AFRICA'S LEADING FILM FEST TRIES TO FEEL NO FEAR

One of the films to be screened.

Africa's largest film festival begins tomorrow in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou, amid some concerns that the conflict in neighbouring Mali could have an impact on both the attendance and the atmosphere.

But Michel Ouedraogo, the “delegate-general" of FESPACO (the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) has promised that security will be ensured.

At a recent briefing in Paris to unveil the event, Ouedraogo expressed his country’s “solidarity with the people of Mali”, while stressing that “Africa has a tolerant culture”. The organizers also pointed out that the festival has seen three coups since its beginning in 1969, but is still going strong.

Now in its 23rd edition, the biennial festival will screen 169 films from 35 countries over the next week, with the selection of the winning director eagerly awaited.

This year, for the first time, the Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), based in  Brussels, will give an  award of 3000 euros in the framework of the ACPCultures+ Programme. The award will go to the film that best reflects the objectives of the programme.

“We’re doing this because we strongly believe that culture is important to achieve  sustainable development,” said Michèle Dominique Raymond, the ACP Assistant-Secretary General for Political Affairs and Human Development.

“There is no future without culture,” she told SWAN. “We want to do our best to find means to provide some financial support to filmmakers, having in mind the global financial crisis.”

The festival’s central theme in 2013 is “African Cinema and Public Policy in Africa”, and the debates around the topic have ironically focused on the festival itself, with some observers wondering if it costs too much in a country where the 2012 unemployment rate was over 70 percent. Other critics wonder whether the event is too “elitist”.

"Cobwebs" tells a Malian story.

Responding to such questions, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Culture and Tourism Baba Hama said that the festival’s organizational cost of 978 million CFA francs (2 million dollars) brings returns in the form of increased tourism and development of African cinema.

He said that while the government of Burkina Faso and the European Union provided the largest share of funding, invaluable assistance also came from some NGOs and external organizations.

The festival has enabled African filmmakers to gain international attention, and also offers the public a means of seeing Africa's stories on screen, the event's supporters say.

Burkina Faso itself will have only one movie among the 101 feature films in competition, with the rest coming from South Africa, Morocco, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Angola, and other participating countries.

Mali will be represented by "Toiles d’araignée" (Cobwebs), the first feature film by Ibrahima Touré. It tells the wrenching story of a young woman named Mariama who rejects the old husband that her father wants her to marry and who is tortured and imprisoned as a result.

The film is an adaptation of the eponymous novel, by mathematics professor Ibrahima Ly, who himself was incarcerated from 1974 to 1978 at a time when Mali was under military rule.

The festival's “guest of honor” this year is Gabon, which celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence in 2012. According to Ardiouma Soma, FESPACO’s Artistic Delegate and head of programming, the Gabonese were already making films at the dawn of African independence. “This is a country that was part of the birth of African cinema,” Soma said.

The Gabonese entry in the feature film competition category is “Le collier de Makoko” (The King’s Necklace) by Henri Joseph Koumba Bididi. Filmed in Africa and France, it has been touted as the first high-budget film by an African director.

LITERATURE PROVIDES COMFORT TO A TROUBLED CITY

Article and photographs by Zofeen T. Ebrahim

Literature fans discover new books at the festival.

For three full days, from Feb 15-17, Pakistan's Karachi Literature Festival provided a menu designed to tempt the most discerning of literary palates, complemented by an enviable list of authors, writers, poets and journalists.

The place reverberated with discussions, dialogues, readings, conversations on subjects that ranged from social satire to films, from cricket to politics, from secularism to human rights. And the intense discussions were interspersed with theatre, music, poetry, storytelling for children, and puppet shows.

One could not help but notice how surreal the surrounding was. Held at the Beach Luxury Hotel grounds next to the creek, the festival experienced cool breezes and filtered sunlight that made the atmosphere perfect for the event. It was also more accessible and bigger than the previous venue.

