BOMBASTICELEMENT.ORG PRESENTS:
"Snow Falling on Cedis", a blog-comic strip about a bunch of immigrant kids from West Africa. They find themselves living on the snow slopes of a valley glacier in one of the remotest parts ofAlaska after their parents migrated in search of jobs in the region's booming hospice and elderly care industry.
Far from home, the kids fill their snow days dropping 'wisdom' on many things Africa-related. Lots of hilarity and punditry ensue.
Updated 3 times a week (Mon, Wed and Fri).
Enjoy & Share.
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Africa: European Films
Exploring African Immigration
Reuters' Silvia Aloisi on director Emanuele Crialese's "Terraferma" (Mainland), which screened at the Venice film festival. The film explores how the lives of a fisherman and his family on a remote island off the Sicilian coast are transformed when they rescue a pregnant Ethiopian woman at sea and hide her in their house. Excerpt:
...Crialese decided to make the film in 2009, after reading the story of an African woman who was one of only five survivors on a crammed boat that spent 21 days drifting at sea without assistance before running aground on Lampedusa."I was hypnotized by her face, her expression. She had just been through hell, three weeks at sea, with people who saw them, got close and threw them water and then abandoned them again. And she looked as if she had arrived in heaven," he said. Crialese offered the woman, identified only as Timnit T., the part of the pregnant Ethiopian in Terrafirma, a film which is a clear indictment of the crackdown on illegal immigration by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government and its ill-preparedness in the face of a humanitarian emergency."...she looked as if she had arrived in heaven," Crialese's description of the pregnant Ethiopian migrant literally gets painted on screen in another immigration film that screened at Venice. Check out the nude beach meets garden of Eden opening scene of Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost's The Invader (starring Burkinabé actor Issaka Sawadogo and Italian actress Stefania Rocca). Tambay's preview - here.
More stuff: an Italian graphic novel about another Ethiopia migrant - here. More or the depiction of racism in Italian cinema - here. More immigration cinema: S&A previews + trailers for Maggie Peren's Color of the Ocean (Germany) and Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (Finland). Erwin Wagenhofer's Black,Brown and White (Austria)
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Watch Trailer For Award-Winning
Race Identity Doc “Colour Me”
Here’s the trailer for Colour Me, a documentary examining the way we define race. It screened at this year’s San Francisco Black Film Festival and won the “Bronze Palm Award” at the 2011 Mexico International Film Festival.
Directed by Sherien Barsoum, the film follows motivational speaker Anthony McLean and his groundbreaking mentorship program for black teens in Brampton, the most demographically changing Canadian city. While challenging his students to analyze and abandon the stereotypes they have accepted, Anthony is forced to critically examine his own identity.
The film is still on the festival circuit but for future updates please check out the film Facebook page HERE or go to colourmethefilm.com.
>via: http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/archives/watch_trailer_for_award-winn...
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Film: "Black Brown White"
co-starring
Clare-Hope Ashitey (Austria)
"Black Brown White" is an Austrian feature film about a young Nigerian woman (Jackie) who is on the run across Sahara heading north, hoping to find a way of reaching Switzerland and finding the father of her son, a Swiss UN-employee who was once based in Nigeria. She is hoping he will provide education for her son.
Synopsis
Don Pedro (Fritz Karl) is a 35-year-old truck driver. Together with his paraplegic partner Jimmy (Karl Markovics), he operates a small freight shipping. Over the years they have devised an elaborate, nifty but also illegal system whereby they smuggle African refugees to Europe.
Jackie (Clare-Hope Ashitey), a young Nigerian woman, is on the run across the Sahara going north, her son Emanuel (Theo Caleb Chapman) at her side.
Their destination is Geneva, where the boy’s father, a Swiss UN-employee, lives. At the border between Africa and Europe, Pedro, Jackie and Emanuel meet for the first time.
But Jackie refuses to be treated as the other fugitives, who are locked in a hidden compartment in the truck. Against his better judgment, Don Pedro goes along with her request and together they make their way to Europe.
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Ethiopia/ Italy:
Comics, Immigration and
Remembering Hugo Pratt
Etenesh, landed on the coast of Lampedusa almost two years after starting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He wears the memory of a hellish journey, undertaken in the hope of a better future. He traveled to Sudan, the Sahara desert, ended up in the hands of human traffickers in a prison in Libya and has crossed the Mediterranean sea in an inflatable boat thinking at every meter, that everything was futile.Also with strong ties to Ethiopia is the life and work of another Italian comic artist - Hugo Pratt. In fact when Pratt died in 1995 it’s said the reknowned artist was holding an Ethiopian cross to his chest. His intense relationship with Africa was explored in this 2009 documentary, Hugo in Africa, dir by Stefano Knuchelm -trailer here.
Pratt's African bio included in "Corto Maltese in Africa" says, "from the age of of 10 to 16, Hugo Pratt was in Ethiopia with his family. He became friends with Brahan, a young Ethiopia who had fought the Italians and was forced to become a servant in the Pratt household. Thanks to this important friendship, Hugo learns Abyssinian, Swahili and his initiated into the customs of the country. Despite the war, he made friends amongst those who are supposed to be the enemy soldiers, shepherds, wise men, princes and tribe chiefs. In doing so, he developed an important characteristic of Corto Maltese: respect for different cultures... Thus did he become attached to African mythology. Those years in Ethiopia marked the beginning of Hugo Pratt's nomadic years." You get the feeling that the relationship between the young Pratt and Brahan had aspects of the relationship between Cush and the young prince in this page from "In the name of Allah the merciful" (from Corto Maltetese - Les Ethiopiques ):
