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TV
Film
Features
Friday, March 9 2012
Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times
Four jazz musicians from Brooklyn, Ghana, and South Africa demonstrate how modern Africa reshaped jazz, how modern jazz helped form a new African identity, and how such musical crossings altered the politics and culture of both continents.
Thursday, July 14 2011
What a Wonderful 'Life': An Interview with Director Oliver Schmitz
Life, Above All director Oliver Schmitz brings the best-selling novel Chanda's Secret to the big screen with a dazzling cast of African actresses. Schmitz chats with Nik Ruckert about the making of this universal South African tone poem about tolerance.
Friday, April 8 2011
Revolution in the Mirror: Life Imitates Art in the Middle East and North Africa
Mass uprisings were sweeping the Middle East and North Africa just as Sergei Eisenstein’s 86-year-old agit-prop masterwork, Battleship Potemkin, commenced a multi-city US tour.
Friday, December 11 2009
Precious and Lee Daniels: State of the Race
In adapting author Sapphire's difficult novel for the screen, director Lee Daniels is helping change the way spectators view African American women by deploying stereotypes and then exploding them.
Monday, July 6 2009
Viva Africa: An Interview with Amadou & Mariam and BLK JKS
African music, often exiled from the pop mainstream, is making a new incursion in the U.S. Darling speaks to two major African artists, plus highlights the best new releases.
Columns
Tuesday, April 24 2012
Black Country Communion: Darius Rucker and Lionel Richie
Despite country's southern roots, there remains a dearth of black artists. Darius Rucker dipped his toes in those muddy waters in the past, but alas, Lionel Richie's new country album doesn't wade in much deeper.
Friday, April 8 2011
Passing Me By: African American Women and 'Passing' As a Film Genre
Caught between two worlds, standing on a near-literal precipice with one foot in the African American experience, the other firmly in majority white culture, the protagonist of the passing film is confronted with an impossible choice: live in truth as a person of color or risk “passing” for white to gain societal advantage.
Friday, March 19 2010
Six Years in the Life of Post-Blackness (Or Not)
If the 'black' in 'post-black' means “the last 40 years or so”, black folks are clearly moving beyond that; but to the extent that 'black' means “having to deal with the same-old same-old when it comes to racial attitudes,” then we ain’t post-nuthin’.
Tuesday, January 20 2009
Visions of the World
Three world-music documentaries deserving of your attention detail the unity of Islam through music, the convergence of South Asian folk with modern technologies, and the plight of Saharan desert dwellers.
Monday, January 12 2009
Happy-Go-Plucking
Steve Martin, Sufjan Stevens, and Kermit the Frog all know it and you should, too: the banjo is hands-down the coolest instrument out there.
Reviews
Friday, May 18 2012
Amadou Diagne: Introducing Amadou Diagne
Senegalese griot needs to do more to stand out.
Tuesday, April 17 2012
The Lijadu Sisters: Mother Africa
Women who will not be swayed from their essential selves, even if you aim a trumpet at them.
Tuesday, April 10 2012
Various Artists: The Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco
Strong architecture.
Tuesday, March 20 2012
Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang: An Letah
Hop-stab, hop-stab, it's a tease, can't go forward, can't go back, trapped, thrilling.
Monday, March 12 2012
Spoek Mathambo: Father Creeper
With a lot going on, South African Spoek Mathambo's second album unleashes township tech on unsuspecting passers by. While it's good, it doesn't quite fully hang together.
Blogs
Friday, December 16 2011
Ten Notable Holiday Songs of the Past 30 Years
These ten songs from the past 30 years are notable for being gifts that keep on giving.
Monday, December 5 2011
'An African Election' Screening at NYC's Quad Cinema
"The psychology of Ghanians, when it comes to governance or politics generally, has been influenced by our history," notes Baffour Agyeman-Duah, an expert on governance."…
Thursday, October 27 2011
But Is It Art? A Look at Pop Culture in South African Music
Contemporary South African popular music reveals a myriad of artists searching for an identity in a country still recovering from racial hatred; and a youth looking to the past in order to make sense of the present.
Thursday, August 25 2011
Africa's Crime Writers Are Coming to the Fore, Inspired by Violence
In the second decade of the 21st century, some of the most compelling contemporary crime-fiction novels are either set in or coming from Africa.
Tuesday, July 26 2011
'Mugabe and the White African' Premieres on PBS on 7/26 at 10pm
Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson's documentary traces the legal case that white farmer Mike Campbell brings against the Zimbabwean government. He's a white farmer trying…
News
Friday, May 11 2012
‘Under African Skies’ is a moving look at ‘Graceland’ artists
LOS ANGELES — When Paul Simon’s seminal album “Graceland” landed in 1986 with its intoxicating African rhythms and critical acclaim, it also came tainted by…
Thursday, February 9 2012
Pan African film festival going strong at 20
LOS ANGELES — Ayuko Babu, cofounder and executive director of the Pan African Film & Arts Festival, which kicks off its 20th anniversary Thursday, peppers…
Tuesday, January 31 2012
3 pioneering African-American actors made their mark through song and drama
LOS ANGELES — It’s been a long, difficult road for African Americans in achieving equality in all aspects of American life, and Hollywood is no…
Monday, January 23 2012
‘Opika Pende’ box set resurrects the world of early African music
LOS ANGELES — Jonathan Ward’s music room in his second-floor walk-up is a tight, comfortable space with three walls full of records and itsy speakers…
Friday, November 4 2011
Isabel Wilkerson dramatizes story of African-Americans who fled the South
CHICAGO — Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, fled Mississippi in fear for her life after a relative was falsely accused of turkey stealing,…
Media
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