Most sessions had packed audiences which showed how starved the dwellers of the violence-riddled city were for an intellectual discourse. "It goes to show that there are still educated people in Karachi," pointed out Farooq Sattar, a politician belonging to Mutahidda Qaumi Movement party. 

  

Amina Saiyid, the director of Oxford University Press, one of the co-organisers, traces the festival’s galloping growth from a modest 35 speakers and 34 sessions back in 2010, to as many as 240 authors and 100 sessions now in its fourth year.

A panel discusses Afghanistan.

Fifty of the authors were international, and attendance has risen steadily from 5,000 in 2010 to 10,000 in 2011, and to 15,000 last year. In addition, 23 books were launched. However, the director refuses to bask in the success of the event which she terms "every publisher's dream".

Saiyid, who was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ambassador of France in Pakistan, Philippe Thiebaud, got the inspiration from the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF)" which she considers "the mother of all literature festivals in South Asia" (see earlier SWAN article). However, she does not want to tread the same path as the JLF's because it has "become a victim of its own success".

"It's become quite unwieldy and lost the intimacy and connection," she said. For that reason alone, she doesn't want the KLF to become "a totally wild mob scene".   

But her co-organiser, Dr Asif Farrukhi, wants to see a "bigger and better" KLF next year, but one that should "reflect Pakistan". Quite satisfied with how the events unfolded, he said he found that the questions asked by the audience after the panel discussions reflected how sharp and knowledgeable they were. 

Dr Azra Ahsan, Karachi's leading gynecologist and obstetrician, liked the "festive" atmosphere which she found infectious. She said it gave her a glimmer of hope for Pakistan when she saw the crowd comprising "people of all ages there talking and not fighting".

"The fact that there was so much intellectual stimulation, the opportunity to hear and meet some of the authors and to hear what their thought processes were behind their works" is what psychiatrist Dr Murad Moosa Khan liked best.

A session on politics and the Pakistani English novel.

Moderating the session on cricket and cricket writers, Khan said it gave him an "opportunity to get views of those (panelists) who have an in-depth knowledge of the game as well as great writing styles".

But there were some topics that people would like to see in the next KLF.

Sumera Naqvi, a Karachi-based journalist and a literature buff, said while there were sessions on poet Ghalib and short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto, there were other epic literary giants who didn't get even a mention. "Why were poets of the 80s like Habib Jalib and linguists like Jameel Jalibi completely ignored from the literary discourse?"

Also conspicuous by his absence was Mushtaq Yusufi, an Urdu satirical and humour writer. 

Psychiatrist Khan felt there should have been a session on the psychological impact of the violence that is happening to Pakistanis. In addition, he said, there was also nothing on "ethics and morality".

"I would like to see both these addressed in future KLF," said Khan.

Farrukhi, himself a writer and a critic, said he would have liked to see more of "Urdu and other Pakistani languages" represented. 

  

But there are people who also expressed the feeling that there was too much discussion on politics. 

"It may seem that there were more panels that could be termed political, but how can you separate politics from literature or from life because literature is about life?" countered Saiyid who does not subscribe to knowledge being compartmentalised. "And literature is not just about writing beautifully but also about beautiful thoughts and ideas."

Zofeen T. Ebrahim is a freelance journalist based in Karachi.

Editor’s note: The city of Lahore in Pakistan will also hold a literary festival, its first, on Feb. 23 and 24.

AFRICAN ARTISTS COME OUT IN SUPPORT OF MALI

Angelique Kidjo

Declaring that “if you want peace, you have to make peace”, the renowned African singer and activist Angélique Kidjo launched an evening of solidarity with Mali on Monday night in Paris that attracted hundreds of supporters of the West African nation.

The event was aimed at raising awareness of the need to restore and safeguard Mali’s centuries-old culture (see article below), following the destruction of World Heritage sites in the city of Timbuktu and elsewhere during a year of conflict.

“I’m here specially to support Mali’s cause and Malian culture … and also the culture and music of the wider African continent,” said the Benin-born star.

