JAMAICA SHOWS JAPANESE ART, AND CELEBRATES LINKS

Fans of Japanese pop culture, especially anime and manga, can now be found all over the world, and the Caribbean region is no exception.

In Jamaica, the Japanese genres have a strong following, especially among young people, so a coming exhibition on the island is expected to draw big crowds.

The poster for the exhibition at the
National Gallery of Jamaica

Starting May 11, the National Gallery of Jamaica will present “JAPAN: Kingdom of Characters”, which showcases anime and manga characters that have been popular in the Asian country.

Under the theme Characters and the Japanese, the exhibition asks various questions, such as: What exactly are "characters"? Why do characters appear and become popular? What kind of social reality do they reflect? according to a statement from the Gallery.

“The purpose of the exhibition is to introduce the world of characters in a broader sense and examine their impact on Japanese society. Highlights include life-sized models of some of Japan's most popular characters and a replica Hello Kitty room,” the Gallery added.

Charles Campbell, chief curator, told SWAN that the institution was "very excited" to host the art show because of the "huge interest" in Jamaica.

"It's a very big scene here," he said. "And we're also hopeful that it will attract new audiences to the Gallery." 

The exhibition is organized by the Embassy of Japan in association with the National Gallery and the Japan Foundation. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of Japan-Jamaica diplomatic relations and is also part of the National Gallery’s 40^th- anniversary activities.

Established in 1974, the Gallery is the oldest and largest public art museum in the Anglophone Caribbean. It has a comprehensive collection of early, modern and contemporary art from Jamaica along with smaller Caribbean and international collections. A major selection of the artworks is on permanent view.

The “Japan” show forms part of the Gallery’s active exhibition programme, which includes retrospectives of work by major Jamaican artists, thematic exhibitions, guest-curated shows, touring events that originate outside of the island, and the premier national exhibition, the National Biennial.

Yasuo Takase, Ambassador of Japan to Jamaica, will launch “Kingdom of Characters”, which runs until June 14, 2014.

STEREOTYPES AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS: CARTOONISTS SPEAK

Biting humour from Australian cartoonist Cathy Wilcox

Is there ever anything “funny” about the topics of inequality, violence against women or sexist attitudes in the workplace? Cartoonists from around the world had a go at answering some of these questions at an off-beat festival in the southern French region of Hérault this weekend.

The second International Festival of Press Cartoons, titled L’Hérault Trait Libre (Herault draws a free line), brought together 18 cartoonists from 10 countries for a series of challenging debates about women rights and media portrayal, and also launched a provocative exhibition of drawings about these issues.

“It’s important to have a meeting like this of cartoonists from different regions to talk about clichés and stereotypes,” said Plantu, a well-known French cartoonist and president of Cartooning For Peace, which co-organized the festival with Hérault’s district council and a local press club.

“We use clichés in our work to draw attention to certain subjects, but are the clichés themselves a problem? Can we escape them?” he added.

The answer to that might be “no”, judging from some of the drawings produced during the festival itself. But many cartoonists are actively trying to promote dialogue and change attitudes, especially regarding gender.

Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani. (Photo: McKenzie)

In fact, a growing number of women cartoonists, from countries ranging from Tunisia to Venezuela, have made women’s rights a major theme in their work, even as they themselves confront sexism in the male-dominated cartooning sphere.

“I think women have a huge responsibility in the current era, of trying to create one’s own space and one’s own way of being,” said Rayma Suprani, a journalist-turned-cartoonist who works for the newspaper El Universal in Caracas, Venezuela.

“Nowadays, we have the privilege of greater freedom. My grandmother didn’t have the option of choosing to be a cartoonist, choosing not to be married or opting for an alternative lifestyle, for instance,” Suprani told SWAN.

In a country where machismo is a reality, using cartoons to poke fun at certain attitudes is only to be expected. Where Suprani faces problems, however, is in the political domain; she has received threats because of her work criticizing the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and both Cartooning for Peace and Amnesty International have drawn attention to her case.

“I don’t think the threats are based solely on gender,” Rayma told SWAN. “It’s not because of your genital organs, but it’s because you have a brain and you can think.”

