Heaven and Earth,

VIFF’s enviro film series

Tend to your green thumb at the Vancouver International Film Festival

by Amanda McCuaig on September 28, 2011 

Vancouver’s largest film festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, is set to begin today. With 300+ films showing over 16 days, and hundreds of volunteers coming together to make it happen, it’s no surprise that this time of year becomes the “what are you seeing at VIFF?” time of year.

If you’re looking to spend your $12 ticket price on something with a green lean, you’re in luck. This year is the 5th year that VIFF is presenting its Environmental Film Series, sponsored by WWF-Canada. Choose from 21 documentaries and films that take the viewer to “remote places for direct encounters with antiquated lifestyles and nature in the raw.”

Heaven and Earth, the theme of this year’s VIFF Environmental Film Series, collects stories that explore the admonishments destroying our planet and the beauty of nature that continues to inspire humankind. But all in all, “whatever your politics, certain kind of films take us out-of-doors in marvellous ways, leaving us to draw our own conclusions about how to better live our lives.”

 

Canadian Enviromental Doc Picks:

PEOPLE OF A FEATHER
Canada | Dir: Joel Heath | View Trailer
Employing astounding time-lapse photography captured over seven years, environmentalist Joel Heath illustrates how a remote Inuit community’s traditional way of life is being ravaged by climate change. As an increasingly volatile ecosystem lays waste to flocks of eider ducks, the people who rely upon the birds are left to wonder how they will survive.

SEEKING THE CURRENT
Canada | Dir: Nicolas Boisclair, Alexis de Gheldere | View Trailer
Directors Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere, together with Quebecois film star Roy Dupuis, take a scrupulous look at Hydro Quebec’s plan to construct dams along the Romaine River. This is a journey of dedication that goes beyond the critique to envision a better future for the land.

PEACE OUT
Canada | Dir: Charles Wilkinson
As Canada’s energy consumption grows, scientists, industry and government are making hard choices about how to feed it. Charles Wilkinson’s latest eye-opener is a concentrated look the harrowing costs of our technological affluence.

WAKING THE GREEN TIGER
Canada | Dir: Gary Marcuse
By declaring that nature must be conquered in the name of progress, Chairman Mao ushered in an era of environmental degradation for China. Now, passionate activists strive to preserve their natural wonders, educate their compatriots and encourage public debate. Gary Marcuse’s stirring documentary celebrates the brave souls at the forefront of China’s new revolution.

ON THE LINE
Canada | Dir: Frank Wolf | View Trailer
Director Frank Wolf’s low-tech journey from the Alberta Tar Sands to the B.C. coast traces the planned route for the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project, highlighting the soon to be affected locals and the as yet unspoiled wilderness over which this environmentally heedless project looms.

Environmental documentaries from around the world:

BLOOD IN THE MOBILE
Denmark/Germany | Dir: Frank Piasecki Poulsen | View Trailer
Winner, Cinema for Peace Award for Justice, Berlin 2011.
In this fearless piece of investigative journalism, Frank Poulsen seeks to uncover the truth about the “blood minerals” that power our cell phones. Who are the real villains here: the ruthless henchman running the African mines or the cold-blooded suits turning a blind eye in Nokia’s corporate headquarters?

LETTERS FROM THE BIG MAN
USA | Dir: Christopher Munch | View Trailer
Nursing a broken heart in the wilds of Oregon, Sarah suspects that she’s not alone. Indeed, she’s acquired a particularly secret admirer: a soulful, reclusive Sasquatch. Utilizing this risky device, director Christopher Munch truly takes us out of doors for a profound and glorious meditation on the natural spirits of our Cascadia.

FLIRTING WITH HEIGHTS
France | Dir: Jean-Michel Bertrand | View Trailer
There have been many beautiful wildlife films, but few attain the virtuosity and poetry of Jean-Michel Bertrand’s monumental chronicle of the flora and fauna of the Swiss Alps. Bertrand worked solo for four patient years and the results are extraordinary.

THERE ONCE WAS AN ISLAND: TE HENUA E NNOHO
New Zealand/USA | Dir: Briar March | View Trailer
The inhabitants of a beautiful Micronesian atoll contend with the merciless effects of climate change in Briar March’s alarming documentary. With their island being regularly inundated by rising tides, these proud people must face the strong possibility of not only losing their homes but also their culture.

BURNING ICE
UK | Dir: Peter Gilbert
Jarvis Cocker, Leslie Feist, K.T. Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Robyn Hitchcock, Laurie Anderson and Ryûichi Sakamoto are among the people featured in Peter Gilbert’s refreshingly different approach to raising awareness about climate change. Along with a group of scientists, these musicians go on an expedition to the high Arctic, and together we witness some unforgettable images and sounds.

UNDER CONTROL
Germany | Dir: Volker Sattel | View Trailer
In the double wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the German government’s decision to abandon nuclear energy by 2022, Volker Sattel’s cogent examination of the nuclear industry takes on ironies unimagined. Offering extraordinary inside access to nuclear plants in Germany and Austria, this is a film of significant aesthetic and informational achievement.

