When the Church

Fails Its Women:

7 Truths We Need to Tell

About Creflo Dollar,

Black Daughters

and Violence

By The Crunk Feminist Collective

11 Jun

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I walked out of church in the middle of service. I grew up in church; my stepfather of 15 years is a pastor; as recently as 2009, I led a ministry team  at one of Atlanta’s Baptist megachurches. Thus, my choice to get up and walk out while the pastor was speaking defied every notion of decorum I have ever been taught.

Image from madamenoire.com

 

But when he stood to express his unequivocal support for Atlanta megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar who was arrested late last week for committing simple battery and cruelty to a child on his fifteen year old daughter, I had to go. 

I have struggled in recent years to reconcile my long-standing faith, to my relatively more recent feminist commitments. And it is precisely because of the Black Church’s continued willingness to advocate problematic, violent, hierarchical stances against women and gay people that I continue to struggle.

According to the police report, Dollar told his daughter  she couldn’t go to a party due to bad grades.  From there the situation got real ugly. His daughter left the room, went into the kitchen and started crying. Dollar followed her, asked why she was crying, and when she indicated that she didn’t want to talk to him, she says that he  “then charged her, put his hands around her throat and began to choke her, slammed her to the ground and began to punch her,  and took off his shoe and started whooping her with it.” The victim’s 19 year old sister, who witnessed the altercation, backed up her sister’s story. Dollar, himself, admitted only to using a shoe.

In classic fashion, Dollar denied everything yesterday, as he entered his sanctuary to a standing ovation. “She was not choked. She was not punched….I should never have been arrested.” Elsewhere he said, “All is well in the Dollar household.”

Apparently, his daughters are bald-faced liars. Both of them. And apparently, they resent him so much that they would concoct this magnificently violent tale in order to have him arrested. If he thinks all is well, clearly he isn’t well.

So now let’s entertain the notion that his daughters are telling the truth or at least some truth.

What would it look like for our faith communities to be places where Black girls could testify about the violence they experience from the men in our communities and be believed? 

What would it look like for Black women, the primary attendants and financial supporters of the Black Church, to demand accountability from the overwhelmingly male leadership in our pulpits?

The most troubling thing about Creflo’s statement was the overwhelming amount of support from his female parishioners. I can’t help but notice the admixture of fear and disappointment on the fifteen year old girls face in the above video (1:19) as her mother actively sides with Creflo for the cameras. 

What would it mean for us to recognize that when we refuse to believe the testimony of other Black women and girls, it makes our own witness “for the Lord,” before the law, and before anyone else we need to believe us less credible?

Yet, I witnessed Black women coming out in full support of the “man of God” in droves because…

“We weren’t there.”

“We don’t know what happened in that house…”

“We don’t know what she did or said to provoke him…”

[What is this? Chris Brown and RiRi 2.0? (Let me leave that alone.)]

 “If she swung on him first (as some news outlets reported), then she deserved it…” {And for the record, the police report in no way indicates any such thing. Even Creflo doesn’t say she swung on him.}

“If you’ve ever raised a teenager, you know how they can be…”

“He has the right to discipline his children.”

For the record, we never know the whole story about anything, if it didn’t happen to us. That doesn’t prevent us from making reasonable judgments based on the evidence. Christians use the same type of reason to profess our faith in a God-man, who was born from a virgin, crucified on a cross and Resurrected on the 3^rd day. And we believe in his Resurrection, primarily on the basis of the initial testimony of some women who Jesus’ male followers weren’t trying to hear (Mark 16: 1-11). So in my view, if we refuse to believe Black girls when they testify about their experiences, we call the basis of our own witness and our own faith into question. Jesus prioritized listening to women, even when his disciples said they were being a nuisance.

Why I wonder are Black women so willing, so ready to co-sign theologies that literally support us getting our asses kicked in our own homes? 

Why have we bought into the primary premise of white supremacy, that the most effective way to establish authority is through violence? Surely, this situation teaches us that the only thing that kind of parenting does is breed the kind of resentment and contempt that will have your children calling the cops on you at 1 in the morning.

Why is it so hard for us to take a stand against Black men and tell them that there is never a reason to put their hands on us in a violent fashion? Not when homicide is the top killer (after accidental death) of Black women and girls ages 15-24.