Tunisian cartoonist Willis from Tunis (Nadia Khiari), whose trademark character is an acerbic cat, has also faced threats, but she said that continuing to protest, whether on the streets on in cartoons and blogs, is one way to change things.

Willis from Tunis and Rayma Suprani drawing live.
Photo courtesy of Cartooning for Peace.

Her cartoons deride attempts to suppress women and freedom of expression, but like other cartoonists, Willis sometimes worries about how her work is perceived. For instance, when she tackles a subject such as rape perpetrated by members of the “security” forces, she’s concerned that the victim doesn’t see herself as being mocked, she said during the festival.

Sexual violence is in fact one of the most sensitive topics for cartoonists, and some male participants in Montpellier created drawings that made observers question whether they comprehend the effects of such violence.

But the issue isn’t only a male-female one, says Portuguese cartoonist Cristina Sampaio, it’s one of personality and sensibility. Aded to this is the question of whether there should be limits on freedom of expression.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Sampaio told SWAN. “There must be a balance between being a cartoonist and the audience’s ability to not take things too personally.”

For André Vezinhet, chairman of Hérault’s General Council, “freedom of expression is the mother of all freedoms and the work of cartoonists is a good indicator of the health of a democracy”.

A cartoon by Willis from Tunis

Still, the concept that freedom comes with responsibility - whether in the area of gender, ethnicity or religion - is the idea behind the founding of Cartooning for Peace.

Created by Plantu and former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2006, following the protests sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonists’ influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide,” Annan says.

Alice Toulemonde, editorial director of Cartooning for Peace, told SWAN that in choosing cartoons for the exhibition launched during the festival, she didn’t see a real difference in the work of male and female cartoonists.

“The new generation of women cartoonists draw differently from the older generation, and may have a different approach to women’s rights as that is not their only concern,” she said. “The work also depends on the country because the gender context varies.”

Some countries may have greater levels of equality, but the public generally continues to perceive particular professions in a certain way. As cartooning has long been a male preserve, some readers automatically assume that a political drawing has been done by a man.

Cathy Wilcox, a cartoonist who works for the Sydney Morning Herald, tells of receiving letters that begin with “Dear Sir”. When she points out that it’s a woman who has done the cartoons, some readers ask if it’s a man who wrote the captions.

Tellingly, of the 108 members of Cartooning for Peace (representing more than 40 nationalities), only 25 are women. Could this mean that perhaps men are more adept at eliciting laughter?

Still, despite the statistics and the serious questions, the festival was entertaining on a number of fronts, especially when the cartoonists produced instant drawings satirizing one another and the topic at hand.

The exhibition Elles vident leur sac (They empty their bags) features 200 cartoons from 50 countries and runs until 26 July 2014, at the pierrevives community complex in Montpellier, Hérault department, France.

FRENCH REGGAE BAND SLAMS 'POLITRICKS' ONCE MORE

Some of the members of Danakil. Photo: Julie Arnoux

If you want to listen to music that speaks to and of the times, then go for reggae, or at least roots reggae - the kind with socially conscious lyrics and a solid stance against injustice.

That at least seems to be the message from Entre les Lignes (Between the Lines), the latest album from French reggae band Danakil, a group not much liked by French critics but loyally supported by fans.

Their new album is a collection of unequivocal compositions in the tradition of Bob Marley and Third World; it “chants down” inequality and political hypocrisy, while still providing an infectious rhythm.

The cover of Entre les Lignes

France’s “unhealthy, one-way” relationship with its former colonies comes in for particular criticism on the album, especially on Mali Mali, the second track after the very lively opening song Poupées Russes (Russian Dolls).

“They want to sell the country as if it were merchandise … as if the population belonged to them,” lead vocalist Balik sings in French about the political treatment of the West African nation.

“Yes, they are the ones who put clientelism and corruption in place,” he adds.

As is widely known, France launched a military operation in Mali in January 2013, a year after armed conflict erupted in the north of the country with rebels seizing certain territory. Since then, Malian and French forces have largely recaptured the north, but public opinion in France is still divided about the government’s action.