JOURNEY ON THE WILD COAST
USA | Dir: Greg Chaney | View Trailer
The antithesis of a boring vacation video! Using only a hand-held video camera, Greg Chaney documents two newlyweds’ ambitious bid to hike, paddle and ski from Seattle to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Their life-altering odyssey immerses them in Pacific Coast’s unparalleled beauty, but also leaves them at the mercy of nature’s sometimes cruel whims.

HEAVEN AND EARTH
Austria | Dir: Michael Pilz
An epic two-part documentary that “teaches you to see and hear things in a completely new way” (Ulrich Gregor), Michael Pilz’s classic examination of life in a mountain village in the Austrian state of Styria uses an open approach that allows for quiet rhythms and a transcendental accumulation of poetic detail.

BIG BLUE LAKE
Hong Kong | Dir: Jessey Tsang Tsui-Shan
Indie fiction films from HK are rare these days: a film as polished and moving as Jessey Tsang’s portrait of her home village is precious indeed. When Lai Yee returns home to her ailing mother, she uncovers family secrets, remembered loves, and buried yearnings. A meditation on disappearing history that’s graceful, melancholic and inspiring.

SUSHI: THE GLOBAL CATCH
Winner, Special Jury Prize, Seattle 2011.
USA | Dir: Mark Hall | View Trailer
Wide-ranging, thorough and fascinating on many levels, Mark Hall’s investigation into the past, present and future of the exploding sushi industry covers everything from the best sustainability practices worldwide to the seven-year apprenticeship that Japanese sushi chefs must undertake.

TWO YEARS AT SEA
UK | Dir: Ben Rivers
Acclaimed experimental filmmaker Ben Rivers’ first feature takes as its subject Jake, a hermit who lives in isolation in remote Scotland. The film documents Jake’s solitary existence, capturing moments of profound beauty as he passes the time with strange projects, living the radical dream he had as a younger man, a dream he spent two years working at sea to realize.

THE OTHER CALIFORNIANS
Mexico | Dir: César Talamantes
Shuttling us to the remote deserts of Mexico’s Baja California, César Talamantes introduces us to the “rancheros” who carve out a hardscrabble existence there. While the arid vistas are decidedly striking, it’s the evocative images of these “untamed hooligans” at work and in repose that lend this documentary its rough-hewn beauty.

IT’S THE EARTH NOT THE MOON
Portugal | Dir: Gonçalo Tocha | View Trailer
Winner, Special Mention, Filmmakers of the Present, Locarno 2011.
Take a trip with Gonçalo Tocha to Corvo, the smallest island in the Azores, a self-sustaining place of mystery, superstition and fantastic natural scenery. Over three years Tocha set out to be Corvo’s contemporary social historian, and the result is just about the warmest film you’ll ever see.

YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED
UK | Dir: Anthony Baxter | View Trailer
Winner, Green Award (best environmental film), Sheffield 2011.
In this all-too-real David vs. Goliath drama, a few Scottish farmers find themselves in the way of bragging and bullying Donald’s Trump’s plans for developing the “world’s top golf resort” on ecologically fragile coastal sand dunes near Aberdeen. Documentarian Anthony Baxter offers us a stirring example of principled resistance, but asks if, in fact, Goliaths lose. Music by Sigur Rós’ Jónsi.

TASTE THE WASTE
Germany | Dir: Valentin Thurn | View Trailer
Valentin Thurn’s timely and startling documentary on global food waste (did you know that on the way from the farm to the dining-room table, more than half of all food ends up in the garbage?) is both a call to arms and a how-to for doing our best to eliminate this major problem.

LIFE ABOVE THE CLOUDS—A FAIRY-TALE VALLEY IN THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS
Germany/Italy | Dir: Titus Faschina
Life Above the Clouds is a marvelous series made for European television that we are inspired to present on the big screen. We will screen four of the five series sections, all of which take us to remarkable locations on the European continent where humans have managed, through perseverance and in a most impressive manner, to establish themselves “above the clouds,” despite all temptations of a simpler life further down below.

For more about VIFF or for a full schedule, visit www.viff.org.

The Art of El Anatsui

- Documentary

 

Trailer for 2011 release of Fold Crumple Crush, Susan Vogel's documentary look at El Anatsui, the renowned Ghanaian sculptor, active for much of his career in Nigeria. Synopsis:

...The film circles around Anatsui, drawing ever closer to a deep understanding of the man and his surprising bottle top hangings. We see the celebrated artist installing work on the great world stage of the Venice Biennale; we follow him back to the small town of Nsukka as he goes about his daily life, then watch him inside the hive of his studio directing assistants as they stitch together bottle tops into a vast metal hanging. Finally, Anatsui admits us to the privacy of his home where he tells us about his formative years, and reveals a youthful discovery that clouded his life.

