Premiering out of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, the impressionistic essay film “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” refracts the plot against Patrice Lumumba through a kaleidoscopic lens. Cutting between historical footage of the Un General Assembly and home movies shot in liberation-era Congo, weaving in a diverse set of perspectives, and setting the pace to a non-stop rhythm of bebop, rumba and classic jazz, director Johan Grimonprez evokes the euphoria of post-colonial possibility and the heartbreak of the dashed hopes and violent reprisals that would ensue.
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
- 1/17/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
World premiering out of the Marrakech Film Festival ahead of a wider and promising festival run, Luck Razanajaona’s “Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story” will offer the cinema of Madagascar its most prominent international showcase in nearly three decades.
The feat didn’t come easy — or quickly — for the Malagasy filmmaker, who graduated from Marrakech’s Esav film school in 2011 and then spent more than a decade crafting award-winning shorts while developing his first feature. Throughout that long development period — which eventually brought the filmmaker back to Marrakech for a slot at last year’s Atlas Workshops — Razanajaona honed and refined this story of a barely post-adolescent sapphire miner who returns to his native village in search of identity.
Among the many challenges was the simple question of period: The fact is, given Madagascar’s shatteringly predictable holding pattern, the narrative of dashed hopes and calls for reform could take...
The feat didn’t come easy — or quickly — for the Malagasy filmmaker, who graduated from Marrakech’s Esav film school in 2011 and then spent more than a decade crafting award-winning shorts while developing his first feature. Throughout that long development period — which eventually brought the filmmaker back to Marrakech for a slot at last year’s Atlas Workshops — Razanajaona honed and refined this story of a barely post-adolescent sapphire miner who returns to his native village in search of identity.
Among the many challenges was the simple question of period: The fact is, given Madagascar’s shatteringly predictable holding pattern, the narrative of dashed hopes and calls for reform could take...
- 12/3/2023
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
“We don’t have no movies about Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line,” Chance the Rapper tells me about the influential Pan-Africanist leader and his short-lived steamship company designed to facilitate travel and commerce across the Black diaspora. “I think it’d be really powerful for Black people to see and envision themselves on boats, like on top of them, not underneath, as chattel, but to be the voyagers and the directors of our future.”
Though Garvey’s Black Star Line crumbled under the weight of sabotage by the...
Though Garvey’s Black Star Line crumbled under the weight of sabotage by the...
- 11/22/2022
- by Mankaprr Conteh
- Rollingstone.com
At the start of “The Inheritance” — an experimental film about the formation of a Black collective, set in the early ’90s — Julian (Eric Lockley) rummages through a wooden crate of books he found in the West Philadelphia row house his grandmother left him. In it is a trove of poetic and political thought circa the late ’60s and beyond: There’s Malcolm X and Alice Walker, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, as well as Charles Mingus and a stack of Ebony magazines.
In the next scene, Julian’s friend, maybe girlfriend, Gwen (Nozipho Mclean) helps him tug and shove the crate across the floor of the near empty abode. He asks her to move in. She reminds him that the last time they saw each other was at least a month ago. They’d gone to see Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice”;” he cried and grew quiet. No wonder they...
In the next scene, Julian’s friend, maybe girlfriend, Gwen (Nozipho Mclean) helps him tug and shove the crate across the floor of the near empty abode. He asks her to move in. She reminds him that the last time they saw each other was at least a month ago. They’d gone to see Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice”;” he cried and grew quiet. No wonder they...
- 3/11/2021
- by Lisa Kennedy
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: In the wake of a hot 2020 which saw Blitz Bazawule’s Beyonce visual album Black Is King debut on Disney+, in addition to scoring the directing gig for The Color Purple feature musical, the filmmaker’s debut novel The Scent of Burnt Flowers has just been acquired by Ballantine Books.
Senior Editor Chelcee Johns at Ballantine acquired North American publishing rights from CAA. The novel is scheduled for publication in 2022.