With Entre les Lignes, Danakil urges listeners to read between the lines and to look at Europe’s history of colonialism. That message also comes across in the track L'or noir (Black gold), where mellow instrumentation contrasts with the tough lyrics about greed and political trickery.

“Politics is not something that's obligatory for us, it just comes naturally,” says Mathieu, the band's manager and saxophonist. "We love and respect the traditions of reggae, which has a political aspect. But we also sing about things we see and experience ourselves."

Danakil in concert. Photo: Lisou Becker

In Le Rêve (The Dream), the second single released from the album, following the brass-driven Hypocrites, Danakil portrays a world in danger, while channeling youth discontent. The official music video shows scenes of destruction, makes reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement and runs through a host of long-past as well as more recent demonstrations.

“Neither deities nor devils will prevent me from believing … in those who raise their voices,” goes a line in the song, one of the best tracks on the album. The video also shows scenes of police violence and flashes a now iconic image of Jamaican political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga at the 1978 Bob Marley peace concert.

Entre les Lignes thus pays homage to the home of reggae, and one of Marley’s sons, Ky-Mani is among the guest artists on the album. Others who lend their skills include The Twinkle Brothers (a Jamaican band formed in 1962 and still performing), and Harrison "Professor" Stafford and Marcus Urani, founding members of the American reggae group Groundation.

The guest artists contribute to the polished yet edgy sound of the album, but it is Balik’s persuasive voice that holds everything together. Since the creation of the band by eight young Paris-area students in 2000, he has given Danakil their signature sound: harshness combined with poetic beauty, rather like the Danakil Desert in Ethiopia, which inspired the band’s name.

Danakil is currently on a European tour with performances throughout France as well as in Belgium, Austria and other countries. The band will appear at Reggae Sun Ska in Bordeaux in August.

To view the official video of Le rêve go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3hlDiVb8IU

PARIS BOOK FAIR SHOWS THAT 'LIT' IS ALIVE AND KICKING

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was just one of the thousands of guests at the official opening of the Paris Salon du Livre (Book Fair) on March 20, proving that the predicted death of books is still a long way off.

Books on display at the Argentinian pavilion.

The annual event welcomed some 197,000 visitors last year, says spokesperson Daphnée Gravelat, and a similar or higher number is expected this year, as the Salon features writers from South America, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and other regions.

Numerous authors will be giving readings, speaking with fans, participating in panel discussions and presenting their latest works over the next four days. The country of honour at this 34th edition of the fair is Argentina, with 46 writers from the Latin American country attending.

“Visitors to the fair can take stock of the vitality and diversity of Argentina’s contemporary literary production, which is at the same time widespread, inventive and poetic,” the organizers say.

They are using the occasion to “fêter” the 100th anniversary of the birth of Julio Cortázar, the highly influential Argentinean writer who spent many years in Paris, where he died in 1984. Visitors can learn more about the writer through a special exhibition at the fair on his life and work.

The African pavilion with bookseller Ruth Ntsiente

Literature by African writers is being highlighted as well, with a strong presence particularly of those who in write in French. They include Léonora Miano and Calixthe Beyala, both prize-winning authors born in Cameroon and now based in France; the controversial French-Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou; and diplomat-author Henri Lopes, a former prime minister of the Republic of the Congo.

Many of the authors will meet the public at the pavilion titled “Livres et auteurs du Bassin du Congo” (Books and Writers of the Congo Basin), where a live band and traditionally dressed hostesses greeted literature fans on opening night.

Through individual publishers, the Caribbean is being represented by writers such as the prize-winning novelist and poet Olive Senior, who has just had a bi-lingual poetry collection published in France - Un pipiri m'a dit/ A little bird told me - which she will present on Saturday.

Senior, whose books of short stories have also been translated into French, said she was delighted to attend the Salon for the first time. She said she supported plans by SWAN’s editor and fellow Jamaican writer Alecia McKenzie to try to organize a Caribbean pavilion there in the future.

Senior (l.) at the Salon with publisher Marc Torralba
 and  Christine Raguet (translator of an earlier book)

For those who love comic books, some of the top Japanese Mangakas (cartoonists) are on hand during the weekend, at the huge section of the fair devoted to the genre. Fans will be able to rub shoulders with Kaoru Mori and Kaori Yuki, the respective authors of A Bride’s Story and Angel Sanctuary.