 

__________________________

EL ANATSUI - MY WORK

>via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE-GkTQTvHY

__________________________

HE'S THE TOPS

The art world is waking up to the brilliance of El Anatsui, who weaves beauty out of bottle tops. Paula Weideger meets him ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Winter 2009

El Anatsui, grey-haired and softly spoken, sat across from me on a black leather sofa in the lobby of a New York hotel. We had met to talk about his large and shimmering hangings. “I see myself as a person and an African,” he began. And indeed he was born in Ghana and since 1975 has taught and sculpted at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was quick to grasp what I was after when I asked a question but slow, sometimes very slow, to respond. The pauses between his words, between one sentence and the next, could be very long. It wasn’t that he was worried about saying the wrong thing. Although he is a modest man, he appears solidly self-confident. His pauses seemed to exist to create spaces in which he could think. “Professionally,” he finally added, “I see myself more as an artist in the world community of art.” So he is. But the world community of art took rather a long time to confirm his view. Fortunately, he wasn’t languishing.

Anatsui has “a huge reputation”, according to Chika Okeke-Agulu, a former student of his, now an art historian at Princeton. “He is one of the best-known names in (and I mean in the inside world of) contemporary Nigerian art. He is one of the leading figures associated with Nsukka School…arguably the most influ­ential art school in Nigeria.” Lagos, an hour’s flight from Nsukka, has long had its own flourishing gallery scene and with that, active collectors. The novelistChinua Achebe and the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka are among those who own Anatsui’s work. The October Gallery in London has been showing his work since the mid-1990s. In 2006 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired one of his pieces for its African gallery. But it was only in 2007, aged 63, that Anatsui leapt into the heart of the wider art world. His springboard was the Venice Biennale, where he had exhibited in 1990, without making much impact.

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale Art School and director of the biennale, invited Anatsui to show two pieces in the Arsenale. Like all his current work, they were large hangings made of thousands of pieces of shimmering metal, stitched together with copper wire. They are astonishingly beautiful and not like anything done before. Some think of them as tapestries; Anatsui calls them sheets. It is common to hear them compared to Byzantine mosaics, but the differences are greater than the similarities.

Anatsui’s art is abstract. Colour, shape and light tell his story. In some pieces there are hundreds of dancing colours, while others are dominated by broad swathes of silver or gold or red. Unlike mosaics, these works are flexible; hanging free, they ripple as if they were cloth.

Anatsui was the hit of that biennale. Of the pieces in the Arsenale, one was bought by Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum, the other for the Contemporary Collection of the Met. But his most talked-about work was a commission from the Belgian collector Axel Vervoordt for the Artempo installation at Palazzo Fortuny. “Fresh and Fading Memories, Part I-IV” was draped across the façade of this moody Gothic palace (pictured below). Wire fastenings were undone to let light into the upper floors—adding to the love liness of the piece, making the sumptuous fabric look ripped. Interest in Anatsui has been building ever since.

In October 2008 at Sotheby’s contemporary art sale in London, an Anatsui tapestry sold for $610,000, a world auction record for his work. (According to art-world gossip, one of his works has sold in the Middle East for over a million dollars. Vervoordt sold the Artempo piece, but will not disclose its price.) “Three Continents”, a dazzling 2.4 metres by 4.5 hanging, the outline of which resembles a Mercator projection, is priced at $700,000 at New York’s Jack Shainman gallery. (Several pieces by Anatsui will be included in Bonham’s contemporary art auction in New York on February 24th.) Commissions keep coming, including one for a 12 metres by 3.6 piece to hang in the atrium of the Bill and Melinda Gates campus in Seattle.

“El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa”, his first major retrospective, will open at the Royal Ontario Museum in October 2010. In February 2011 it reaches New York as the inaugural exhibition at the Museum for African Art now under construction on upper Fifth Avenue. As well as organising the retrospective, the MFAA has co-produced a 53-minute documentary, “Fold Crumple Crush: The Art of El Anatsui” by Susan Vogel, director of Columbia University Global Centres: Africa. It’s an engaging, informative and sensitive look at his way of life and of working.

In the film we see Anatsui at his local internet shop, doing his e-mail. We watch the rusty red earth kick up behind him as he heads for the shed of a seamstress who will sew packaging for him. And he takes us to the spot where he first came upon a bag of the bottle tops that are now central to his work.

Many African artists prefer to work with materials found near to hand. But just why were there thousands of bottle tops on Anatsui’s doorstep? The answer has to do with recycling. Drinkers return empty gin and whisky bottles to their local distiller, where they are refilled and given new caps. There is a keen market for the cast-offs. Melted down, they are transformed into cooking pots. Thirst being what it is, Anatsui has no trouble buying what he needs.

Some 20 men work on the hangings. They sit on the floor or hunch over tables in a large, open-plan studio. The round tops are cut out, the remaining aluminium is made into strips. Each element is pounded flat and pierced. Round ones are threaded together with round ones, strips with strips. Anatsui tells his crew what colour combinations he wants. These are then put together in sections, or units as he calls them. A unit might be two feet square or smaller.