Frankly, we need to “radically rethink” our understandings of authority, love, violence, and respect in the Black Church.  Black folks love to say, Tell the Truth, and Shame the Devil. Well here are seven truths we need to tell.

1.)   Sisters have the power to change this thing. The Black Church is one of the few places where we do have this kind of power. And the tide won’t turn, until Black women get fed up and then start to stand up, start walking out, and start taking our money with us.

2.)  Children are not our property. It is not their job to confer upon us the worth and dignity denied to us by others. We do not get to violently beat them into submission, supported by terrible “spare the rod” theologies. Everyone wants children to obey, but what do we do with Ephesians 6:1-4 which clearly, after telling children to honor their parents, admonishes fathers not to “provoke children to wrath.” Wonder why that’s in there?

3.)  Discipline is not synonymous with punishment or spanking. It was in church that I learned that discipline and disciple share the same root word. To disciple means to train up (usually in the ways of Jesus.) Aren’t there more creative and effective ways to parent? Spanking is the easy-out option. It is the option that packs the “literal” biggest punch, requires the least amount of thought, and is designed to quickly redirect undesirable behaviors. But it is largely ineffective, and rarely about actual discipline. Spanking is used to communicate anger to a child for doing something wrong. They are used to remind the child who’s boss. And the boss is the person who gets to mete out violence when the rules don’t get followed. Interestingly enough, in the Black Church, I think far too many of us understand God in these exact same terms –as the strict disciplinarian, who polices all our actions, ever ready to issue cosmic butt whoopings when we don’t fall into line. Thank God for delivering me from such thinking.

4.)  Domestic violence is not discipline. And this was domestic violence. And I find it hard to believe that a man who will beat the shit out of his own daughter, who feels biblically justified in doing so, wouldn’t beat the shit out of her mother, too. Not levying any accusations here, but I think it’s a question worth raising. Read this Black girl’s testimony and see how true it rings. 

5.)   Just because your parents whooped you, and you “turned out fine,” doesn’t mean the whoopings are the cause of it. Black folks are overcomers by copious circumstance. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep recreating negative circumstances for our children and calling them right and good. I had a racist sixth grade teacher who made me cry every day. I still made excellent grades and remained undeterred. If I have children, I will not seek out a racist teacher for them, celebrate their ability to excel despite it, and then claim that they excelled because of it. That is pathological.

6.)    The Black Church can’t have it both ways. If Black fathers set the moral tone for how men will treat their (presumably hetero) daughters, then Black folks cannot continue to insist that a father’s punches thrown in anger are wholly distinct from a partner’s punches thrown in anger. I’ve always found it interesting, that when we talk about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, no one wants to critique Lot, nephew of Abraham, for tossing his daughters out the door to be raped by the men of the city. No one makes the connection that a few verses over these same two daughters get Lot drunk, sleep with and get pregnant by him, and become the mothers of tribes that create all manner of havoc for the Israelites. We are so invested in sic’ing this text on gay people like rabid dogs, that we miss it’s more obvious invitations to consider the ways in which men of God–and the Bible calls Lot “righteous”–have a long tradition of subordinating the well-being of the women in their lives to other goals that seem to be more morally significant, those aims namely being homophobia and patriarchy. But Genesis seems to insist that a father’s choice to subject his daughters to violence can cause those daughters to both resent and actively seek to humiliate their father. (Genesis 19)

7.)   Our theology will kill us if we let it.  As the Bible thumpers love to remind us: “there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is destruction.” (Prov 14:12) Consider this my remix. Jesus already died, and I refuse to let the Black Church turn me into a martyr for its causes. I refuse to stand by while Black men (and women) use bad theology about headship and Black women and men use bad theology about “sparing the rod” to heap indignities on women and children in the name of God.  Our blind investment in patriarchy, and the kind of hierarchy it promotes in churches and families is not healthy for a people who continue to find themselves on the bottom of every social hierarchy that exists. In my faith communities, being a feminist makes me suspect. But to them I say,  Jesus was a feminist. In my feminist communities, being a Christian often makes me suspect. And to them I say the same thing, Jesus was a feminist. So I am going to unapologetically let my faith and my feminism inform one another. (And keep reading great blog series like this one to help me out on rough days.) It is because I believe in Jesus and feminism, that  I don’t tolerate violence against women in any form from the men in my life, and I for damn sure, am not gonna sit up and hear violent ish coming at me from the pulpit. Black women have to become as serious about demanding that our churches are spaces where we can tell our testimonies about the violence done to us and be believed. I am determined to have a theology that is truly liberatory, one centered on grace, healing and abundant life. And if I have to raise hell and disrespect a few pulpits to get it, so be it. 