They will be joined by several Chinese artists, illustrators and writers as the Salon du Livre has named booming, vibrant Shanghai the “city of honour” this year. 

INT’L ARTISTS PORTRAY WOMEN’S STRENGTH, STRUGGLES

A photograph by Angèle Etoundi Essamba at the UNESCO show.

The statistics are sobering: “women and children constitute two-thirds of the world’s poor … women make up just 21 percent of the world’s parliamentarians … seven out of 10 women report having experienced violence in their lifetime”.

Even on International Women’s Day (March 8), women will experience abuse and worse. Aware of this, the artists taking part in a wide-ranging exhibition at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, have chosen to focus on women’s strength in the face of continuing struggles.

Through paintings, photographs, sketches, video and other media, they are highlighting women’s contributions and perseverance in a world where girls still face discrimination in many countries, including those that are member states of UNESCO.

Angèle Etoundi Essamba discusses her work. (© McKenzie)

“This is about strength as well as fragility,” said the Cameroon-born photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba, who has contributed 25 luminous portraits from her “Women of the Water” project to the group show.

Her huge photographs depict women, girls, and mothers with children as they go about their work or daily life on the waterways of Benin. The aim is to show how women are coping with climate change, poverty and global water issues, amid other concerns. But the overall impact is one of beauty.

“The show combines art and development,” Essamba said. “It shows the daily struggles that these women are dealing with, but they go for it, they fight and they survive.

“This is what inspired me to do this work - to show how brave they are, and how elegant and strong and proud they are,” she added.

The subjects of her photographs are dressed in traditional clothing, and are seen steering canoes, ferrying their children to school, washing clothes. The creative use of light and colour take the pictures into the realm of art, but art that inspires discussion.

Photojournalist Natalia Ivanova with image. (© McKenzie)

Emmanuel Dollfus, a spokesman with the French Development Agency, which partially funded the project, told SWAN that the photographs would help to make the international community more aware of the impact of climate change on local communities and especially on women. Besides Paris, Essamba’s works will be seen in a number of other cities, including Amsterdam, where she is based.

The UNESCO exhibition, which is open to the public until March 20, also features paintings from Azerbaijan artist Asmar Narimanbekova, Bangladeshi painters Rokeya Sultana and Kanak Chanpa Chakma, and traditional textile art from indigenous women in Bolivia.

For her part, the Russian photojournalist Natalia Ivanova is presenting a project that examines notions of feminine beauty. Titled “Les Origines de la Beauté ” (The Ethnic Origins of Beauty), the non-commercial documentary and artistic venture seeks to capture feminine appearances in all their diversity.

Ivanova has photographed women in Moscow as well as in Paris, including some who were just passing through, and the project includes a video of interviews in which her subjects talk about their life and experiences.

One hundred women have so far participated in the photo series, but Ivanova plans to create more than 5,000 portraits, which would bring together all the “ethnicities of the human race”. The project is also a plea for peace and for an end to discrimination, she said.

An excerpt from "The Ethnic Origins of Beauty" by Natalia Ivanova

BOOK BY FORMER RWANDAN REFUGEE OUT IN FRANCE

PARIS – In 1994 the world watched horrified as news of widespread massacres emerged from Rwanda. Now, nearly 20 years later, comes a poignant book in French that gives a personal account of the genocide and the effects on those who became refugees.

The front cover of Les enfants du Rwanda

Les enfants du Rwanda (The Children of Rwanda), published this month in France by Gaïa Editions, is a painful book to read, but a necessary testimony of what happened in the east-central African country. Its author Angelique Umugwaneza was 13 when she witnessed some of the massacres in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed in 100 days, and she said that as a survivor, she needed  to speak out.

Most of those murdered were Tutsi, with the Hutu as main perpetrators, and what makes this book unusual and controversial for some is that Umugwaneza is Hutu. She shows that everyone suffered in the bloodletting: Tutsi, Hutu and the Twa - a marginalized community that has not received the same level of international attention. But she has been criticized by at least one reviewer for not sticking to what she calls the “official story” that only members of one ethnic group were killed.