She said she was particularly concerned about the plight of girls and “all the women who suffer from violence during conflicts", with their violation seen as a weapon of war.

Kidjo, who also works as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, flew to Paris from New York to act as host for the evening of solidarity, and she welcomed other musicians to the stage for a poignant series of performances and speeches.

Rokia Traoré

Accompanied only by her guitar, French-based Malian singer Rokia Traoré delivered a haunting song that evoked aspects of the Sahara, while lute-player and vocalist Pedro Kouyaté expressed the joyous energy of African music in his performance. A troupe of drummers and dancers also pounded out a message of hope and resilience.

Notably absent were Malian icon Salif Keita and the husband and wife duo Amadou & Mariam, who apparently had previous, long-standing engagements. But echoes of their music drifted through the concert hall.

The “solidarity evening” capped a day in which government officials and international experts at Paris-based UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, adopted an Action Plan for the “Rehabilitation of Cultural Heritage and the Safeguarding of Ancient Manuscripts” in the country.

Pedro Kouyaté and band

Carrying out the plan will cost between 10 and 11 million dollars, officials said. It will include the digitization of Mali's priceless manuscripts and the training of professionals in culture conservation.

UNESCO has set up a special fund for donations by private and public sponsors and intends to “send a mission on the ground to make a full assessment" as soon as the situation permits. 

UNESCO VOWS TO REBUILD MALI’S CULTURAL HERITAGE

The United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO has promised to do “everything possible” to safeguard and to rebuild Mali’s “extraordinary” cultural heritage, but this will be no easy task given the uncertain future the West African nation is facing.

Irina Bokova

“Restoration and reconstruction (of cultural heritage) will give the people of Mali the strength and the confidence to rebuild national unity and look to the future,” said Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s director general, during a lightning visit to the country over the weekend.

“Now that Timbuktu will return to normalcy, we must do everything to help the people of Mali turn a new page in the spirit of national cohesion,” she stated.

The recent escalation of "wanton destruction" of Mali’s heritage made action all the more urgent, Bokova said. "UNESCO will spare no effort to help rebuild the mausoleums of Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao, and we will mobilise all our expertise and resources to help safeguard and preserve the ancient manuscripts that testify to the region’s glorious past as a major centre of Islamic learning. I appeal to all our partners to work with us,” she added.

In addition to 16 mausoleums, Timbuktu’s three major mosques (Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahi) were first inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1988. The Tomb of Askia in the city of Gao was added to the list in 2004. But in July of last year, this tomb and Sidi Yahi were inscribed on the "In Danger" list following the destruction of 11 of the mausoleums, and of the doors of Sidi Yahi.

The destruction took place during a year of conflict that began in northern Mali in January 2012. The complex internecine warfare and military coups led French armed forces to launch a campaign last month with the purported goal or restoring stability and unity to the country, which had divided along ethnic and religious lines. As French and Malian forces retook Timbuktu in late January, retreating rebels set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute, which held precious ancient manuscripts.

Peacetime Timbuktu © OUR PLACE The World Heritage Collection

Bokova’s trip, with French President François Hollande, was aimed at assessing the state of Mali’s cultural heritage and of manuscripts after the recent fighting. 

The agency says that an estimated 300,000 manuscripts are kept in private and public collections in Timbuktu. Many of them date from the 13th to 16th centuries and "were produced by great scholars from the city and elsewhere".

UNESCO, whose headquarters are based in Paris, said it wishes to define a plan of action with the government of Mali that will guide the agency’s support to cultural reconstruction and safeguarding.

After visiting Timbuktu on Saturday, Bokova travelled to the Malian capital Bamako with Hollande to meet with government officials.

“At this moment, we must act quickly to safeguard and rebuild this country’s outstanding cultural heritage – this is essential for national unity and reconciliation,” she said. “This heritage is a source of strength and confidence for the people of Mali as they consolidate the foundations of peace.”

UNESCO also announced that it would hold a “Mali Day” in Paris on Feb. 18, to highlight the country’s culture and Timbuktu’s history as a centre of Islamic scholarship. The day will also be used for fund-raising.

JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL BEGINS AMID DISSENT

Aita Aghodaro, a featured writer

One of the biggest literary festivals in the Asia-Pacific region began today in Jaipur, the majestic capital of Rajasthan in India. Entering its sixth year, the Jaipur Literature Festival features writers from around the world, but it takes place amidst much debate on the extent of authors’ freedom of expression.

Last year, Salman Rushdie had to withdraw from the festival following alleged death threats, and he was also prevented from addressing participants by video link-up because activists said they would demonstrate at the venue, in the continuing protests against his book The Satanic Verses.

This year, authors who read excerpts from the book in 2012 are being blocked from attending, and other campaigners also wish to exclude writers of certain nationalities. As The Times of India newspaper put it: “Not to be bested in this game of competitive fundamentalism, saffron activists are now demanding that Pakistani authors be kept away from Jaipur.”

Still, the five-day festival is expected to attract thousands of participants in celebration of “national and international literature,” according to the organizers. The event comprises readings, discussions, performances and children’s workshops, among numerous offerings.

The Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, is scheduled to speak about faith during today's opening, and other internationally known personalities are also on the Jan. 24-28 programme.

Tahar ben Jelloun

They include French-based Moroccan writer Tahar ben Jelloun, who has recently been writing about the Arab Spring; model-turned-writer Aita Ighodaro, whose novels All That Glitters and Sin Tropez explore “the relationships between wealth, greed, lust, ambition and power”; Zoe Heller, the author of Notes on a Scandal, which was made into a critically acclaimed movie; Namita Gokhale, writer, publisher and festival director, who has authored more than 11 books; and William Dalrymple, co-organizer of the festival and author of the prize-winning City of Djinns as well as other books about India and the Islamic world.

Besides fostering debate, the Jaipur festival also represents the growing promotion of literature in Asia over the past decade. One can now attend literary festivals in Singapore, Indonesia, Nepal and other countries.

In Bali, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in October of this year with a special focus on women's stories, women's rights and education, and heroes and visionaries, according to the organizers. It will “embrace writers across all genres including travel writers, songwriters, playwrights, poets, comedians and graphic novelists,” they state.

This focus, too, will probably engender debate, but argument comes with the writing territory.  As The Times of India noted in its opinion piece: “It is the nature of literature to give offence to one set of readers or another. And it is the nature of literature festivals to create space for competing affronts and voices.”

We at SWAN say “long live the literary festival”.

ASK YOUR 'TRUE LOVE' FOR BOOKS, NOT GOLDEN RINGS

(We review some books that would make thought-provoking gifts this season.)

Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, by Colin Grant

Reviewed by Patricia Viseur Sellers

The breadth of Colin Grant’s biography of Marcus Garvey will satisfy, intrigue and evoke sighs from the reader. The book’s cover revives the emblematic photograph of Marcus Garvey - stiffly crowned emperor of Harlem - as he presides over the Universal Negro Improvement Association parade in 1920, when adherence to the UNIA neared its apogee.

The framing of the photo, slightly derivative of the nineteenth-century miniature of Toussaint L’Ouverture with plumed “chapeu”, is iconic. Yet, the frozen imagery belies the wearer’s adeptness at navigating the tightrope of the colour line.  

Grant relentlessly recounts Garvey’s evolution, starting with his passages within Jamaica, from St Ann’s Bay and eventually to Kingston.  This internal migration forges the self-taught boy into a young man who becomes not only a printer but also an “elocutionist” for the Jamaican working poor.

Garvey’s re-invention was spurred on first as a timekeeper cum newspaperman at the United Fruit Company and then by his travels to Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela, where he bore witness to the indignities suffered by Jamaican migrants alongside other Caribbean and Central American blacks, toiling as neo-slaves.