The Scent of Burnt Flowers is steeped in the history of Ghana, specifically the 1966 coup of then-president, Kwame Nkrumah. The novel follows an African American couple, who are on the run after one commits a murder in self-defense in the Deep South of the United States. Unaware a coup is underway in Ghana, the couple’s plan for safety is to flee the United States and reunite with their old friend Nkrumah who they believe will grant them asylum.
Senior Editor Chelcee Johns at Ballantine acquired North American publishing rights from CAA. The novel is scheduled for publication in 2022.
The Scent of Burnt Flowers is steeped in the history of Ghana, specifically the 1966 coup of then-president, Kwame Nkrumah. The novel follows an African American couple, who are on the run after one commits a murder in self-defense in the Deep South of the United States. Unaware a coup is underway in Ghana, the couple’s plan for safety is to flee the United States and reunite with their old friend Nkrumah who they believe will grant them asylum.
- 2/1/2021
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
U.S.-based production company Congo Rising is preparing “Patrice Lumumba,” a film on the life of the Congolese leader who was assassinated in 1961.
Lumumba, the leader of the Congolese National Movement party, was instrumental in securing Congo’s independence from Belgium and became the new republic’s first Prime Minister in 1960. However, after a a political struggle that involved the Belgian government, the U.N., Soviet Union and the U.S., Lumumba was deposed within a few months of his assuming power and was subsequently executed in 1961.
Lumumba was held in great esteem by top U.S. civil rights leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who called him “the greatest Back man to ever walk on the African continent.”
The film will be directed, co-written and co-produced by Tshoper Kabambi Kashala (“Heart of Africa”), co-written by Veron Okavu On’Okundji and co-written and produced by Congo Rising’s Margaret Blair Young.
Lumumba, the leader of the Congolese National Movement party, was instrumental in securing Congo’s independence from Belgium and became the new republic’s first Prime Minister in 1960. However, after a a political struggle that involved the Belgian government, the U.N., Soviet Union and the U.S., Lumumba was deposed within a few months of his assuming power and was subsequently executed in 1961.
Lumumba was held in great esteem by top U.S. civil rights leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who called him “the greatest Back man to ever walk on the African continent.”
The film will be directed, co-written and co-produced by Tshoper Kabambi Kashala (“Heart of Africa”), co-written by Veron Okavu On’Okundji and co-written and produced by Congo Rising’s Margaret Blair Young.
- 1/28/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The third season of “Killing Eve” has begun production and added Harriet Walter and Danny Sapani to its cast, BBC America revealed Monday.
As fans of the Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer-led drama will remember, Season 2 left off with a cliffhanger, as Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) seemingly betrayed Eve (Oh) before Villanelle (Comer) shot Eve, leaving her for dead in Rome.
Walter is known for her role as Caroline Collingwood on HBO’s “Succession,” who is the second wife of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and mother for Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Kendall (Jeremy Strong). She also played Clemmie Churchill on the first season of Netflix’s “The Crown. Sapani played Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah on the second season of that series.
Also Read: 'Killing Eve': Sandra Oh Explains What the Shocking Finale Means for Season 3
As previously announced, Suzanne Heathcote (“Fear the Walking Dead”) will...
As fans of the Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer-led drama will remember, Season 2 left off with a cliffhanger, as Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) seemingly betrayed Eve (Oh) before Villanelle (Comer) shot Eve, leaving her for dead in Rome.
Walter is known for her role as Caroline Collingwood on HBO’s “Succession,” who is the second wife of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and mother for Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Kendall (Jeremy Strong). She also played Clemmie Churchill on the first season of Netflix’s “The Crown. Sapani played Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah on the second season of that series.
Also Read: 'Killing Eve': Sandra Oh Explains What the Shocking Finale Means for Season 3
As previously announced, Suzanne Heathcote (“Fear the Walking Dead”) will...
