Tag: kenya

Afripedia to launch new platform to connect creatives with clients and each other

Africa’s representation has been exhausting – it’s typically about poverty and her friends, disease, unemployment and corruption. From the West, Africa is every NGOs wet dream or just one long sad story. Now being raised in Sweden with strong Ethiopian and Eritrean roots, Teddy Goitom and Senay Berhe knew the pitiful narrative. It all changed when they traveled to the continent in 2009 and witnessed its “hidden” glory for themselves.

This exposure was revolutionary for Teddy and Senay. As seasoned directors, they were compelled to use the power of film to capture how fellow creatives were navigating themselves on the continent and releasing their creative expressions. Behold, the birth of Afripedia, a visual guide for African creatives.

Created by Teddy, Senay, and fellow director of Stocktown Films, Benjamin Taft, the documentation of Afripedia’s content began on that 2009 journey to Ethiopia, Ghana and Burkina Faso. The trio are film heavy weights and have been innovating visual storytelling since the late ‘90s and Afripedia’s gripping and spirited essence is a testament to the mastery the trio have over this medium.

The foundation of Afripedia is to develop the imagining of Africa, hence the determination to share the documented stories with Swedish television, as well as the world. The initial process to gain Swedish co-producers and sponsorship was difficult because these potential partners wanted a European voice to narrate these African stories. However, Afripedia values the voice of the storyteller and the ownership of their narrative so Teddy, Senay and Benjamin financed their own productions.

The project of Afripedia was fuelled by a DIY mentality, with extensive research and nurturing global connections. YouTube and film festivals added to Afripedia’s reach and gained the site some funding in the end. The result being five short films being released in 2014 – Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, and Angola. Since the launch of these films, Afripedia has been part of more than 80 film festivals, the films have been shown on SABC, BET and Afridocs. Ethiopian Airlines, KLM and Kenya Airways have included the films on their in-flight entertainment.

These insightful films took about five years to complete and with the burning desire to continue the work they have started, Teddy and Senay have begun extending their documentaries into an actual database where the creatives can be found. This idea expands Afripedia into a platform on which African creatives can be recruited by clients and connect with each other in order to build their team.

The platform focuses on African creatives talented in production, so photographers, stylists, art directors, film directors, illustrators, graphic designers and animators. Before the platform is released in May 2018, Teddy and Senay are currently inviting prominent and emerging creative talent from Africa and the diaspora to join. When it is available to the public, the curated platform will be a virtual booking system, way to connect creatives and clients, and a digital portfolio.

To keep up with the innovative ways Afripedia is elevating the exposure of African creativity, subscribe to their site here.

29 March 2018
Isaac Kariuki on internet culture, autonomy and identity

Disillusioned by the idea that the Internet is a democratic space, digital artist Isaac Kariuki centres his work around internet culture, the body, autonomy and identity. I had a conversation with him about these themes, as well as his zine, Diaspora Drama.

Having studied a BA in Digital Art, Isaac confesses that playing around with Photoshop was where he learnt most of what he uses to create his work now, which is a combination of solo, collaborative and commissioned work.

As he started delving into more theoretical work, he realized that there was not much talk about the Internet in conjunction with African identities, or non-Western identities. “As someone who is from Kenya and who got on to the Internet thing very late as opposed to Western countries, I found we have our own structure and our own way of connecting with the Internet”. Isaac is interested in exploring those structures and relationships to connectivity, expressing that he thinks that the Internet is something that we can tether to what is going on politically, socially and culturally in non-Western countries, specifically African countries. Hence his focus on internet cultures and identity. “It is about what works in certain countries in certain contexts. So since the Internet is a Western territory, we have to go around it in certain ways to not get lost inside the western context and just like feed into it”.

Isaac’s ongoing SIM Card project was recently part of the exhibition Potentially “Flawless” in Toronto. In this project he looks at supposed “third world countries” and their relationship to the internet, and connectivity in general. With African countries having heavily embraced the cellular boom, he critically explores how cellular culture has become restricting and overwhelming. His work is a commentary on the monopoly that certain service providers have, and the limited narrative around connectivity created through their marketing strategies. As a way to subvert or mock the institutions that put forward this limited narrative, Isaac replicated the aesthetic of the advertising or what you would see on a SIM card, such as a smiling person. As a next phase in this project Isaac is working on developing a limited number of working SIM cards.

“I enjoy how people of colour use the Internet,” Isaac syas. Coming from the understanding that the Internet is an unsafe space for people of colour, seeing people of colour create spaces where they can represent and express themselves is encouraging for Isaac. With the Internet being flattened out in the sense that anyone who has access to it can create a page, Isaac enjoys how people of colour are creating safe zones in the scary, unsafe structures of the online where other people of colour can get access to information. When asked how he would re-imagine the Internet, he expressed that the main servers would be situated in remote places across the world so that it could be taken out of the control of large American corporations.