“Working with the rings that hold the caps—that is very, very slow,” Anatsui says. “A few inches in a day. But when you work with the shaft of the cap that is very fast, because the basic unit is big.” Although he used to make preparatory drawings for his wood sculpture, he does no drawings for these pieces. “Now, I place things on the floor and move them around,” he says. “When I like where it is, it gets linked up. There are a lot of permutations all along the route.”

As the tapestry takes shape it begins to look like a giant jigsaw. But there is no pre-existing image. Even the artist may not know exactly what he’s looking for until it comes into existence on the studio floor.

“Fold Crumple Crush” will have its premiere at de Young Museum in San Francisco on February 13th. “El Anatsui”, says Professor Vogel, “is the first black African artist continuing to live in Africa who is making work of a grandeur and depth that is going to last.”

Anatsui knew he wanted to be an artist as a boy, but had no path to follow. “In my family”, he says, “there were creative people like my father, my brother. Some were poets, others composed lyrics for dance groups, but there were no artists the way I am.” He wasn’t daunted. “I had a feeling that art was something I was going to enjoy. To enjoy is the most important thing.” Towards the end of a rigorous secondary-school education, his enjoyment was interrupted by a phone call that brought a severe emotional shock.

Anatsui found out that the woman who had raised him and whom he believed was his mother was in fact a cousin. His birth mother had died when he was one. The revelation surely played some part in his decision to give himself a new name. Emanuel, the first of his given names, became El. For the rest, no one will say. Anatsui does not wish to have the subject discussed, which of course only adds to its psychological weight.

He has never married. A long-time colleague believes that in more than three decades, no member of his family has ever visited him at Nsukka. But he seems comfortable with strangers and has spent decades in lively exchanges with his students. He travels widely: “I am a nomad. Home is a psychological state, not a physical place. You carry it with you.”

El Anatsui will soon retire from teaching. He is building a house on a bluff overlooking the campus, and will spend part of the year there, part in Ghana. He has already begun scouting Accra distilleries for bottle tops. “I am very much involved with the sheets,” he says. “There is so much variety, there are so many new ways of handling it—new textures, new relations.” 

Picture Credit: October Gallery, Grant Delin

(Paula Weideger writes about art for The Economist and is a contributing editor to Art+Auction magazine)

>via: http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/paula-weideger/hes-tops

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Wangari Maathai: Obituary

Professor Wangari Maathai the environmental activist, human rights campaigner and hero far beyond her home country of Kenya, died last Sunday (25 September). She had kept her illness private, so it was quite a shock to hear that she'd been ill and died in hospital during surgery. The videos below tell her story and mission far better than I can. The work of the organisation that she founded - Green Belt Movement will go on.  Wangari Maathai will be much missed.

Guardian Obituary of Wangari Maathai

 

Unbowed, Wangari Maathai's autobiography

African Weekly Inspiration

AfricanWeeklyInspiration84

Wangari Maathai

Every week African Digital Art showcases digital projects made by African artists or projects influenced by Africa. It is exciting to see African projects that displays and encourages creativity. Inspiration is a key component in the design process so we searched the web for the best projects from a variety of genres. We are here to promote your work so don’t forget to send us your recommendations. We recently introduced our online community  The District,

 Africa’s creative online space. If you are interested in submitting your work please join the African Weekly Inspiration Group and submit projects from around the world that highlight Africa’s creativity, diversity and innovation. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr so post your projects and we’d be happy to share.

RIP Wangari Mathai [via KWELI Mag]

Wangari Maathai
Gerardo Ugarte

>via: http://www.africandigitalart.com/2011/10/african-weekly-inspiration-84/

__________________________

 

Remembering Nobel laureate

 

Wangari Maathai in her words

 

Wangari Maathai passed away on September 25 at the age of 71, after a year-long battle with cancer. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the first person to win for environmental activism.

Maathai had been first in a lot of things. She was the first woman in central Africa to hold a PhD and the first woman head of a university department in Kenya. In later years, Maathai was elected to the Kenyan Parliament and served as a cabinet minister.

Maathai published a memoir, “Unbowed,” in 2007 where she recounts starting the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which is responsible for planting more than 10 million trees to provide firewood and combat soil erosion — the project was carried out primarily by women.

In a 2007 interview with Steve Paulson on To the Best of Our Knowledge, Maathai shared insights from her memoir and talked about how she triumphed over discrimination and tribalism in her native land and became an environmental activist.

>via: http://publicradiointernational.tumblr.com/post/10768115017/remembering-nobel...

 

 

__________________________

 

 

Wangari Maathai

kilele:

Photo: Prof Wangari Maathai sits on a log cut down by developers at Uhuru Park in 1989. She fought and stopped the construction of a 60-storey building mooted by the Government of the day. (Seen via The Standard, Kenya)

Professor Wangari Maathai died on September 25th 2011 from ovarian cancer. The Government of Kenya announced she would be accorded a state funeral. More here

 

 

>via: http://fyeahafrica.tumblr.com/post/10809541199/kilele-photo-prof-wangari-maat...