Josina Muthemba Machel

37thstate:

Josina Muthemba Machel (August 10, 1945 - April 7, 1971) is a major heroine in the history of Mozambique and the second wife of Samora Machel. Her grandfather was a lay Presbyterian evangelist who preached nationalism and cultural identity against European assimilation. Her father worked as a nurse in government hospitals. At one time, Josina and her family were all jailed as a result of their participation in clandestine opposition to the Portuguese colonial administration. She became a key figure in the Mozambican struggle for independence, promoted the emancipation of African women, married the man who would become the country’s first president, and died at the age of 25.

At age 7, Josina entered the primary school for the children of Portuguese and assimilated African families, she later entered “Dr. Azevedo e Silva” school to pursue an interest in accounting. Two years later, she joined the Nucleo dos Estudantes Secondários de Moçambique (Mozambican Secondary Students Group), which encourages cultural identity and political awareness among secondary students. In March 1964 she fled the country with several other students with the intention of joining the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO), which was based in Tanzania. They managed to travel as far as the border between Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Zambia but were arrested by the police and jailed. Five months later, at her 19th birthday, Josina was released from jail as a result of an international campaign carried out by FRELIMO.

As she reached her 20th birthday, Josina was immediately assigned responsibilities within FRELIMO’s multifaceted quest for national independence. She began to work at the Mozambique Institute, a residential education center for Mozambican students in Tanzania, as assistant to the director. She turned down an offer of a scholarship in Switzerland to volunteer for FRELIMO’s newly created Women’s Branch (Destacamento Feminino). The Women’s Branch provides women with political and military training in order for them to be fully integrated into the liberation struggle. This initiative was criticized because it went against traditional African cultural norms.

In May 1969, she married Samora Machel at the Educational Center of Tunduru in southern Tanzania, a facility she had helped to develop. At the end of November, Josina and Samora’s only child was born.

During 1970 Josina begins to suffer from stomach pains and weakness. She went to Moscow for medical reasons. A year later, she became seriously ill again. She was taken to Muhimbili Hospital and died on April 7, 1971 at the age of 25. She was buried in Kinondoni Cemetery.

A year later, FRELIMO declared April 7, the day of Josina’s death, as National Women’s Day in Mozambique. In March 1973 FRELIMO established the National Organization of Mozambican Women as the movement’s social and political arm for women. Inspired in part by the ideals of women’s emancipation that Machel promoted, the organization continued to work for this goal following Mozambican independence in 1975. The principal secondary school in the capital city is named after her.

(—sources: wikipedia and mozambiquehistory)

(via b-sama)

HOWLIN' WOLF

June 10, 1910 — Howlin’ Wolf, blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, was born Chester Arthur Burnett in White Station, Mississippi. During the 1930s, Wolf performed in the South with a number of blues musicians, including Robert Johnson and Son House. His first recording, “How Many More Years,” was produced in 1951 and was a hit on the Billboard R&B charts. This was followed by other hits, including “Moanin’ at Midnight” (1951) and “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)” (1956). Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightening” (1956) is enshrined in both the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a recording of “qualitative or historical significance.” Also, his recordings “Spoonful” (1960) and “The Red Rooster” (1962) are enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His 1962 album, “Howlin’ Wolf,” influenced many British and American bands infatuated with Chicago blues. Wolf died January 10, 1976 and was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1994, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honor. The Howlin’ Wolf Memorial Blues Festival is held each year in West Point, Mississippi. His biography, “Moanin’ at Midnight, The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf,” was published in 2004.

<br />Howlin' Wolf - Shake For Me <i>by fredozydeco</i>

Submissions

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the notice in Poets & Writers, but the Marie Alexander Series is currently not taking unsolicited manuscripts.

