Gulf of Guinea, in the areas of education, culture and active citizenship. São Tomé e Príncipe has a strong cultural and artistic tradition, which, as the country itself, is a bit of a secret.

A number of lawyers of Clifford Chance Amsterdam, united in Stichting Support São Tomé e Príncipe, have therefore taken the initiative to organise an exhibition of Sao Tomean art in Amsterdam in cooperation with Galerie ArtVisie and CACAU (www.cacacultural.com), a Sao Tomean cultural organisation. The exhibition will include paintings from a number of Sao Tomean artists, including the younger generation, as well as sculptures made from old metal (in this case old bicycles).

The exhibition will take place at Galerie ArtVisie and will open on 7 October at 16hr00 in the presence of some of the artists. The exhibition will continue until the end of November, so if it is not possible to attend the opening, please visit the exhibition on another day.

ArtVisie
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 57
1017 DD Amsterdam

27.09.2012 | par martalanca | Olavo Amado

‘Rise and Fall of Apartheid’ - Images That Preserve History, and Make It

Photography is the common language of modern history. It’s everywhere; and everyone, in some way, understands it.

No institution presents and parses that language with more skill and force than the International Center of Photography when in peak form, which is the form it’s in for “Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life.”

This isn’t an emotional outcry of an exhibition, a tragedy-to-triumph aria, which it could easily have been. It’s dramatic, for sure, but in a measured, nuanced, knotty way, like a long, complex sentence with many digressive clauses and a logic sometimes hard to follow. With more than 500 photographs, supplemented by books, magazines, posters and films and spread over two floors, the show can’t help but be overwhelming. But it’s pitched as much to the mind as to the heart.

On the one hand, it’s a grand narrative of stirring sights: ardent faces, agitated bodies, camaraderie, clenched fists, funerals. It’s also a disquisition on the ordinariness of good and evil, on how people in a particular time and place encounter and partake of both and go on with their lives, no matter what.

Organized by Okwui Enwezor, an adjunct curator at the center, and Rory Bester, a South African art historian, the show is based on the idea that modern South African photography began in 1948, with the legalizing of apartheid — compulsory racial segregation — by a white-led national government.

Until then, the story goes, photography had primarily commercial and ethnological uses; after that year it became an issue-specific industry, a political weapon in a civil rights war that went on for more than four decades.

The pre-1948 photography in the show has, of course, a political dimension too. Early in the exhibition we see images of white Afrikaners re-enacting their mythical 17th-century journey from Europe to South Africa, which they claim as their divinely promised land. And although intended to have scientific validity, the carefully posed portrait photographs, some dating to the early 1920s, in A. M. Duggan-Cronin’s 11-volume “Bantu Tribes of South Africa,” likewise combine fact and fantasy. Valuable as field photographs, they also promote a vision of black South Africans as actors in an ethnographic theater, living in a perpetual yesterday.

But as this show suggests, theater became an important element in both apartheid-era politics and photography, as in pictures of the Women’s Defense of the Constitution league, known as the Black Sash, in the mid 1950s. A coalition of white women opposed to apartheid, its members staged choreographed protests, standing, impeccably dressed, in silent formation, all wearing identical black sashes over one shoulder.

This is how they appear, holding placards on the steps of Johannesburg City Hall, in an enlarged 1956 photo dominating the first floor. They make an unforgettable sight. And while their performance — that’s what it is — may have been directed toward a street audience, it was also calculatedly photogenic.

At the time the Black Sash was conceived, organized anti-apartheid activity was based on principles of Gandhian nonviolence. This was not to last. In 1960, at a demonstration against the law requiring blacks to carry identifying passbooks, police killed 69 unarmed black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, 30 miles south of Johannesburg. Everything changed.

Nelson Mandela, already a veteran activist, proposed a move to armed struggle. Popular violence erupted. In the dramaturgy of resistance the raised fist became the new symbol of black purpose and solidarity. And photography became the primary means of spreading that gesture wide.