In keeping with the need for outlets for people of colour to share information represent themselves, Isaac started his zine Diaspora Drama in 2015. Using the word ‘Diaspora’ was important because he wanted to connect it with more light-hearted content about people of colour and their relationship to the Internet. Volume 1 of Diaspora Drama will be sold at the DIY Culture festival in London in May.

Check out more of Isaac’s work on his website

11 April 2017
Our legacy as black woman filmmakers is to show what is possible! An interview with global Bedouin Amirah Tajdin

Our interview would actually begin in the front seat of my car as we made our way through Johannesburg central. My appointment with Ms Tajdin had been made very late by an ANC convoy that had decided to cut in front of us. With no ways of getting through, and a very angry Metro police officer making sure we didn’t, we had no choice but to admire the spectacle making its way to Ellis park stadium to hear our esteemed president.

For Amirah this is the quintessential African experience. “It’s getting stuck in traffic from Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit as she landed in Kenya. It is seeing children running across the road, the sound of Papa Wemba blaring from the car speakers. That is what Africa is, it is Life”

Her first feature film entitled “Fluorescent Sin” like so much of her work functions to grasp such images of Africa. Yet for this film maker is it these very scenes of everyday life that offer her work its transcendence. Her commissioned short film for Sole DXB, entitled Baqal, features mesmerizing images of late night grocery and stores. Filmed in a dreamy decadence the images slowly pan of over the vender. As puffs of smoke wisp from their weary lips the viewer is made to feel like a nocturnal hunter on their evening’s inquisition.

For Amirah the spaces she roams are not clearly separated by geographic boundaries. She herself is no stranger to travel. A ‘global Bedouin’ she has lived in Kenya, Dubai, having received her art degree from Rhodes University. Her work has even shown at the Cannes and Sundance film festival and has attended residencies in Chile and Johannesburg. Her works celebrate how, where ever you travel you will always experience the same culture, the same store fronts. In all her travels it is in such street scenes that she sees the commonalities between the places she travels. “We think we are different but when you step out you can actually realise that we are all the same”. This self-identified Bedouin shows us the similarities of experiences and in doing so a shared humanity that is able to thrive.

Her own journey into filmmaker would start at 14 after watching the 1962 film “To kill a mocking bird”. She hated the movie for having betrayed the visuals of the book she so loved with the same name. Her decision to enter into film was one of wanting to take charge of the visual telling story. Her future works would centre on themes of womanhood, sister relationships and drag queens.

She is currently working on the script for her film, Hawa Hawaii, within it she deals with a complicated relationship with a mother and her flamboyant son.

“With HAWA HAWAII, I’ve brought the story closer to home and my heart, setting it in my home country of Kenya and more importantly, Mombasa – an island I have a complicated relationship with owing to its ancestral hold over my heritage and identity that continues to unravel itself to me. This coastal region has been the home of more than just my father and forefathers, it’s been the home of some of Africa’s most colourful characters, inspired artists and wandering souls. Hailing from this Swahili background myself, I felt compelled to pen a story set within it is sometimes restricting confines yet incredibly rich history.

As a Swahili woman myself who has never been able to live up to my expected role as a daughter, grand daughter and woman, but who nonetheless has a deep love for my culture and religion, I am bound by my birthright to share this story with the world. Not only because of the urgency with which it needs to be made but because it is MY love letter to my people and a community that is fast disappearing, silently.”

Her work is sincerely personal but it is in these intimate spaces that we are shown how not so different our intimate relationships can be. A must see work of hers is entitled “ Minerva’s Lilies”. Here she follows the corporeal fantasy world experienced by two sisters guided by the soft backdrop of a Dubai dessert covered roads. The soft Swahili Taarab music goads us to mediate on their moments with their mother. It’s a film that shows how even within the close and personal relationship between mother and daughters, a sense of individuality is also brewing. The girls experiencing their sensual pleasures of having their hair braided and taking bubble baths. The girls ride their bikes as their mother is left in the shot with her deep thoughts. It is a close relationship but it is one where all are growing to be their greater individual selves.

Amirah also recognizes the challenges of being able to tell her story as a film maker. She like many other woman in the industry have the great responsibility of telling our stories. Whether black, woman or African, these are our stories as those who feel the oppressive burdens of being within such categories. Yet when one watches her work we see that there is life beyond such oppression as we lose ourselves within those quiet intimate moments. She herself is no stranger to the trials of being a black woman in the industry and acknowledges that there is still much to be done. She sees her work as one of setting an example of what is possible for other young budding filmmakers. “My legacy is to dedicate myself to the cause”. Her success becomes the destiny set for others surpass.

You can follow Amirah on her website, on vimeo and on Instagram.

7 August 2016