In 2012, we will host an open submission period during the month of July. An award of $500 and publication will be given for a chosen collection of prose poems or flash fiction by an American writer.

Submit a manuscript of at least 48 pages, which can include some lineated pieces, along with a cover letter with complete contact information and an SASE for notification only.

Postmark must be between July 1 and 31; the mailing address will be posted in early 2012.

Entries should also include a simultaneous electronic submission of the manuscript (MS Word or PDF format) sent to editor@mariealexanderseries.com. There is no entry fee.

Marie Alexander Poetry Series
Attention: Nickole Brown, Editor
(address to be posted later) P.O. Box 5686
Louisville, KY 40255-0686-->
editor@mariealexanderseries.com

Before submitting, it's always a good idea to become familiar with the work we've published. Please enjoy a sample of work from books we've published. (pdf file)

Other Voices Poetry Prize

(Harvest Journal

| $200 prize per issue

| worldwide)

Deadline: 15 June 2012

In celebration of cultural unity and respect, Harvest International welcomes poetry submissions in any language. International contributors are welcomed to submit as well.

Each issue, Harvest International awards two poetry prizes:

• Steve Whaley Poetry Prize — $200 — to the U. S. contributor whose poetry most eloquently expresses the human condition while promoting greater awareness of human interrelatedness.

• Other Voices Poetry Prize — $200 — awarded by Roger Humes to the international contributor whose poetry best fulfills the above criteria.

Submitted poems are automatically entered for consideration into their appropriate contest.

The winner must provide tax ID number or social security number, signature, and full legal name in order to receive payment from Cal Poly Pomona Foundation. The recipient has the right to refuse payment.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Harvest International is seeking original, unpublished poetry, short fiction, song lyrics, essays, and black and white artwork from children and adults.

In celebration of cultural unity and respect, we welcome poetry submissions in any language, as well as submissions from international contributors.

Entrants may submit one piece in each category. Manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced, and should not exceed 3000 words. Please follow MLA standards where applicable.

Please e-mail your manuscript and a brief bio to the Harvest Editor-in-Chief, Jill Walker, at jswalker@csupomona.edu. Submit two copies: one with no identifying information, and one with a cover page including your name, preferred mailing address, telephone number, and email address.

If you prefer, send hard copies of your manuscripts, along with a WORD (not PDF) formatted disk and a brief bio to the following address:

Harvest International
c/o Faculty Advisor, Professor Gill-Mayberry
Cal Poly University, EFL Department
3801 West Temple Ave.
Pomona, CA. 91768

All rights revert to the author upon publication.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For inquiries/ submissions: jswalker@csupomona.edu

Website: http://www.csupomona.edu

 

Call for Submissions

for Spring/ Summer Issue:

MoJo! Journal of Black and

African-American Women's

Poetry and Flash Memoir

Deadline: 15 June 2012

MoJo!, an online journal of Black and African-American women's poetry, flash memoir, and social commentary, is now reading submissions for the Spring/Summer Issue.

GUIDELINES

Black and African-American women are invited to submit Poetry of any style and on any topic, of fewer than 100 lines (shorter is better). The process of selection is very subjective. The editor is not generally looking for very religius poems, although spirituality is welcome. Please lighten up on the ryhme. Flash Memoir or social commentary of fewer than 1,000 words is also published. Journalism is not accepted. A personal viewpoint is wanted. Profanity, slurs, gratuitous violence and overt sexuality et cetera will not be published.

Feel free to query.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For inquiries/ submissions: mojoeditor@yahoo.com

Website: http://mapsonehq.wordpress.com/mojo/

 

What the Ugandan

middle class lacks:

Philosophers

 

Ugandans prefer posh weddings, even if their means may not allow for such extravagance. File Photo. 

By Timothy Kalyegira 

Posted  Sunday, June 3  2012

 

Most Africans, even the best-educated, best-paid and most widely-travelled, are held hostage to a mindset in which university-educated professionals are still impressed by things that Whites outgrow as teenagers.

 

Rather than keep giving us their financial aid and grants, the best Europe and China can do is send us teachers, philosophers, thoughtful guides to help us see that a flashy Range Rover or a house with 40 metres of cables leading to satellite dishes and 50-inch flat screen TVs is not really the true mark of success, but rather is a sign of our maalo.