In 1976, in Soweto, a black township that is now part of Johannesburg, police opened fire on high school students protesting the enforced use of Afrikaans in their classes. Photographers were there.

One of them, Sam Nzima, took a picture of the first person killed, 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, cradled in the arms of a fellow student. The picture appeared in print the next day, quickly spreading throughout South Africa and beyond it and inflaming anti-apartheid sentiment around the world.

Another photographer, Peter Magubane, was also at the protest, as he had been at countless others since the 1950s. His picture of the mass funeral following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 had immense impact at the time; his coverage of the Soweto uprising virtually defined the pictorial genre that came to be called struggle photography.

In general the show refrains from designating saints and sinners in the stories it tells. But if there’s a single photographer-hero, Mr. Magubane is it. Time and again he put himself in the line of fire and came away with history. The South African government retaliated. In 1969 he was arrested, placed in solitary for 18 months and banned from using a camera for five years. Other arrests and harassments followed.

Not all his images, though, are of combat. From 1960 comes a shot of a young black couple dancing in a Johannesburg nightclub, and one of a tense Miss South Africa, also black, minutes before she won her title. Such pictures represent the flip side of struggle photography, and the show makes a point of emphasizing them — demonstrating that even in conditions of political duress, modern, cosmopolitan black urban life flourished. It was documented in popular magazines like Drum, where, in the 1950s, Mr. Magubane and other great photojournalists — Ernest Cole, Bob Gosani and the German-born Jürgen Schadeberg — got their start.

According to Mr. Enwezor and Mr. Bester, however, not all the work in the show qualifies as photojournalism. They cite two other genres. In one, which they call engaged photography, political content is kept oblique, even inaccessible, until the contextual meaning of the image is revealed.

A 1993 shot, by the celebrated artist David Goldblatt, of a leafy bush by the side of a road could be of any bush anywhere, until you read the caption and learn that you’re looking at a remnant, preserved in a botanical garden in Cape Town, of a bramble hedge planted in 1660 by South Africa’s first Dutch settlers specifically to separate themselves from the indigenous population.

Social documentary forms the next category, exemplified by work produced, beginning in the 1980s, by the multiracial collective agency Afrapix. Afrapix photographers — among them Lesley Lawson, Chris Ledochowski, Santu Mofokeng, Guy Tillim and Paul Weinberg — tended to concentrate on politically driven series of images rather than going after single, emotionally punchy, frontline news shots.

Afrapix expanded in the bloody years leading up to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990. Two years later it dissolved, partly as result of internal conflict but also because financing for anti-apartheid initiatives decreased.

Technically the struggle was over. With Mr. Mandela’s election as president on the horizon, optimism, not criticism, was the preferred tone of the day.

If this show had been done 20 years ago, it might have ended on an upbeat note. But enough time has passed for realism, if not quite disillusionment, to set in. Significantly Mr. Mandela’s 1994 election passes without fanfare; just a few images in a small gallery. Within the densely layered, winding panorama the curators have laid out, it’s just another event in the story of a country still suffering the long-term effects of institutionalized racism.

Poverty is rife. Class privilege thrives. Conflict, interracial and black-on-black, simmers, flaring up hideously last month when the police killed striking workers at a platinum mine some 70 miles away from Johannesburg.

What’s left for photography at present, it seems, are backward looks and disappointments. At least that’s what the show’s younger photographers, Sabelo Mlangeni and Thabiso Sekgala, both born in the 1980s, focus on. Mr. Mlangeni shoots half-empty cities and their listless, probably jobless residents. Mr. Sekgala turns his eye on crumbling homelands, apartheid-created settlements meant to confine and isolate blacks. In the past they were places to escape from; in a rootless present they’re viewed with nostalgia. Over all, these are disheartening visions of everyday life.

They are part, however, of a far-from-everyday exhibition. It’s not a smooth and easy read. Its direction can be confusing; some of its images are underexplained, some of its themes are overwritten. But the material brought together is rich, its arrangements provocative and its ideas morally probing. In short, it’s really something to see, and I urge you to.

