Africa
We Are Proud To Present..., Bush TheatreMonday, 10 March 2014
The full title of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, first produced in Chicago in 2012, is deliberately gauche and in need of editing. No review is complete without it, however, so here it is: We Are Proud To Present A Presentation About The Herero... Read more... |
Storyville: Coach Zoran and His African Tigers, BBC FourFriday, 28 February 2014
Hassan Ismail Konyi is not the first young man to see football as a meal ticket. The twist is that he has rather more dependents riding on his dream that most. Hassan has 26 sisters and 35 brothers. He comes from South Sudan, the youngest country on... Read more... |
Mad Dog: Gaddafi's Secret World, BBC FourTuesday, 04 February 2014
Three years ago this month, the first protests against the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi broke out. On October 20 2011, the tyrant was finally caught, and mobile phone footage of his bloody and abused last minutes went viral. His... Read more... |
Zhang Enli/Alex Van Gelder, Hauser & WirthTuesday, 14 January 2014
In 1920, Man Ray, now better known for his solarized photographs, produced a sculpture made from found objects. L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse, named after the 19th-century French poet who used the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont, is a sewing machine... Read more... |
Album of the Year: Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba - Jama KoMonday, 23 December 2013
Mali has been in the news this year: music was under serious threat from the fundamentalism that spread through the north of the country and ransacked parts of the ancient city of Timbuktu. The jihadists are hardly music-lovers and Mali’s creative... Read more... |
Angélique Kidjo, Songlines World Music Awards, BarbicanSunday, 15 December 2013
She has been called “Africa’s greatest diva” but as DJ Nihal giving the award of Artist of the Year at this year’s Songlines Awards to Angélique Kidjo pointed out the word “diva” is a loaded one, and makes you think of Mariah Carey’s... Read more... |
Jane Bussmann: Bono and Geldof Are C*ntsWednesday, 20 November 2013
Jane Bussmann may not be an immediately familiar name to some, but you will know her work. The writer, who was once a celebrity journalist, has been part of the writing teams for South Park, Smack the Pony and Brass Eye, among other quality... Read more... |
'Books have been my life': Doris LessingSunday, 17 November 2013
Doris Lessing’s storm-tossed life would make a stirring biopic. She spent her early years on an isolated farm in the Southern Rhodesian veldt, abandoned the children of her first marriage to take up with a German communist refugee during the war,... Read more... |
Captain PhillipsFriday, 18 October 2013
Earlier this year we saw Tobias Lindstrom's A Hijacking, a Danish-made thriller based on true events, about a freighter hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Featuring familiar faces from Borgen and The Killing, the film skipped the part... Read more... |
Dan Snow's History of Congo, BBC TwoThursday, 10 October 2013
Congo has been where European adventurers have for generations gone in search of fortune. Probably not making a fortune, historian Dan Snow, an affable, energetic sort, was keen to tell us about this vast country, the size of Western Europe and... Read more... |
Siege in the Sahara, Channel 4Wednesday, 04 September 2013
Bruce Goodison has been responsible for some of the more impressive television of the last decade, sometimes drama, sometimes straight documentary, and sometimes drama-documentary, like his Flight 93: The Flight That Fought Back. He was back in the... Read more... |
Youssou N'Dour: Voice of Africa, BBC FourSaturday, 31 August 2013
You either get Youssou N’Dour, or you don’t. For millions on his home turf, the Senegalese singer is a major cultural figure: the street urchin-turned-superstar who almost became president. For large numbers of Western fellow travellers he’s the... Read more... |