Garvey returned briefly to Jamaica as a “Colon” man, a lauded worker on the Panama Canal, before setting off to England. In London, Garvey the journalist/student experiences the social and metaphysical status of the “black man (who) is both visible and invisible” -  the European negritude life.  The initial constraints of Old World expatriation plunges Garvey into books, such as Edward Wilmot Blyden’s racial exhortations and essays on the mistrust of mixed race Negros, and Booker T. Washington’s treatise, “Up From Slavery”.

Garvey re-emerged as what used to be termed a “race man”, albeit not one pinned to the parochial views of Washington but rather bathed in Pan-Negroism.  This archetypical journey abroad and into Garvey’s own interior expands into a collective calling for racial change and personal recognition when he lands in Harlem, the Mecca, in 1916. There, amid the competing racialist philosophers and firebrands seizing upon the political ripening of the New American Negro(s) freshly seared by World War I, Garvey preaches/beseeches and soon culls his followers-to-be of the UNIA. Grant aptly denotes this period the “second coming of Marcus Garvey”.  

Author Colin Grant in Jamaica

And it was a glorious existence. Political activism caroused with journalism, the arts and religious-like acts aimed at the redemption, improvement and resurrection of the Negro Races.  However, all gallops toward self-realized freedom by the UNIA drew confrontations, denunciations and deceit from several other black organizations, most notably the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Grant details the bitter battles between the NAACP’s revered leader, light-skinned intellectually enthroned W E B Dubois, and Garvey who championed his working class, urban and agrarian-based UNIA.  Their philosophical divergences, the UNIA’s Back to Africa program and the NAACP’s political and social integration platform, frequently erupted into public intra-black showdowns. 

If the number of adherents signified the utility and worth of a black liberation philosophy, the UNIA (brimming with its international analysis of racism, especially concerning the New World Negro) won decidedly. However, there existed no neat measuring rods nor finishing lines in these intra-racial struggles for the souls of the Negro, and pithy success was to be discerned by concessions from the outside, non-black, world.

Moreover, the internecine animosity of Negro liberation organizations, and other political movements such as socialism or unionism, fuelled and played into the clutches of the encroaching US governmental surveillance of the UNIA. Garvey was ultimately charged with fraudulent use of the US mail, a federal offense.

Grant charts the UNIA’s demise as a viable commercial enterprise, and Garvey’s demise as its leader through his trial and imprisonment.  The author writes that the imprisoned Garvey lashed out at his black, half-caste tormentors, especially Du Bois, and censured them more than he blamed the inimical racist political constraints of the New World.  

Back to Jamaica but not to Paradise

The third act of Garvey’s life, told briefly, comprises his deportation to Jamaica.  This era is significant because it shows the political gap between the two countries. The UNIA philosophy of return to Africa appealed to US blacks who lived in a nation structured along racial apartheid.  It, however, proved more discordant in a still colonial Jamaica that toiled under a caste and feudal system, administered by appointed British whites.

Broken, Garvey leaves on his final sojourn to England.  This results in no return to glory, nor, more critically, any progression of Garvey’s or the UNIA’s philosophical bases.

Grant honours the reader by granting an unflinching aperture into this devolving, ruminating Garvey, too bound to his world view. It is an oft told tale of third acts. Garvey disdains deep self reflection. His evolution has sputtered then halted. In the aftermath of the Great War, he deftly seized upon former slaves’ seminal yearning for black pride and created an organization that offered a seemingly permanent solution – return to Africa. Two decades later, he remained myopically tethered to its untenable execution.   

As Garvey retakes to the Speakers’ Corner in London, the UNIA’s urging of separation and black colonization of Liberia misreads the new generation of Africans whose priority was European decolonization. He also misreads the American-based race movements’ determined struggle for political enfranchisement.

Colin Grant at a reading in Jamaica

Tellingly and sadly, Garvey, who prophesied the rise of a King from Africa, is stunned by Haille Selassie’s refusal to receive him and is angered, inconsolably, by London liberals’ enchantment with Paul Robeson. Grant’s dense, fact-packed biography, viewed mostly through Garvey’s eyes and personality, occludes Garvey's insistence on his now ill-suited vision of colonisation. Not enough distance is provided for the reader to fully contemplate how Garvey comprehends the political world he inhabits.

