the future leaders seminar went by like a whirlwind. inspiring. enlightening. filled with good people, information, food, and fun at the protea hotel in lekki. we discussed readings from and about nelson mandela, gandhi, george orwell, machiavelli, dele olajede, lee kwan yew, aristotle, and others, pondering what it means to be a leader, good society, and good government, all in the context of nigeria.
it had been so long since i'd been in a proper classroom and i don't think i was quite ready to debate and discuss my views. in fact, i usually figured out what i wanted to say ten minutes after the conversation had shifted to something else. (i felt like an idiot, lol. ;) i guess, being a writer, i take all the time i need to formulate my opinions and present them when I'm ready.
the seminar convened nigerians from across the diaspora, working in different sectors, to discuss leadership and nation-building. i figured that it would be a good litmus test for the potential viability of working in nigeria. i've fantasized about starting a production company in lagos, but really had no clue about all the bureaucracy involved in that before now. after discussing electricity, roads, water, interest rates, taxes, the loan problem, infrastructure, corruption, and good governance (or the lack thereof), i'm actually no more optimistic than i was before.
though i might possess the brazen will, determination and courage necessary to make it work, i'm not quite sure i'd make that choice in such an economically unfavorable climate. that's probably the saddest part about the whole thing, because plenty of diasporeans would come back and work and live if the circumstances were better. although i definitely acknowledge that i'm privileged. in a country where 70% living on less than $1 a day and 49% of people aged 18-35 are unemployed, there we were chilling in a four-star hotel with our a/c and catering and PowerPoint presentations.
all in all, the person who probably shed the most light of all was uche, the founder of bella naija, who was one of my classmates. for the past year she's been able to run her blog full-time, finally leaving behind the 9-to-5. i still don't know exactly how she did it, though i found her experience to be a useful model. and despite all of the other success stories in the room, politics was pushed as the main path to making change to the detriment of those of us who had no political aspirations.
i suppose if i had to pick a poison, i might make a good peacemaker, mediator, or ambassador. but i'll always make a better artist than anything else. since i was a kid, i've been floating up in my head making up stories. a bit of a dreamer, somewhat unfettered by reality, given to flights of creative fancy. case in point, StandUp Naija, the group project I'll be working on over the next few months. we'll be interviewing the average Nigerian about the issues important to them in the 2011 election, then posting the videos online to start an interactive conversation. there seems to be much skepticism and pessimism surrounding the election, but i still think that it's possible for some good to come of it. we shall see. --AL.
it had been so long since i'd been in a proper classroom and i don't think i was quite ready to debate and discuss my views. in fact, i usually figured out what i wanted to say ten minutes after the conversation had shifted to something else. (i felt like an idiot, lol. ;) i guess, being a writer, i take all the time i need to formulate my opinions and present them when I'm ready.
the seminar convened nigerians from across the diaspora, working in different sectors, to discuss leadership and nation-building. i figured that it would be a good litmus test for the potential viability of working in nigeria. i've fantasized about starting a production company in lagos, but really had no clue about all the bureaucracy involved in that before now. after discussing electricity, roads, water, interest rates, taxes, the loan problem, infrastructure, corruption, and good governance (or the lack thereof), i'm actually no more optimistic than i was before.
though i might possess the brazen will, determination and courage necessary to make it work, i'm not quite sure i'd make that choice in such an economically unfavorable climate. that's probably the saddest part about the whole thing, because plenty of diasporeans would come back and work and live if the circumstances were better. although i definitely acknowledge that i'm privileged. in a country where 70% living on less than $1 a day and 49% of people aged 18-35 are unemployed, there we were chilling in a four-star hotel with our a/c and catering and PowerPoint presentations.
all in all, the person who probably shed the most light of all was uche, the founder of bella naija, who was one of my classmates. for the past year she's been able to run her blog full-time, finally leaving behind the 9-to-5. i still don't know exactly how she did it, though i found her experience to be a useful model. and despite all of the other success stories in the room, politics was pushed as the main path to making change to the detriment of those of us who had no political aspirations.
i suppose if i had to pick a poison, i might make a good peacemaker, mediator, or ambassador. but i'll always make a better artist than anything else. since i was a kid, i've been floating up in my head making up stories. a bit of a dreamer, somewhat unfettered by reality, given to flights of creative fancy. case in point, StandUp Naija, the group project I'll be working on over the next few months. we'll be interviewing the average Nigerian about the issues important to them in the 2011 election, then posting the videos online to start an interactive conversation. there seems to be much skepticism and pessimism surrounding the election, but i still think that it's possible for some good to come of it. we shall see. --AL.
this is too hilarious. i couldn't resist posting it. happy friday! --AL.