 

 

 

Sunday, October 2, 2011

The world will remember

Troy Davis

 

Saturday thousands of mourners at funeral for Troy Davis remembered executed convict as 'martyr' and pledged to fight death penalty

A convicted murderer given the lethal injection despite emotional pleas worldwide for his life is being remembered this weekend as a gentle man who faced his execution with grace and dignity.

Sent to death row 20 years ago, Troy Davis was celebrated as 'martyr and foot soldier' by more than 1,000 people who packed the pews at his funeral on Saturday and pledged to fight the death penalty.

Davis, 42, was executed last month in Georgia for the slaying of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989, insisting his innocence and asking forgiveness for his accusers and executioners.

Troy's last words that night were he told us to keep fighting until his name is cleared in Georgia,' Mr Jealous said at the funeral on Saturday at Jonesville Church in Savannah, Georgia.

'But most important, keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else.'http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk

See the statement of the NAACP: The world will remember Troy's name

Long time civil rights activist, Dick Gregory, speaks a memorial on Saterday, to remember recently executed inmate Troy Davis.

Thousands of mourners

at funeral for Troy Davis

remember executed convict

as 'martyr' and pledge

to fight death penalty

• 
  
• Troy Davis, 42, executed last month in Georgia for slaying of Mark MacPhail Georgia man received huge support from celebrities and former presidents - Church memorial on Friday before Saturday funeral in hometown Savannah
• 
  

 

By MARK DUELL

 

Last updated at 2:37 PM on 2nd October 2011

 

A convicted murderer given the lethal injection despite emotional pleas worldwide for his life is being remembered this weekend as a gentle man who faced his execution with grace and dignity.

 

Sent to death row 20 years ago, Troy Davis was celebrated as 'martyr and foot soldier' by more than 1,000 people who packed the pews at his funeral on Saturday and pledged to fight the death penalty.

 

Davis, 42, was executed last month in Georgia for the slaying of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989, insisting his innocence and asking forgiveness for his accusers and executioners.

After: Pallbearers carry the casket of Troy Davis followed by family and supporters after his funeral today

Still angry: Friends and supporters chant in the street and block traffic outside Jonesville Baptist Church following the funeral of Troy Davis in Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday

 

 

'Troy's last words that night were he told us to keep fighting until his name is cleared in Georgia,' Mr Jealous said at the funeral on Saturday at Jonesville Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. 

 

'But most important, keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else.'

 

Davis's closed casket was piled with a spray of blue and white flowers - a colour scheme decoded by a close friend who mentioned his love of NFL team the Dallas Cowboys. 

 

Attendees each got a glossy, 22-page programme filled with a scrapbook's worth of photos, many of Davis in his white prison garb posing with family members during weekend visits.

 

Last night more than 250 people, including civil rights activists Benjamin Jealous and Dick Gregory, jammed the New Life Apostolic Temple in Davis’s hometown of Savannah.

 

Unhappy: Davis died by injection for the 1989 slaying of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail

 

This church memorial served as a prelude to a much larger service for Davis's funeral today, where a line of people waited outside the Jonesville Baptist Church before it started this morning.

Dead: Troy Davis, 42, was executed in Georgia

 

On Friday, friends, pastors, anti-death penalty activists and Davis' lawyer all took turns at a podium behind his closed casket, decorated with a spray of white and purple flowers.

Longtime friend Earl Redman, who said he had known Davis since the age of eight, told the crowd on Friday that during prison visits Davis would often say that he expected to die in the death chamber.

 

‘He looked me in the eye and he told me: “Don't let me die in vain. Don't let my name die in vain”,’ Mr Redman said as a church usher tore paper towels off a roll for teary attendees to dry their eyes.

 

The Reverend Randy Loney, a Macon pastor who often visited Davis in prison, said he was always struck by Davis's gentle nature despite the death sentence looming over him.

Referring to the catchphrase adopted by his supporters - ‘I am Troy Davis’ - Reverend Loney said he came to realise that ‘in a lot of ways, we are not Troy Davis’.

 

‘We did not wake up every morning and go to sleep every evening with the spectre of the executioner in our eyes,’ Reverend Loney said.

 

Jason Ewart, a lawyer who spent seven years handling Davis's appeals, fought back tears as he recalled sitting with execution witnesses and watching the life drain from his client's eyes.

 

Mr Ewart recalled many long phone conversations with Davis, never shorter than an hour, in which the men spent twice as much time talking about their families as they did legal strategy. 

Public access: A line of people wait outside the Jonesville Baptist Church before the funeral of Troy Davis

 

Emotional day: Martina Davis gets into a car after the funeral of her brother Troy Davis in Savannah, Georgia

Mourners: A line of people wait outside the Jonesville Baptist Church before the funeral of Troy Davis in Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday. Davis died by injection for the 1989 slaying of policeman Mark MacPhail

 

Mr Ewart said his own grandmother had just died, and he pictured her and Davis together at ‘heaven orientation’.