Thankfully Grant stopped to direct a word to the reader on that fateful day of the UNIA parade.  Grant observes and avers that if Garvey were the embodiment of a Roman charioted emperor, at the cessation of the roar of the crowds, a dutiful slave would have whispered in his ear, “ Remember you are only human’.   The advice is not necessarily about scornful pride, but possibly about the confines of humanness and human clairvoyance.

Upon concluding the book, one should again glance at the cover to refocus on Garvey’s eyes, not his hat. Those solemn eyes seemingly gaze at the inevitable unfolding of history, some of which he prophesied, even in his flawed way, and some of which may still come to pass as he foresaw.

(Patricia Sellers is an international criminal lawyer.)

FURTHER READING

Bridges is a remarkable compilation of 45 stories by writers from more than 15 countries, many of whom are renowned internationally, and all of whom have a passion for the short story. Edited by Maurice Lee, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Central Arkansas, the anthology represents diverse cultures and is aimed at a global audience.

Lee says that the anthology began as a “family affair” to support the writers attending the 12^th International Conference on the short Story in English that took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, in June of this year. But once he began collecting the stories, Lee realized that the anthology would be “one of a kind”, with writers representing the United States, Caribbean islands, France, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and other countries.

The stories underline that we are in a “global society, and we now have to become global citizens”, Lee says. He hopes that the book will assist readers in “embracing that reality”, and with such an engaging, wide-ranging collection of stories, his wish just may be fulfilled.

For more information: www.temenospublishing.com.

Black Paris Profiles is an e-book written by Monique Wells, an African-American professional who has lived in Paris for 20 years. The collection of articles provides an up-close and personal view of what life is like for people who have left the United States and the Caribbean to settle in the French capital, with all the challenges of being a "foreigner". 

The book profiles 24 contemporary African-American and Afro-Caribbean expatriates (including SWAN's editor Alecia McKenzie) who have launched and developed careers, started families and shaped lives and communities in France, in their homelands, and in other countries as well. 

So, how do you give an e-book as a present? All you need to do is go to Amazon.com and click on the button that says “Give as a gift” in the box at the top of the right sidebar.  Then, follow the instructions on the gift purchase page.

Wells says that it’s not necessary to own a Kindle device, as free apps are available from Amazon that allow you to read Kindle books on major types of computer, tablet, or smartphone.  You can download the app that you need.

POETRY

Snapshots from Instanbul, by Jaqueline Bishop, the Twelve-Foot Neon Woman, by Loretta Collins Klobah (see sidebar), and Jubilation!, edited by Kwame Dawes, are just some of the poetry collections we've also enjoyed this year. Check them out at: peepaltreepress.com.

PANAMA'S JAZZ STAR NAMED UNESCO ARTIST FOR PEACE

The acclaimed Panamanian pianist and jazz composer Danilo Pérez has been appointed UNESCO Artist for Peace “in recognition of his efforts to provide outreach music programmes to children living in extreme poverty in Panama and his dedication to the ideals and aims” of the United Nations cultural organization.

The musician, known for his distinctive Pan-American jazz style, has received many awards for his social work in Panama. He is the president of the Danilo Pérez Foundation which provides outreach music programmes to children living in extreme poverty in the country.

Pérez with UNESCO's director-general Irina Bokova

“It’s an incredible honour to be named Artist for Peace, and I take it with a lot of pride,” Pérez told SWAN after giving a lively concert at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris on Nov. 20.

“I’ll do my best to expose youth to the music, the values of the music and what it can teach about how we relate to other people and to our environment,” he added.

Born in Panama in 1965,  Pérez currently directs the Berklee Global Jazz Institute at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts. He has developed an educational curriculum based on what he calls “inter-connective learning”, which allows students to experience and practice ideas linked to social change through music.