last night i went to an open studio show of one of my longtime friends, multimedia artist eto oro, at the school of the visual arts. he was super creative and always painting as a kid, then studied mechanical engineering at mit and design engineering at stanford. after working as a consultant for some time, he decided to go full-time creative and worked on dozens of multimedia installations before singlehandedly opening an art gallery in jersey. it closed just shy of three years later, but i still give him mad props for it. eto was showing some work with a handful of classmates at sva (he took a sculpture class this summer just to broaden his horizons). he designed this wicked double-sided video projector that hung suspended from the air like a pendulum and, as it spun around, plastered the walls in words, colors and images (thelonious monk, psychedelic pastures, the human skeleton) that moved in and out of focus depending on how close the projector came to the walls. for me, he represents most closely what i think of as a creative mind. want to take it apart and look inside at how all the synapses connect.
*sigh* i just fucking love artists.
I've finally been kicked out of NYU. Not literally, of course, since I'm technically on academic leave. But over the course of the past two weeks I have slowly been losing access to online research databases, academic calendars, and now my e-mail. It feels so sudden! although it has been almost four semesters since I went on leave.
My 9-to-5 brings a certain clarity to these circumstances.
The director of our documentary project just came back from Haiti with some footage of the UN and other relief organizations. Today I was trying to find the correct application to read a certain type of media file on his hard drive, and I couldn't figure it out. I had no clue. Had never even seen this type of file before. Found myself cursing under my breath, asking why the hell I left film school, wondering what other technologies have passed me by. I find that, when it comes to technical things, you only ever know as much as you learnt or thought yourself capable of learning in school. But I digress.
I wanted to share a clip from the Haiti footage that made me smile. I'm quite sure I'm not breaking any rules posting it here (my boss doesn't know about non disclosure agreements), but I also hope that vous pouvez parler un peu francais. No subtitles here!
I also came across this other Haitian relief documentary online, chronicling the activities of the Red Cross.
The main problem with this Red Cross project, and also what my boss is trying to do, is that the production time is far too short. The relief effort will likely take a decade to bear fruit, and most filmmakers' attention spans--not to mention that of the public and the media at large--are simply not long enough.
But what's really fascinating is that Haiti's only film school, the Cine Institute in Jacmel, was completely destroyed and yet the students continue to make films in the aftermath of the quake. All but one of the sixty students survived, and they found six working cameras buried in the rubble that they are now using to film recovery stories. Folks have been sending donations, and I'm starting to think my next ten relief dollars should go to them.
My 9-to-5 brings a certain clarity to these circumstances.
The director of our documentary project just came back from Haiti with some footage of the UN and other relief organizations. Today I was trying to find the correct application to read a certain type of media file on his hard drive, and I couldn't figure it out. I had no clue. Had never even seen this type of file before. Found myself cursing under my breath, asking why the hell I left film school, wondering what other technologies have passed me by. I find that, when it comes to technical things, you only ever know as much as you learnt or thought yourself capable of learning in school. But I digress.
I wanted to share a clip from the Haiti footage that made me smile. I'm quite sure I'm not breaking any rules posting it here (my boss doesn't know about non disclosure agreements), but I also hope that vous pouvez parler un peu francais. No subtitles here!
I also came across this other Haitian relief documentary online, chronicling the activities of the Red Cross.
The main problem with this Red Cross project, and also what my boss is trying to do, is that the production time is far too short. The relief effort will likely take a decade to bear fruit, and most filmmakers' attention spans--not to mention that of the public and the media at large--are simply not long enough.
But what's really fascinating is that Haiti's only film school, the Cine Institute in Jacmel, was completely destroyed and yet the students continue to make films in the aftermath of the quake. All but one of the sixty students survived, and they found six working cameras buried in the rubble that they are now using to film recovery stories. Folks have been sending donations, and I'm starting to think my next ten relief dollars should go to them.
Went to a panel discussion at NYU Wagner School of Public Service tonight, with participation of FilmAid, Communication for Change, and Barefoot Workshops (skypeing in from South Africa) -- all organizations that teach video workshops in refugee camps, NGOs, and educational settings in Africa. I showed up a little prickly after a long day at work, expecting the same-old panel talk with a few US-based organizations peddling brochures covered in dusty brown children.
And I did largely encounter what I expected, with the exception of Barefoot, that also invited a budding Nigerian filmmaker, in Capetown for a video workshop, to participate in the discussion. The filmmaker, Jonah, had lost both of his parents to HIV/AIDS and wanted to shoot a documentary to educate Nigerians about the disease. Education is largely the goal of these trainings, offering refugees and other at-risk populations a media-driven tool for battling gender-based violence, disease, and even female circumcision.
I suppose in a way, I did not know what was meant by "participatory filmmaking." I thought that these folks maybe collaborated with Africans to make feature films that were competitive on a global scale. Pardon my ignorance. Most of the films were in the style of PSAs, or stories that appealed to a local audience, and the quality was kind of hit or miss.