 

‘She would say: “Jesus died on the cross not because he was guilty, but because we all were”,’ Mr Ewart said.

 

Davis's family opted to open the funeral on Saturday to his supporters and the general public, holding the service at a church that organisers say can seat 2,000 people.

 

The pastor delivering the eulogy said he hopes the funeral will serve as wake-up call on the death penalty much like the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till shocked Americans to the brutality of Jim Crow.

Ceremony: Funeral directors bring the casket of Troy Davis into the Jonesville Baptist Church before his funeral in Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday

Queue: Shari Robbings waits in line outside the Jonesville Baptist Church before the funeral of Troy Davis

Killer and victim: Troy Davis, left, enters court in 1991 to be found guilty of murdering off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail, right, two years earlier

 

 

‘Emmett Till's mother insisted on an open casket funeral in a way that the world could see the injustice of Jim Crow,' Revd Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, said on Friday.

 

'He looked me in the eye and he told me: “Don't let me die in vain. Don't let my name die in vain”'

Troy Davis's longtime friend Earl Redman

'It's much to the Davis family's credit that they have been willing in the midst of their personal pain to see that we are talking about a larger, national moral crisis.'

Till was killed and his body was mutilated by white men after the boy was seen speaking to a white woman at a grocery store in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955.

 

His death was an early flashpoint that helped spark the civil rights movement.

Family: (l-r) Mr MacPhail's mother Anneliese MacPhail, his son Mark MacPhail Jr, widow Joan MacPhail and daughter Madison MacPhail, spoke of their relief when the Supreme Court temporarily upheld the execution

Trying their best: Demostrators attempted to continue the fight last month to keep Davis alive

 

 

 

Reverend Warnock, head pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr once preached, said ‘it's not a perfect analogy’ to compare Davis' case to the Till lynching.

'In a lot of ways, we are not Troy Davis. We did not wake up every morning and go to sleep every evening with the spectre of the executioner in our eyes'

Reverend Randy Loney

Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing Mr MacPhail, who was shot twice while rushing to stop an attack on a homeless man.

 

After four years of appeals since Davis' first scheduled execution was halted in 2007, every court that looked at Davis' case ultimately upheld his death sentence.

 

Mr MacPhail's family and prosecutors insist Davis was the killer. But Reverend Warnock said he is among those who believe Davis was innocent.

Nas x Damian Marley live

@ Austin City Limits

Music Festival [Video]

 

September 19, 2011 by I Am Ayo

 

Yesterday we brought you footage of  Kanye West ‘s co-headline performance at the 10th anniversary of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, in Austin Texas. Now through the power of the Interwebs we are able to bring you footage of the legendary  Nasir Jones (backed by DJ Green Lantern on the 1s and 2s) and his Distant Relatives partner Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley. Below is footage of Nasty Nas performing some of his classic records for the Hip Hop loving faithful and footage of the two performing their 2005 collaboration “Road To Zion” off Jr. Gong’s Welcome to Jamrock LP… Enjoy!

Watch… Nas Perform Some of His Classic Records

Watch… Nas & Jr. Gong Perform “Road To Zion”

[via RapRadar]

 

 

 

<br />Novel - Body Down [Official Video] <i>by IAMNOVEL</i>

Body Down

Posted: 23rd September 2011 

 

Novel – Body Down by IAMNOVEL

DIRECTED & PERFORMED BY NOVEL
A REMIX VERSION OF JACKE PENATE’S “BODY DOWN”.
R.I.P. TROY DAVIS

WHY DO THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
WHY MUST THE BAD LIVE
THEY SAY LIFE IS A SAD SONG
I GUESS DEATH IS THE AD-LIB
& LOVE IS THE CHORUS
THAT WE ALL SING ALONG
THEY SAY HEAVENS A PRETTY, PRETTY, BIG, BIG PLACE
WELL THEY ALL CANT BE WRONG

YOURE GONNA GO SOON, GO SOON
GO DOWN THE PARLOUR
PICK YOU UP AND PUT YOU IN A SHIRT & A COLLAR
DRIVE YOU DOWN THE ROAD & LAY YOUR BODY DOWN
(X2)

BUT BEFORE THEY LAY
YOUR BODY DOWN, BODY DOWN
YOU GOTTA CHANGE THE WORLD
BEFORE YOUR SIX FEET UNDER THE GROUND
BEFORE THEY LAY
YOUR BODY DOWN, BODY DOWN
WE GOTTA CHANGE THE WORLD
BEFORE WE SIX FEET UNDER THE GROUND

I CANT STAND STILL
& I CANT BEHAVE
THEY SAY ITS THE END OF THE WOLRD
THEN WHY DONT WE PRAY
WHY CANT WE PRACTICE WHAT WE PRACTICE
PLEASE DONT JUDGE ME HERE
LET ME BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE
WE’LL SEE WHEN WE GET THERE

 

 

Legato’s Audiobiography

Posted: 31st January 2011 

NEW video “Legato’s Audiobiography” off the Mix Tape, Legato Blues Summer. Directed by Novel & Eli Brown. Performed by Novel. 2011

Big Fish Online Contest:

Flash Fiction and Prose Poetry

 

open October 1 – November 1

A prize of $200 and online publication will be given for the best piece of writing under 500 words that we receive. Flash fiction, short-shorts, micro-prose, prose poems, poetic prose, just plain short stories–whatever you call your briefest prose pieces, send them our way. The contest winner will be chosen by the CutBank editorial staff and announced on our website on December 1. All submissions will be considered for both online publication and print publication in CutBank. Submissions must be accompanied by a $9 submission fee.

