The value of a people and their social structure
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s film “Touki Bouki” is an excellent example of how the contemporary can be read through the (re)construction of myths and narratives from a collective memory.
6436 Article(s) by:
Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
An unusual sensitivity
One of the striking facts of Nabil Ayouch’s film is that Israelis love the land and the Palestinians love it too.
Yinka Shonibare’s National Treasure
The ever-well-informed African Art in London announced this week that Yinka Shonibare's contribution to the fourth plinth of
Guggenheim’s map–Where is the rest of Africa?
The recent announcement of the Guggenheim Foundation’s new “Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative” bears all
Shameless Self-Promotion: Chief Boima’s Many Identities
http://youtu.be/q88JPrlhzh4 If you're unfamiliar with my musical work, OkayAfrica.com recently did a profile on me for their web
The ‘Swedish Cake’ artist explains himself
Makode Linde calls his approach Afromantics: it use the blackface to show the connection between stereotypes, part of the same system of oppression.
Shell brought me here
A BBC reporter visits the old fields of southeast Nigeria, the site of massive exploitation by Shell Oil–in a helicopter provided by Shell.
We are not all Senegalese
Senegal’s scandal: Thousands of local boys or trafficked from neighboring countries (known as talibés) are forced into begging by religious teachers.
Parisian Africa
Younger generations of artists, many immigrants of African origin, are reconfiguring the arts in France on their own terms.
Photographer Gregory Chris: Shooting Nneka, Meta and Just a Band
Photographer Gregory Chris shot African music stars Nneka, Meta (of Meta and the Cornerstones) and Just a Band in and around New York City. Here he talks about how he came to chose these artists and what he tried to convey. "I wanted to shoot the artists in the streets of the city, in the neighborhoods where they live, their favorite places, inside their homes, in a place they feel comfortable. Basically, I wanted to shoot them as they are."
Uganda, now you have touched the women
In October 2011, the Ugandan government sent Ingrid Turinawe to the infamous Luzira Prison--Uganda’s Guantánamo--for the treasonable act of walking to work. This week, the State, again, attacked Turinawe and other women activists for the “crime” of standing, speaking out, driving, and generally being. Big mistake.
The Other African election: France’s First Round
Both of the front-runners, incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist François Hollande, have run against FrançAfrique. Easier said than done.
Mahesh Shantaram’s Addis Ababa Diary
Images of Ethiopia by Indian photographer Mahesh Shantaram
In Praise of Jeffrey Gettleman’s Pulitzer
Pulitzer awarded Gettleman $10,000 for “his vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa.”
Goldman Sachs’s Angolan interests
When the Financial Times commits an entire article to topics Angolan, it fills my Google news alert for a week.
Friday Bonus Music Break, N°7
Nowadays we're doing multiple #musicbreaks on Twitter and Facebook when the spirits move us. We figured we'd
Soviet cinema and African filmmaking
Abderrahmane Sissako’s oblique suggestion of what a ‘socialist friendship’ might be in his first film, “October” (1993) set in a then-declining Soviet Union.
The impotence of the political bourgeoisie
Ousmane Sembene’s “Xala” (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal.
Why is so much coverage of the Mali crisis so bad?
We mean the kind of bad that comes from being caught in a Beckettian loop of either saying nothing at all or having nothing to say.
The Swedish Golliwog Cake
It’s a brilliant staging of structural racism and post-colonial existence by the artist Makode Linde.