I understand that the local communities are the target audiences, and mainstream audiences are not a main target (as far as I could tell no distribution networks even exist to this end), but I think that high-level filmmaking should still be a goal.
I suppose I would have liked to have seen the act of filmmaking itself used as a vehicle for radical autonomy, ie, equipping the refugees with the tools and vocabulary to make films on par with those readily consumed in the West. I had a great conversation with MTV Africa head Alex Okosi about this a couple years ago, and he said that a rising number of Africans are fairly sophisticated movie viewers.
I think these video workshop participants should be grappling with the same creative dilemmas as independent filmmakers. All it would have taken to do this was a bit of diffusion here, some tighter sound editing there, a little bit more attention paid to the picture itself and I would not have felt like these organizations were doling out a remedial film education.
I have seen the curriculum for some of the inner-city video programs happening in New York and they are teaching youth at a more sophisticated level. Although, disclaimer, I have not seen these organizations' curricula, and I must also admit that funding may play a significant role, since FilmAid was so much better than the other two.
I do not believe that, even in the remotest villages with no access to television, that a person cannot enter into the pantheon of acclaimed filmmakers if given the same tools and vocabulary. My ten cents.
And I did largely encounter what I expected, with the exception of Barefoot, that also invited a budding Nigerian filmmaker, in Capetown for a video workshop, to participate in the discussion. The filmmaker, Jonah, had lost both of his parents to HIV/AIDS and wanted to shoot a documentary to educate Nigerians about the disease. Education is largely the goal of these trainings, offering refugees and other at-risk populations a media-driven tool for battling gender-based violence, disease, and even female circumcision.
I suppose in a way, I did not know what was meant by "participatory filmmaking." I thought that these folks maybe collaborated with Africans to make feature films that were competitive on a global scale. Pardon my ignorance. Most of the films were in the style of PSAs, or stories that appealed to a local audience, and the quality was kind of hit or miss.
I understand that the local communities are the target audiences, and mainstream audiences are not a main target (as far as I could tell no distribution networks even exist to this end), but I think that high-level filmmaking should still be a goal.
I suppose I would have liked to have seen the act of filmmaking itself used as a vehicle for radical autonomy, ie, equipping the refugees with the tools and vocabulary to make films on par with those readily consumed in the West. I had a great conversation with MTV Africa head Alex Okosi about this a couple years ago, and he said that a rising number of Africans are fairly sophisticated movie viewers.
I think these video workshop participants should be grappling with the same creative dilemmas as independent filmmakers. All it would have taken to do this was a bit of diffusion here, some tighter sound editing there, a little bit more attention paid to the picture itself and I would not have felt like these organizations were doling out a remedial film education.
I have seen the curriculum for some of the inner-city video programs happening in New York and they are teaching youth at a more sophisticated level. Although, disclaimer, I have not seen these organizations' curricula, and I must also admit that funding may play a significant role, since FilmAid was so much better than the other two.
I do not believe that, even in the remotest villages with no access to television, that a person cannot enter into the pantheon of acclaimed filmmakers if given the same tools and vocabulary. My ten cents.
Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book Award for her collection of short stories, An Elegy for Easterly. I first heard about her in an African Voices interview (Part One below, find the rest on YouTube) with memoirist Alexandra Fuller, author of the phenomenal Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. I remember watching Petina bristle sitting beside Fuller, a white Rhodesian woman, talking about the plight of the Zimbabwean writer. Her palpable defensiveness, though thinly veiled in pleasantries, was diffused by the authenticity with which Fuller interrogated her own entitlement as a white woman. And I found myself confused about whether hers was a fruitless anger. But I have come to understand that what I interpreted as anger was only Petina's embodiment of radical autonomy. On closer examination, she is simply engaging in a disruptive act by writing, pushing against a deeply ingrained power structure that was not meant to include her own voice. In that way, I too may appear "angry" at times (and I certainly will own up to that).
Thank goodness for vindication.
This might be the lamest thing I've ever seen. Not the text, by the brilliant Binyavanga Wainaina, but rather the video.
Is it that they stuck Djimon Hounsou, a two-time Oscar-nominated actor, in a 10x12 bedroom with a little girl surrounded by photographs and taxidermied animals...or the cliche music...or the montage of starving children at the end that only reinforces stereotypes of Africa, turning the entire piece on its head...or the tagline/plug, "Great Music Saves Lives"? Maybe a combination of all of them.
This is exactly my problem with Bono's whole RED campaign. If making change really were as easy as buying a T-shirt, then we wouldn't need more activists, we'd need more hawkers. And I really don't think rock stars should liken themselves to politicians, but I guess I'm no expert.