- 8/19/2019
- by Jennifer Maas and Tim Baysinger
- The Wrap
As is the case for most countries on the African continent, Ghanaian film history isn’t anywhere near as rich as the West. After it achieved independence from the British in 1957, Ghana boasted the most impressive infrastructure for film production in Africa, but eventually squandered that potential. After Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first democratically-elected post-independence president, was overthrown in a violent coup d’état in 1966, the new military regime failed to continue his nationalistic policies towards cinema, and instead reverted to pre-independence practices by depending on Europeans (over local filmmakers) to tell Ghanaian stories.
Now, one New Yorker with big dreams hopes to reclaim the promise of industry independence that Nkrumah envisioned decades ago.
Samuel “Blitz” Bazawule, a Brooklyn-based Ghanaian musician and filmmaker, wants to make up for lost time — starting with the production and distribution of his feature directorial debut, “The Burial of Kojo,” an ambitious visual stunner...
Now, one New Yorker with big dreams hopes to reclaim the promise of industry independence that Nkrumah envisioned decades ago.
Samuel “Blitz” Bazawule, a Brooklyn-based Ghanaian musician and filmmaker, wants to make up for lost time — starting with the production and distribution of his feature directorial debut, “The Burial of Kojo,” an ambitious visual stunner...
- 10/31/2018
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Ryan Pfluger for Rolling Stone
As Occupy protests spread in the fall of 2011, rattling elites and offering a brief, tantalizing vision of grassroots uprising, the most uncompromising and confrontational arm of the would-be revolution was in Oakland. At its center was Boots Riley, the longtime radical activist and frontman of the hip-hop group the Coup. While covering Occupy, I accompanied Riley to a foreclosed Fannie Mae house that had been taken over by squatters from the youth-led Tactical Action Committee and watched as he addressed the crowd during a march...
As Occupy protests spread in the fall of 2011, rattling elites and offering a brief, tantalizing vision of grassroots uprising, the most uncompromising and confrontational arm of the would-be revolution was in Oakland. At its center was Boots Riley, the longtime radical activist and frontman of the hip-hop group the Coup. While covering Occupy, I accompanied Riley to a foreclosed Fannie Mae house that had been taken over by squatters from the youth-led Tactical Action Committee and watched as he addressed the crowd during a march...
- 6/27/2018
- Rollingstone.com
Shirikiana Aina says premiere of her film in Rotterdam is ‘ironic’.
Source: Iffr
Shirikiana Aina
At International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) this week, filmmaker Shirikiana Aina has called on the Netherlands to acknowledge its colonialist past.
The director points out that one of the dungeons in Ghana spoken about in her film, Footsteps Of Pan Africanism, was called ”Fort Amsterdam.”
“It was the dungeon where Africans were held for months and months and months, sometimes for up to a year, along with other “goods” to be stored there for these ships from the Netherlands to take them off to slavery.”
Aina welcomes Iffr’s Pan-African Cinema Today (Pact) programme. “I think it is also very significant that it is in the middle of Holland which had such a huge and determining impact on the past and future of Africa. Their colonial presence was devastating. I don’t know if Holland has ever taken the time to look at...
Source: Iffr
Shirikiana Aina
At International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) this week, filmmaker Shirikiana Aina has called on the Netherlands to acknowledge its colonialist past.
The director points out that one of the dungeons in Ghana spoken about in her film, Footsteps Of Pan Africanism, was called ”Fort Amsterdam.”
“It was the dungeon where Africans were held for months and months and months, sometimes for up to a year, along with other “goods” to be stored there for these ships from the Netherlands to take them off to slavery.”
Aina welcomes Iffr’s Pan-African Cinema Today (Pact) programme. “I think it is also very significant that it is in the middle of Holland which had such a huge and determining impact on the past and future of Africa. Their colonial presence was devastating. I don’t know if Holland has ever taken the time to look at...
- 2/2/2018
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
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