 

Montana Prize in Fiction,

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction,

and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry

 

Open December 1 – February 28

Submissions for all contests are accepted December 1, 2011 through February 28, 2012. Winners receive $500 and publication in CutBank 75. All submissions will be considered for publication in CutBank. The contests’ $17 entry fee includes a one-year, two-issue subscription to CutBank, beginning with the prize issue, CutBank 75.

Please send only your best work.  With all three of these awards, we are seeking to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. Judges will be announced in fall 2011.

The Television Show Contest

Details

Deadline: October 31

Fee: Free

This month's contest is sponsored in part by Scribophile member Keshiins Deer.

Scribophile is proud to present flash fiction master Len Kuntz as the judge for our newest contest. Len is a writer from Washington State and, in the last two years, over 500 of his fiction and poetry pieces have been published in print and online.  Several of his works have been named "Best of the Web" and anthologized, and he's currently an editor at the literary magazine Metazen.

Everyone has a favorite TV show. Whether it’s a sitcom like Friends or How I Met Your Mother, a science fiction adventure like The X-Files, or a crime drama like Criminal Minds or Law and Order (or perhaps even L.A. Law or Hill Street Blues for those of us of a certain age), television shows have left their mark—shaping both our culture and us as individuals. Our favorite programs not only entertain, but for us writers often inadvertently instruct us in writing techniques like plot, pacing, point-of-view, dialogue, symbolism, and character development—sometimes without us even knowing it!

For this month’s contest, write a piece of flash fiction (1,000 words or less) inspired by a television show. Note: While we have nothing against fan fiction, this isn't a fan fiction contest. Stories that include characters from a television show won't be eligible. Instead, choose themes, character types, and plot devices you've learned from your television to inspire your writing. Use your favorite TV show as a springboard for your muse. If you’re inspired by I Dream of Jeannie, a story about a genie is appropriate. A story about a hot genie and an astronaut—not so much. Don't be limited by decade, genre, country, or popularity. Use television to spark your creativity—don't just copy it!

Ladies and gentlemen, start you remotes!

Second Light Poetry Competition

for Short and Long Poems 2011

 

The competition is now open for entries, DEADLINE Tuesday 1st November 2011.
 
PRIZES: FIRST £250 for each of Short and Long poems
SECOND £100 and THIRD £50, plus COMMENDED: Book prizes
All winning & commended poems will be published (in full or extract) in ARTEMISpoetry and poets will be invited to read at the adjudication event in London.
 
The competition judge is Fiona Sampson. Sampson’s latest collection, Rough Music, was shortlisted for both the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes in 2010. Her new edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Faber) is the Poetry Book Society’s Online Book Club Choice for July.
 
ENTRY FEES:
Long Poems (over 50 lines, no upper limit) £6 per poem
Short Poems (up to 50 lines) £4, £8 for 3, £12 for 8
Second Light Members are entitled to submit 1 free entry
 
RULES
– Submissions by Women poets only    *    Send TWO COPIES
– Second Light members are entitled to 1 free entry (can be either category)    *    Join SLN now for 1 free entry
– Poems may be on any subject    *    must be the unaided work of the writer    *    must not have been previously published in book form but may have appeared in magazines.
– Send TWO COPIES of each poem, typed or neatly written on A4 sheets, which should not bear the poet’s name.
– Include a separate contact sheet with name, address, telephone & email, plus poem titles.
– Cheque payable to ‘Second Light’ and send with entries to Dilys Wood at 3 Springfield Close, East Preston, West Sussex, BN16 2SZ.
 
Download competition flier

Mamela Nyamza

34-year old multiple award-winning dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, passionate development activist and motivational speaker Mamela Nyamza is the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Dance.

"It's such a great feeling to be recognised in your country," said Nyamza after hearing that she had won the award. "Now I can travel the world with confidence, and carry the flag with me everywhere I go. There are no mistakes in life. Dreams are for real. I have dreamt about winning this award, and now it's a reality."

Nyamza matriculated from Fezeka High School in Gugulethu, Cape Town, where she also attended the ZAMA Dance School, under the royal Academy of Dance.

"Growing up in Gugulethu with a huge family did not give me a choice but to love dancing. There is music and sound, all day long, and even in the streets the noise became the music," said Nyamza. "I used my body as the instrument to react to all forms of sound, whether it be playing, crying, or watching all sorts of things that one can imagine happened in Gugulethu in the 80's" she added.