“I worry about being accused of not giving the full story of the genocide,” she said in an interview. “Some people who have seen the Tutsi being slaughtered have not seen the killing of the Hutu.”

The book was first published in Danish, as Denmark accorded political asylum to Umugwaneza and her sister in 2001, and it’s co-authored by Peder Fuglsang, a Danish academician who specializes in the history of developing countries. Fuglsang said his role was to provide the historical context for the very personal story.

The book begins with Umugwaneza’s almost idyllic childhood, before the genocide. She lived in a community where Hutu and Tutsi inter-married, went to the same church and sent their children to the same schools. One of her father’s best friends was a Tutsi named Mudenge. In the murderous madness of April 1994, Mudenge was “tortured and killed in the worst of fashions”, she writes.

Umugwaneza gives the now widely known background to the genocide but from the point of view of her younger self. She recalls the moment when her father turned on the family transistor to listen to the news on April 7, 1994, but could only hear “chants de complainte” (songs of mourning). Later, he found out from Mudenge that President Juvénal Habyarimana had been killed when his plane was shot down as he was returning from a peace conference in Tanzania. The president of Burundi (and all other passengers) also died in the attack. Both presidents were Hutu.

From the first part of Les enfants du Rwanda, one could get the impression that the downing of the plane triggered fear among Hutus, who felt they had to kill to avoid being killed themselves, and that the massacres were not planned. But official reports, and a history section at the end of the book, indicate that there had been schemes to exterminate the minority Tutsi people, with militants stockpiling weapons before April.

Angelique Umugwaneza (photo: SWAN)

The young Umugwaneza would not have known this, however, and so the atrocities are seen through a child’s eyes. The violence did not spare young people: Tutsi children were murdered while some of their Hutu schoolmates had to watch the slaughter. Children of mixed Tutsi-Hutu parentage were also hunted down.

“What happened to the children of Rwanda during this time was horrific,” Umugwaneza writes.

The genocide stopped with the victory of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (Tutsi), who formed a new government, but Hutus were now the ones fleeing. Many were killed in revenge attacks. Umugwaneza and her family became part of the exodus from Rwanda, and the bulk of the book deals with her experiences. For seven years, she lived as a refugee, moving from camp to camp, living in the forest and seeing unimaginable scenes.

She lost her mother and an older brother as they tried to find refuge in Zaire and then the Central African Rupublic. Her father had stayed in Rwanda as he had been called back to a distant job before the exodus, and a younger brother was eventually able to return, but Umugwaneza has not been back since 1994.

“I’ve traveled to the border, and I could look in but I did not go in,” she said during a trip to Paris to launch her book. “It used to be my country, but it’s not anymore.”

She said that she began writing just two weeks after she arrived in Denmark. “Being in a place where I didn’t have to live in fear for the first time in years gave me the energy to write,” she said. “But I had to ask myself: who was I writing for?”

She says she is writing for those who can’t, including a boy who attached himself to her family and who had to be left behind in the pitilessness of the refugee march. With the book now in French and set for a wider readership, she is also sending a message to those who would deny refugees a safe place because of politics and self-interest.

“I think being a refugee is a very nasty thing,” she said. “You hope and hope, and then you start giving up. You stop hoping. But situations can change. It has changed for me.”

After launching the book in Paris, she was scheduled to fly to the Central African Republic where she is working with a non-govermental organization to help refugees. An estimated one million people have fled their homes in the country, which is torn by inter-communal violence, like Rwanda 20 years ago. - A.M.

FRENCH-NIGERIAN SOPRANO SWEEPS OPERA CONTEST

The French-Nigerian soprano Omo Bello was a triple winner in the prestigious Paris Opera Competition held recently in the French capital.

Omo Bello

Bello won the first prize and, in the women’s category, the French Opera of the 19th Century award and the Public Prize at the contest, which was launched to “discover new talents” and “to support and guide” the careers of young singers, according to the organizers.

These are just some of the latest honours for the Lagos-born singer. Bello, 29 years old and based in Paris, first caused opera audiences to take notice when she won the top prize in the 2010 Luciano Pavarotti Giovani competition in Vercelli, Italy.