Pérez  also serves as the Artistic Director for the Panama Jazz Festival, an annual event that attracts thousands of jazz fans and provides auditions, admissions and scholarships for Latin American music students and professionals. The tenth edition of the Festival takes place January 14-19, 2013, in Panama City.

The jam session

American jazz legend Herbie Hancock, who will be among the performers, has called Pérez one of the “most exciting” pianists of today, and the Panamanian lived up to that billing with his performance in Paris. He did a jam session with local musicians and even got the be-suited officials present to snap their fingers and shout their appreciation.

Pérez draws on his Latin American roots, be-bop, and Caribbean and world music to create his own individual blend. “He’s just great,” said one Mexican staffer who attended the concert.

According to UNESCO, Artists for Peace are “internationally-renowned personalities who use their influence, charisma and prestige to help promote UNESCO’s message and programmes”. The agency works with them in order to “heighten public awareness regarding key development issues” and to inform the public about UNESCO’s action is in these fields.

(Images courtesy of UNESCO)

NIGERIA GETS UNMASKED IN FRANCE

Standing figure

PARIS - Awe and surprise were probably the most common expressions on viewers' faces during the recent opening of “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley”, a wide-ranging exhibition that has traveled from the United States to the Quai Branly Museum here.

Through stunning objects, the show takes museum-goers on a “journey” up the 650-mile-long Benue River and introduces the “major artistic genres and styles associated with more than 25 ethnic groups” living along the river’s lower, middle and upper reaches.

The Benue River Valley is an immense region that stretches from the heart of Nigeria to the eastern frontier with Cameroon, and its ethnic groups have long produced remarkable and varied sculptures that collectors have snapped up over time. The current exhibition is derived from both public and private collections in Europe and the United States.

The pieces on display range from objects that look quite post-modern in their abstract forms to sculptures that are so perfectly balanced and intricately designed that they nearly seem to breathe.

Viewers get to admire towering wood statues, maternity figures, helmet masks with “naturalistic human faces”, horizontal masks that seem to fuse human and animal forms, and elaborately forged iron vessels, among other items.

The materials used include wood, metal and ceramic, and all the objects reflect certain meanings and uses. The show makes a point of highlighting community traditions and how current events influenced the pieces produced.

Masks in the exhibition

“Artworks could be made by one group and used by another where meanings might change; stylistic traits could be shared across cultures; and the places where objects were collected may not have been where they were created,” according to the curators.

Some of the most distinctive items in the exhibition are the ceramic artworks from the previously remote upper Benue region. The relative isolation of this area meant that local traditional practices lasted into the late 20^th century, and their ceramic vessels served different ritual functions, such as safeguarding hunters and healing the sick.

The curators say that every effort has been made to ensure that the collections were attained by legitimate means, but some viewers will naturally wonder why so many spectacular African works of art “reside” in the West.

“The works of art … displayed in this exhibition were selected with great care and precision by a small group of eminent specialists, who benefited from a lengthy period of intense dialogue and deliberation followed by exhaustive efforts to secure appropriate works of art and to provide documentation,” said Stephane Martin, president of the Quai Branly Museum.

The poster

The exhibition grew out of a special interest by researchers at the Fowler Museum, at the University of California. Marla C. Berns, head of the curatorial team, said the show is a tribute to the work done by art historian Arnold Rubin who did extensive fieldwork in the Benue River Valley in the Sixties and early Seventies.  Rubin wanted to curate a major exhibition but died before he could achieve his dream.

“As Rubin’s literary executor, I had always intended that the project be completed, both as a tribute to him and his groundbreaking scholarship and observations and because I believed, as he did, that the region’s arts were deserving of such comprehensive treatment,” Berns said.

The Fowler Museum first hosted the exhibition in 2011, and since then it has travelled to Washington and Stanford. The Paris show is a result of a partnership between the Quai Branly and the Fowler Museum’s curators.

"Although much remains to be unmasked in our study of the peoples, arts and cultures of Central Nigeria, it is our hope that our efforts to expose new audiences to the artistic wealth of this region will arouse a wider interest and provoke further scholarly investigation," Berns noted.
.