The reluctance to read and write books - especially among even university-educated African women - has to be overcome before we start talking of future prosperity and development. They can help us arrive at a less embarrassing image of ourselves and develop a knowledge-based, scientific society.

 

This mediocrity in aspiration, this cluelessness about who we are, what we are doing, where we are going, what we ought to be doing and where we ought to be going - this maalo as I termed it last Sunday - lies is at the core of the post-independence Africa identity crisis.

It is the reason the vast new petroleum, natural gas, gold and diamond findings being reported all over Africa these days will not benefit Africans.

Exasperated readers asked me how we can get out of this predicament.

First, we shall need teachers. Teachers, not in the familiar classroom and chalk sense in which we understand the word.

We shall need teachers in the sense of thinkers and illustrators, guides, philosophers, instructors of the mind, people who will show us the way we ought to live and the things we ought to aspire for and what it means to be a people.

What do German doctors think and discuss among themselves when President Yoweri Museveni and his family show up on a presidential jet in Berlin, then go to a clinic for basic medical checkup? In power for 26 years, billions in foreign aid, but still one must fly to Germany for basic medical checkup? Our heads of state also need special advisers on how to overcome their own “maalo”.

Europe, the most influential continent in history, developed first and foremost because it developed the mind. Long before electricity, computers, air travel and when life was still a daily grind, Europe already had a profoundly developed intellectual tradition. Is it a coincidence that the United States which publishes 150,000 new book titles a year and China which publishes 120,000 new titles are the world’s biggest and second-biggest national economies?

The Chinese, with their attention to detail and serious minds, should also help guide the clueless and “unserious” African into the future. We need to develop a higher sense of existence and consciousness. In other words, we need to develop the title of Kenny Rogers’ 1983 album: Eyes That See In The Dark.

Eyes that see in the dark. That is what we need: well-developed, thoughtful, solid minds with a level of perception, penetrating insight and in-depth knowledge that is solely missing in our African societies and to have such developed minds run our companies, government departments, schools, universities and families with mental clarity.

We can only get this gravitas and rock-solid stature by reading and writing and researching advanced knowledge and information.

Not just the bits and pieces of cram work homework, coursework, theses, lecture and classroom notes we work with at school and university, to be left there upon the attainment of a diploma, certificate or degree, but advanced knowledge.

Whites from Europe and America - although over the last 20 years have degenerated into a culture soaked in celebrity gossip, eccentric pursuits, minority rights and that Facebook-ish banality - still largely know what they are doing when they mean to be serious.

They still have minds that search much more keenly and perceive much deeper than anything that can be found in urban middle class Africa.

Most Africans, even the best-educated, best-paid and most widely-travelled, are held hostage to a mindset in which university-educated professionals are still impressed by things that Whites outgrow as teenagers.

Rather than keep giving us their financial aid and grants, the best Europe and China can do is send us teachers, philosophers, thoughtful guides to help us see that a flashy Range Rover or a house with 40 metres of cables leading to satellite dishes and 50-inch flat screen TVs is not really the true mark of success, but rather is a sign of our maalo.

The reluctance to read and write books - especially among even university-educated African women - has to be overcome before we start talking of future prosperity and development. They can help us arrive at a less embarrassing image of ourselves and develop a knowledge-based, scientific society.

 

Trailer:

Director Adam Pesce's

Story Of Indigenous Surfing

In Papua New Guinea,

"Splinters"

News by Emmanuel Akitobi | December 17, 2011

 

"I never set out to make a “surf movie.” My aim with Splinters, rather, is to introduce the viewer to an experiment unfolding in a Petri dish. How the surfboard catalyst will ultimately fuse two disparate worlds together is unknown. Will it be the golden goose that provides a “way out” for emerging surfing talent? Or could it give false hope and usher in the erasure of indigenous heritage while paving the way for commercial exploitation from the West?" -- Adam Pesce, director

 

That statement alone piques my interest in this film, Splinters.  This is at least the third film about surfing within the African diaspora to be released in recent months; the other two I can recall being Otelo Burning and Whitewash.  So I'd imagine that we'll see an increase in black surfers in the near future-- just make sure all you dudes and dudettes pack it in at the first sign of shark activity.