She followed up that success with first place in the Anselmo Colzani international singing competition in Budrio, Italy, in 2011, and in France received the Cziffra Foundation grand prize for exceptionally talented young musicians.

Earlier this month, she also travelled to Aix-en-Provence for the finals of the French annual “Victoires de la musique classique” competition in which she had been nominated in the  "Révélation lyrique de l'année" (revelation of the year) category. She didn’t win in this event, but ended up giving a striking performance.

“These past weeks have undoubtedly been the most eventful period of my career,” she told SWAN. “I was home for a few days after making a debut in the role of Donna Anna (from Mozart’s Don Giovanni) in mid-November, when I got a call from my agent telling me I was nominated for the 2014 Victoires de la Musique.”

Bello receiving one of her three prizes.

It was in late January, a few days before the "Victoires" awards ceremony, that she took part in the Paris Opera Competition, performing in front of top representatives in the field and an audience of music lovers.

“In general, I’m not a fan of singing competitions, but I was very interested in this one when I realized that the jury was made up of well-known opera directors from Glyndebourne, Geneva, Zurich, Brussels, Lyon, Bordeaux, Berlin etc.,” she said.

“I decided to go for it, as this was a unique occasion to have so many of the opera-hiring professionals all at once. It was extremely gratifying to walk away with not one, but the three top prizes.”

Bello added that the French opera prize was her “pride and joy” because of her Nigerian origins. “This proves that I’m able to master the French lyric repertoire and its subtleties,” she said.

That mastery has been due to years of hard work, as her long-time teacher Jorge Chaminé attests. “She is talented, totally dedicated to her craft and pushes herself to achieve the maximum. I believe she will be one of the great singers of her generation,” said Chaminé, a renowned Spanish-Portuguese baritone who lives in France.

Johan Choi

The Paris Opera Competition, created in 2010 by financier and opera lover Paul Vernes and based on a concept by artistic director Xavier le Maréchal, also highlighted other talents this year. American baritone Jamez McCorkle won the “Young Hope” prize; South Korean singer Johan Choi gained the public’s prize and the 19th-century French Opera prize in the male category; and Russian mezzo soprano Maria Kataeva took home the CFPL prize - from the French centre for the promotion of opera.

For an earlier SWAN profile of Omo Bello, see: 

http://southernworldartsnews.blogspot.fr/2011/11/nigerian-soprano-soars-in-europe.html

Other winners: Maria Kataeva (top) and Jamez McCorkle.
Photos by E. Mercier, courtesy of the Paris Opera Competition.

PARIS ARENA HIGHLIGHTS GLOBAL 'POWER' OF THE ARTS

For Margery Arent Safir, the arts can play an important role in promoting respect for human rights and in bringing people together, and this belief has led her to create an unusual cultural “space”.

Arent Safir (r) with Iranian artist Shirin Neshat

Arent Safir is the founder and director of the Arts Arena, a non-profit organization based in Paris, France, that invites artists from all over the world to speak about their work and share their experiences, with audiences participating for free.

“I really believe that the arts can change people’s lives and people’s thinking,” Arent Safir told SWAN in an interview. “You can be sitting at a concert next to an enemy of your country, but you’re both listening to music, and you’re not fighting – you’re sharing the same music, both going through some kind of transformation."

After years in the academic sphere as a professor of comparative literature, Arent Safir knows firsthand the ability of a novel, for instance, to “communicate things than can alter mindsets”. She founded the Arts Arena in 2007 to involve artists and the public in open discussions with a view to sharing her core beliefs.

“Maybe I’m among the last of the true believers in the power of the arts to do something in this world that has become so radically commercialized, so oriented towards money and getting ahead, ‘advancement’ with a dog-eat-dog mentality,” she told SWAN.  “The arts create spaces where you step back from all that for a certain amount of time, and you get in touch with other values.”

Initially housed at the American University of Paris, where Arent Safir taught from 1987 to 2013, the Arts Arena became independent in September with expanded partnerships that include Columbia Global Centers | Europe.

