Driving with Fanon
April 27, 2010 · 2 Comments
I am dying to see this film, “Driving with Fanon,” by my man Steve Kwena Mokwena, a Johannesburg-based artist. (I first met Steve in London in 2003. Very talented man.) I should have a copy soon and will report back. Here’s the description:
Driving with Fanon is a filmic meditation on violence, memory and the human condition in post-colonial Africa. Avant-garde filmmaker, Kwena Mokwena travels through Freetown, Sierra Leone with the ghost of Frantz Fanon, engaging a new generation into conversation about the radical black scholar, psychiatrist and revolutionary thinker. Through this film, we drive into the 21st century Africa guided by a Sierra Leonean journalist and writer , Lansana Fofana. This film uses a dynamic digital language to deconstruct dangerous stereotypical depictions of violence in Africa. Kwena’s daring use of funky hip-hop grooves and free jazz treatments turn the dull documentary format into an exciting experimental moment where young Africans can ask the hardest questions facing their generation. DRIVING WITH FANON juxtaposes classical cinematography with video art and music video like montages that create a new audio-visual language. It is a digital libation.
<!--more-->* BTW, Mokwena’s previous work includes the 2-minute short, “Black Dog Fire” (2009), about a day with his dog Wena (that means ‘you’ in Zulu) around Johannesburg. (“Black Dog Fire” is inspired by Sandile Dikeni’s poem, “Telegraph to the Sky”)
– Sean Jacobs