The exhibition runs until 27 January, 2013.

BRUSSELS GETS A SWEET TASTE OF JAMAICA

Ambassador McNish and the chefs

Lovers of the culinary arts got a treat in October when a “Taste of Jamaica” hit Brussels, Belgium, as part of the celebration of Jamaica's 50^th anniversary of independence.

Two of the Caribbean island's top executive chefs, Mark Cole of the Pegasus Hotel and Dennis McIntosh of the Cardiff Hotel and the Spa Runaway Bay, brought their gastronomic expertise to the Belgian capital from October 15-19, Jamaican Heritage Week.

The chefs served up dishes such as “sun kissed scallion potato and codfish cake”, “Fe weh” Walkers Wood jerk pork loin with pineapple chutney and plantains, and St. Mary’s pineapple bread pudding with aged Appleton Rum and sorrel sauce. The names alone were enough to delight patrons at the BE Restaurant at the 5-star Sofitel Hotel in Brussels. Jamaica’s famous Blue Mountain Coffee naturally topped off the memorable meals.

The week-long event was launched on October 15 at a reception hosted by Jamaica’s Ambassador to Belgium and Head of Mission to the European Union, Ambassador Vilma McNish. The food fiesta was one of several cultural events around the world commemorating Jamaica’s independence from Britain in 1962.

The Jamaica Tourist Board, the JAMPRO trade and investment organization, the Jamaica Cultural Development Corporation and Walkerswood Caribbean Foods collaborated with the Embassy in organizing the event.

LOUVRE OPENS NEW ISLAMIC ART WING

A viewer examines a ceramic panel.

PARIS – The Louvre Museum has opened a dazzling new Islamic art section that has been drawing crowds in Paris this week.

The project, which cost nearly 100 million euros and took 11 years to complete, includes priceless artifacts from the 7th to the 19th century. It takes museum-goers on a chronological journey through Islamic art at a time of increased religious tension in the world.

“It’s a very rich collection,” said art historian Agnieszka Kluczewska Wojcik, who viewed the exhibits after the public opening on Sept. 22.

The museum poster

“The museum has done a good job of bringing things together and giving good explanations,” she told SWAN. “There seems to be a kind of competition on now with different museums showcasing Islamic art, and this opening comes at an interesting time with everything that's happening at the moment.”

(The launch was partly overshadowed by media focus on several mocking cartoons published in a French satirical magazine, which added to the furore surrounding an anti-Islam film.)

Wojcik said that the Louvre’s new department could be compared with the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Islamic art collection in London, which comprises more than 19,000 objects from the Middle East and North Africa.

Some of the ceramic items on display.

At the Louvre, the 18,000 or so artifacts represent regions ranging from Spain to India, with some of the most stunning pieces dating from the former Islamic civilization in southern Europe. Iran and Turkey also account for many of the impressive pottery objects on show.

The Louvre’s executive director, Henri Loyrette, said the new wing is a "dream come true" for the museum, which has one of the “most beautiful collections of Islamic art”. He said that creating the new space and integrating the previously scattered collection was an “architectural and cultural challenge”. The Louvre met the challenge by converting one of its courtyards into the Islamic art department.

Architects Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti designed a gauzy, undulating glass-and-metal roof that somehow evokes the feeling of being in a vast tent in the desert or being sheltered by a huge veil. This roof covers the upper, ground-floor level of the space, while the subterranean level is more in line with a conventional museum. Here, carpets, ceramic objects, ornately carved doors and other exhibits are displayed in spacious halls.

Carpets from Islamic countries form part of the collection.

The curators hope that the new wing will promote dialogue and also shine a light on little known aspects of Islamic art. For the next ten months, they have scheduled a series of debates and cultural events around the collection.

Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and Lebanese artist Walid Raad are some of the featured speakers who will “illustrate Islam’s diversity”, according to the Louvre. - A.M.