The Centers are an initiative by New York’s Columbia University to expand its global “mission”, and the outlook fits with the Arena’s objectives, Arent Safir said.  Other Arts Arena partners include the Yale School of Art, Curtis Institute of Music, and Yale School of Music.

Brochures for the Iranian Arts Now festival

The idea of bringing people together is behind many of the Arena’s events. Arent Safir cites the 2012 Iranian Arts Now Festival that she organized in Paris as an example of how a cultural happening got people to discuss their differences.

“The artists from inside Iran did not like and did not trust the Iranian artists living outside,” she recalled. “But over a week of intense artistic activity and then a month-long art show, they had to come together. They ended up talking this all out, and you could see the change. I think this has value.”

In 2014, the Arena is continuing that tradition with a stimulating line-up of events in France. On Feb. 21, the director emeritus of the New York Film Festival, Richard Peña, will give a lecture on the early independent African-American filmmakers in the United States, who created movies between 1915 and 1950 primarily for black audiences.

Their work included musicals, westerns, social dramas and gangster films, few of which have widely been seen. Peña will screen the 1941 film “The Blood of Jesus” by Spencer Williams (the prints of this “lost film” were rediscovered in the 1980s in a Texas warehouse), and he will also conduct a question-and-answer session with the audience.

Later, in May, the Arts Arena will also participate in the United Nations Association Film Festival, and its Travelling Film Festival, both of which celebrate the power of films and videos dealing with human rights, the environment, globalization, and war and peace, according to the organization.

Arent Safir in her Paris study

“This is something that I really want to emphasize about the work of the Arts Arena – our interest in artists who take strong moral positions,” Arent Safir said. “I’m a believer in activist arts and cultural diplomacy.”

Everyone invited to speak at the Arts Arena has done so for free, she said. The organization gets funding from various patrons as well as its membership program and is committed to offering its events without charge, but costs have grown over the years. The challenge is to keep donors accepting that their contributions help others while also providing something for themselves; the Arts Arena does this by hosting some member-only events.

“I feel that nobody should be turned away from a cultural event because of lack of resources,” Arent Safir told SWAN. “We have to break down the barriers between the arts and the real world.” - A.M.

DAVOS HIGH-FLYERS TO VIEW ‘LONG WALK TO FREEDOM’

Nelson Mandela’s life story is “simply too big, too complex and too important” to be captured by a single movie, according to one critic, but this hasn’t stopped audiences from going to see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

The movie poster in French

The film has been playing in several countries since its release shortly before Mandela’s death on Dec. 5, and most viewers have given it a positive rating, singling out the London-born actor Idris Elba for his commanding performance as the beloved South African icon who forgave his captors after 27 years in prison and who worked to unify his country.

A different set of viewers will watch the film on Jan. 24, however, when Long Walk to Freedom is screened at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Forum brings together leaders from the business, political and academic spheres to “shape global, regional and industry agendas”, but the meeting has often been criticized for being elitist and out of touch.

According to organizers, the screening of the movie is a continuation of the initiative started in 2006 by Prof. Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, “to use the medium of motion pictures to highlight topical global issues”.

In a statement, Schwab said: "Everybody who sees Anant Singh's film, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, is moved by the trajectory of this most outstanding personality of the past decades, who was such a great friend of the Forum. This film reminds us to incorporate the spirit of Nelson Mandela into our mission and all our activities."

Mandela addressed Davos participants in 1991, a year after he was released from prison and three years before he became South Africa’s president.

Idris Elba as Mandela

Producer Anant Singh has been invited to present the film as part of a tribute to Mandela, and he will provide “insights” to the production, which is based on Mandela's autobiography of the same name.

Singh said he hoped that the film would inspire the delegates “as Madiba did in his first address at the Annual Meeting".

The delegates this year include Microsoft founder Bill Gates, American actress Goldie Hawn, Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat and controversial French businessman Christophe de Margerie, the chairman and CEO of  oil giant Total.

Away from Davos, the biopic received a boost earlier this week when the song Ordinary Love, written by the Irish band U2, won a Golden Globe Award in the United States for Best Original Song - Motion Picture. Lead singer Bono said the win was “personal” for the band because they had written a “love song” to a man who “refused to hate”.