Nairobi Dancer Irene Renée Karanja and the Dashy Krew – An Interview

Nairobi Dancer Irene Renée Karanja and the Dashy Krew – An Interview The most interesting things happen often completely unexpected. On a trip to Nairobi, being busy with the Solo and Duo Festival of Dance Forum Nairobi I came along the dynamics of inspiring artists in the GoDown Art Centre located in the industrial area of town. There I had the coincidental chance to meet the dancer Irene Karanja in a daily rehearsal program for a dance show choreographed by Fernando Anuang´a. Her artist name is short: Renée.

Stages

28.12.2011 | by Grit Köppen

On Nomadism

On Nomadism Nomads can be understood in different contexts, as in an anthropological sense, nomads as a new concept in philosophy and nomads as a real and metaphorical concept for new artistic praxis both in real and metaphorical senses. The real sense refers to art among nomadic people, while the metaphorical usage pertains to the use of nomadism in new artistic and theatrical creations.

To read

20.12.2011 | by Knut OveArntzen

Rebuilding the Angolan body politic: Global and local projections of identity and protest in "O Herói/The Hero" (Zézé Gamboa, 2004)

Rebuilding the Angolan body politic: Global and local projections of identity and protest in "O Herói/The Hero" (Zézé Gamboa, 2004) This article uses a reading of Zézé Gamboa's award-winning 2004 feature as a basis for an exploration of post-conflict Angolan screen culture and of its impact both at home and internationally. It considers how O Herói‟s depiction of a war-torn nation, and of the impediments to its reconstruction, negotiates between a socially-engaged film-making practice, informed by local tradition and the tenets of „Third Cinema‟, and the demands of a globalised cinema market. The film achieves this compromise by deploying allegorical and symbolic tropes, familiar from the literature, cinema, and political discourse of the era of Angolan liberation (notably, the concept of a socialist „new man‟), to complicate a superficially optimistic story of post-conflict rehabilitation, and to insinuate a critique of the authoritarian practices and neo-liberal policies of the MPLA government.

Afroscreen

19.12.2011 | by Mark Sabine

The woman in Contemporary African Cinema: Protagonism and Representation

The woman in Contemporary African Cinema:  Protagonism and Representation The variety of techniques and approaches to film in use in the present day impedes overarching judgments. Women’s increasing esteem and importance within the world of cinema has led to a diversity of intentions and perspectives; moreover, the character of global culture is such that the lines separating Africa from the West are no longer so clear as before.

Afroscreen

06.12.2011 | by Beatriz Leal Riesco