SPLINTERS Teaser from splinters on Vimeo.

Splinters is the first feature-length documentary film about the evolution of indigenous surfing in the developing nation of Papua New Guinea. In the 1980s an intrepid Australian pilot left behind a surfboard in the seaside village of Vanimo. Twenty years on, surfing is not only a pillar of village life but also a means to prestige. With no access to economic or educational advancement, let alone running water and power, village life is hermetic. A spot on the Papua New Guinea national surfing team is the way to see the wider world; the only way.

__________________________

He's Got a PhD in Surfing

Jess Ponting talks about his new film Splinters

San Diego and Papua New Guinea may seem like polar opposites when it comes to lifestyle, but they do share a common hobby—surfing! The documentary film SPLINTERS, to be screened at Bird's Surf Shed on Saturday, Feb. 11, explores the evolution of surfing in this developing country. Dr. Jess Ponting, professor at San Diego State, served as cinematographer on the film and even holds the world’s first PhD in Sustainable Surf tourism.

San Diego Magazine: What was it like filming in Papua New Guinea and how long did you spend in the region?

Dr. Jess Ponting: Filming in Papua New Guinea was a blast. After college I spent 18 months living in the country, so by the time we started filming, I knew my way around, understood the customs and was fluent in the language.

The first filming trip was in late 2003. I had just wrapped up my PhD field research in Indonesia. There were just a couple of weeks between arriving home and leaving again for Papua New Guinea. Director Adam Pesce and cinematographer Jason Argyropoulos were kids fresh out of film school, which worried me. I think we spent two months up there on the first trip. We must have looked strange lugging our mountain of high-tech equipment into small boats, on small airplanes, through bush material huts and under developed villages. We had a great time going to the village market and buying fresh fruits and vegetables to live on. The tropical fruits in PNG are incredible but aside from that it’s not really much of a food culture in the way that most Asian cultures are so we were getting creative with the local ingredients.

Director Adam Pesce, Cinematorgrapher Jason Argyropoulos

SDM: Did anything surprise you about the surf culture in Papua New Guinea? 

JP: The fact that a surf culture exists at all in Papua New Guinea is surprising. We came across a quiet little village called Wutung tucked away under a towering headland at the foot of the Biwani mountain range. When we rolled through in the morning we noticed what appeared to be miniature wooden surf boards leaning up against houses. We came back through a few hours later and were stunned to see a bunch of kids from the village surfing on these tiny boards on a shallow gurgling reef break. They told me that they’ve always surfed in PNG, lying down on the broken sides of canoes. They call these splinters, which gave the name to the film. They told me that in the 1980s a traveler left a surfing magazine in the village and they saw pictures of surfboards with fins and people riding waves upright. Their response was to head into the forest and carve the rough board shape from the roots of giant rainforest trees. They carved fins and devised a way to attach them to the board to mimic the shape they saw in the magazine. Then they taught themselves to surf standing up. Completely amazing.

For the village of Lido, where the film was largely shot, surfing is an important part of village life. The village has achieved national recognition and quite a few of the best surfers have had the chance to travel internationally to compete against other South Pacific nations. Surfing is the one chance they have to see the world and they are passionate about it.

SDM: How is it different from the surf culture in San Diego?

JP: Surf culture in Papua New Guinea is very different to San Diego. There are not enough surf boards to go around so surfers take turns. There will be a bunch of people surfing and a bunch of people hanging out on shore. There are no surf shops and so not much in the way of specialized equipment. I remember thinking when I saw the guys surfing in Wutung that there was not a single item of surf industry merchandise amongst them. No trunks, shirts, leashes, boards, fins, watches, sunglasses, shoes, rubber bracelets, no wetsuits. Nada. Its difficult to imagine being a surfer in San Diego without all the commercial trappings that go with it.

What is perhaps even more interesting than the differences is the similarities. The bottom line is -- we are all surfers. The common experience of wave riding is a point of reference that both cultures understand. Papua New Guineans get just as stoked as San Diegans when they get barreled.

SDM: How and when did you first become interested in surfing? 