 

source: The New York Times

25.09.2012 | par herminiobovino | África do Sul, apartheid, fotografia, fotojornalismo

Exposição: O corpo na arte africana RIO DE JANEIRO

O Corpo na Arte Africana conta com cerca de 140 obras de arte reunidas pelos pesquisadores Wilson Savino, Wim Degrave, Rodrigo Corrêa de Oliveira e Paulo Sabroza. As obras estão divididas em cinco módulos: “Corpo individual & Corpos múltiplos”; “Sexualidade & Maternidade”; “A modificação e a decoração do corpo”; “O corpo na decoração dos objetos”; e “Máscaras como manifestação cultural”. A mostra conta ainda com 14 fotografias cedidas pelo colecionador francês Gérard Lévy, com registros que datam do período entre o fim do século 19 e o início do século 20. 

 
Leia mais sobre a exposição no site da Fiocruz (aqui).
O Corpo na Arte Africana
Exposição gratuita
De 17 de setembro de 2012 ao início de 2013
Local: Sala de exposições do Museu da Vida
Visitação: de terça a sexta, das 9h às 16h30, mediante agendamento. No sábado, visitação livre, das 10h às 16h.
Endereço: Av. Brasil, 4365 - Manguinhos - Rio de Janeiro (dentro do campus da Fiocruz e próximo à passarela 6)
Mais informações e agendamento: (21) 2590-6747 e recepcaomv@coc.fiocruz.br.

 

fonte cineáfrica

24.09.2012 | par martalanca | arte africana, corpo

Luiz Rufatto e Tatiana Salem Levy em Lisboa

Esta 5ª feira, 27 de setembro, estes autores vêm a Lisboa lançar De mim já nem se lembra, e Dois Rios pela editora Tinta da China. O evento será na esplanada do
Le Chat (Jardim 9 de Abril, ao lado do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga), a partir das 21 horas. Ambos serão apresentados pela escritora portuguesa Dulce Maria Cardoso.

24.09.2012 | par martalanca | literatura brasileña

Lançamento do Alfabeto do Desenvolvimento

No dia 3 de Outubro pelas 18:00, serão apresentados publicamente a exposição e o livro/catálogo “Alfabeto do Desenvolvimento”, resultado de uma parceria ACEP, CEsA – Centro de Estudos sobre Africa e do Desenvolvimento e Associação In Loco.

 

24.09.2012 | par martalanca | ACEP, Cooperação, desenvolvimento

Pontus de Délio Jasse

Inauguração: 26 de Setembro 2012, 22 horas (patente até 10 de Novembro)

Baginski, Galeria / Projectos

Pontus é a segunda exposição individual de Délio Jasse na Baginski, Galeria/ Projectos. O artista apresenta um conjunto de fotografias através do qual reflecte acerca do actual momento de Luanda, enquanto nódulo para o qual convergem fluxos humanos e culturais diversos, e cuja coexistência redefine as paisagens urbana e populacional de Angola.

A reflexão de Délio Jasse incide sobre os recentes movimentos imigrantes - de origem chinesa, sobretudo - que animam actualmente a cidade de Luanda, num processo de simultânea reavaliação da memória da presença colonial portuguesa em Angola. Pontus é, assim, na noção definida pelo artista através de raízes etimológicas e demais conotações históricas da palavra, uma forma quase-arquetípica de confluência; um enredar, estratégico ou informal, de diversas formas de presença humana, muitas vezes radicalmente divergentes, dando origem a inevitáveis negociações culturais.

Das coincidências e contradições dos dois momentos temporalmente desencontrados na Luanda de hoje, advém o paralelismo da marca estrangeira no país e a forma como esta desperta ou redefine antigos fantasmas coloniais e tensões ainda latentes.

24.09.2012 | par franciscabagulho | arte contemporânea africana, fotografia angolana