She went on to study a National Diploma in Ballet through the Pretoria Technikon Arts Faculty. In 1998 she completed a one year fellowship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre, and also participated in intensive choreographic workshops at the Vienna International Dance festival. In 2005 she attended African Dance workshops in Soweto with Jamaine Acogny, and in 1997 she had Ballet Training with Martin Schonberg through the Pact Dance Company. Most recently in 2009, she did a major intensive course in dance directing through London's prestigious Sadler's Wells Theatre.

"No one warned me that it would be this difficult to be a dancer in South Africa, and there weren't many black female dancers back in the days who could have advised me on how to make it in this profession," said Nyamza. "So I juggled all of this on my own, not knowing what I was getting myself into. It is by no mistake that I am in the industry, it was meant for me. It actually chose me!" she said.

Since graduating she has been a member of the State Theatre Dance Company, lectured dance at the Pretoria Dance Technikon, The Dance Factory and Jazzart Dance Theatre, and was resident choreographer, teacher and Vice Principal of the Zama Dance School in 2007. From 2002 until 2005 she was also involved with various commercial, modeling and corporate projects, including being part of the Face of Woolworths Campaign in 2004, and her ongoing work with the Free flight Dance Company since 2002. She has also presented dance workshops in Brazil and Mexico.

"I love my art, because we have this powerful tool that speaks to all without a word, and that is powerful," said Nyamza.

Nyamza is currently project coordinator for the University of Stellenbosch's Project Move 1524, to educate and demonstrate through dance movement therapy on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug abuse. Her passion for upliftment and youth empowerment is evident through the various community outreach and dance training projects she has been involved in, from teaching ballet in Mamelodi to doing volunteer work at Thembalethu Day School for the Disabled.

"I think doing something with all your soul, you don't think about being drained, although it's all part of the parcel, it's like being a prophet spreading the word of Jesus and not expecting anything in return because you are doing good to the others. At the end of the day you feel so fulfilled that people are listening to your language – body instrument."

"Art has developed me, and opened a totally different book for me to explore the impossible which is now possible," said Nyamza about her passion for community work. "Giving back to the community is helping those that come from where I come from, and showing them that this art is so healing, and it can heal a lot of them that are born out of issues just like myself," she emphasised. She manages all of this outreach work amidst an intense performance schedule.

Nyamza has been part of various original grand-scale musical casts, including The Lion King in Denhaag, Netherlands in 2004 and We Will Rock You in South Africa in 2006.

In 2008 Nyamza choreographed and performed her own piece, HATCH at On Broadway, the Out The Box Festival and Baxter Dance Festival. She also took the piece to the Netherlands, where she performed it in shelters for abused women. She also performed this piece at the World Population Foundation. She did informal studio performances of the work in Brazil and Vienna, as well as at selected schools in the Eastern Cape, Durban and Cape Town and at the South African Domestic Violence conference in Johannesburg. During 2008, she performed in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha for the World's Aids Day, collaborating with Free Flight Dance Company and Dance For All. She was also selected as the South African representative invited to present Afro - fusion in Los Angeles, USA at the Superstars of Dance competition. Her work, Kutheni, was commissioned by FNB.

Other pieces choreographed by Nyamza include Reality Check (1999), Umakoti welixesha (2003), Some Of Us Can Change (2006), The Classroom (2007), If Clothes Could Talk (2008), Our Fear (2008), HATCH (2008), Kutheni (2009), I-Dolls (2009), Hatched (2009) and Shift (2009). She was also a choreographer for the reality TV-programme So You Think You Can Dance in 2008.

In 2009 she performed at the FNB Dance Umbrella and also took HATCH to Mexico for Foro Performatica. She attended the 2009 Young & Bright Artist's Conference in Cape Town, and was a commissioned artist for the Baxter Dance Festival.

Even after many years of experience in the South African performing arts industry, Nyamza is thankful for the opportunities to express her artistic views in the way that she wants to. "I now have my own repertoire, and I am so proud of my own achievements in the industry, thankful for all of those who believed in my art. I am ready to fly with the award, and take it to places where only the sky will stop me," said the dynamic mother, artist and activist.

The Standard Bank Young Artists Award is the latest to a long list of professional recognitions that she has received.

In 1994 she received a scholarship for her three years study at the Pretoria Technikon, and in 1998 she won a scholarship to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance center for a year in New York. In 2000 she won an award for the most outstanding performance by a female dancer in Contemporary style for The Dying Swan. In 2009 she was awarded a scholarship to the Vienna International Dance festival and in 2009 she received the FNB Phillip Stein Choreographers Grant for new work. In 2010 she was of the nominees for Spier Contemporary Art Awards.

"I worked hard to be where I am today. As a mother and as an artist, I am so proud of all my achievements in the industry and will continue doing the work I've been doing," said Nyamza. "I want to continue doing what I've been doing throughout the years, hoping that more doors will open for me. I want to see more light in my path, and use it in a good way," she added.