JP: I grew up in Australia and first saw surfing when I was about 8 years old. I fell instantly in love. My parents would take the family to play tennis on Saturday mornings and the courts were right by Blackhead Beach. I would ditch tennis and watch the older kids surf. When I finally convinced my Welsh parents to buy me a surfboard, every spare moment I had, I was in the water.

My parents loved to travel and so I got to surf in Bali when I was 12 and Hawaii when I was 15. I was hooked on surf travel from an early age. When you travel with the goal of finding great surf it leads you to the most incredible places that most travellers and tourists never get to see. My goal, through the Center for Surf Research at San Diego State University, is to make sure that our impact on the places we visit as traveling surfers is a wholly positive one. Unfortunately, this rarely the case.

SDM: You have the first PhD in Sustainable Surf Tourism. Can you explain a little about this and how it came about?

JP: When I first left Papua New Guinea in 1997, I hopped over the border to Indonesia and spent almost a year on an overland surfing odyssey. Along the way I noticed that surf tourism was supporting communities throughout the Indonesian Archipelago, but that it was coming at a significant environmental and social/cultural cost. Surf tourism accommodation was not adequately sewered, solid waste was being dumped directly into the environment. Visiting surfers were not on their best behavior and drugs and prostitution seemed to follow surfer driven tourism development into previously conservative Muslim, Christian, and Hindu communities.

I realized that surf tourism could become a force for wholly positive change if we could do some research into more appropriate management plans and use some of the tools that I’d learned doing community development work in PNG. I came back inspired and started on a master’s degree in tourism management that looked at the sustainability of surf tourism in Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands.

My university then offered me a full scholarship to continue the research at the PhD level, so I went for it. I look at how surf travel impacts the lives of surf destination communities.

SDM: What do you hope people take away from the film?

JP: I hope that people see the connection between the Lido community and themselves. Lido surfers are stoked on surfing just like we are. We are linked by our love of the ocean and the energy that pulses through it. We are in a position to be able to support these coastal communities achieve community development in their own terms and manage surf tourism in ways that they deem appropriate for themselves. This is why I created the Center for Surf Research. I hope the film will inspire people to think about the communities and environments they travel through as surfers. I also hope the film will inspire people to engage with the Center for Surf Research.

For more information visit snagfilms.com/splinters.

>via: http://www.sandiegomagazine.com/Blogs/Around-Town/Winter-2012/Q-A-with-the-Wo...

__________________________

OTELO BURNING

Full Synopsis

It is 1989 and the struggle against apartheid has reached its peak. The story starts when 16 year old Otelo Buthelezi, his younger brother Ntwe and his best friend New Year are invited to the beach-house where their new friend's mother is a domestic worker.

They watch Mandla Modise surf and he takes the boys into a world previously closed to them. It is exactly the opposite of the township where they live - a place under a constant and growing threat from political violence fuelled by Inkatha hostel dwellers on one side, and United Democratic Front comrades on the other. For the boys, who previously had a deep-seated fear of the sea, "flying on water" comes to represent freedom, and they are sold.

Soon, everyone recognises that Otelo is truly gifted on the water, a surfing star in the making. An older white man, Kurt Struely, approaches the boys, certain of their potential. He invites them to his home to watch some professional surfers on video. He also paints an enticing picture of the life they could have if they learn to master the waves. With practice, Otelo soon outshines his friend, Mandla, whose resentment builds even more when Dezi, New Year's younger sister, falls for Otelo.

As the boys begin to win competitions, Mandla's jealousy grows and eventually he betrays his friend. In exchange for money for a new surfboard, he sells Otelo's brother out as a suspected informer for the apartheid security police.

When Otelo discovers the truth behind his younger brother's death, he has to make a choice between the money, glamour, girls and superstardom of international surfing and justice for Ntwe. On the day Nelson Mandela steps out of prison for the first time in 27 years, the young boy makes a choice that will change his life forever.

Otelo Burning is the opening film for the 32nd Durban International Film Festival. The film is directed by Sara Blecher and is in Zulu with English subtitles. It stars Jafta Mamabolo (Generations), Thomas Gumede (A Place Called Home), and Tshepang Mohlomi (Izulu Lami).

 

Official Trailer

Music Video

Behind The Scenes

 

 

TV SPOT

Featurettes 1-5