The southern United States is known for many natural and man-made disasters. From the Mississippi Flood of 1927, which inspired the song “When the Levee Breaks,” to Hurricane Katrina to the BP oil spill, the South has experienced several apocalyptic events. Not only that, our entire world is dealing with rapidly changing climates, melting icecaps […]
Read More Moving on the Wires: Beasts of the Southern WildLast Saturday, I packed my day with watching both the Marley film about reggae singer Bob Marley and Something Positive‘s annual show Ancestral Chants at Long Island University in Brooklyn. Thus, I am doing a combined kind of review of the two since they both were about Afro-Caribbean cultures. First, the Marley film. As we […]
Read More Modern Griots Review: Marley/Ancestral ChantsA few days a go, I watched these two documentaries on the religions of the West African Akan ethic group. “Return to the Land of Souls” Watch the entire film here This is the description of the film: In the 21st century, many ancestral beliefs are struggling to survive in a hostile, fast-changing world. In […]
Read More Otherworldy Videos: Two Perspectives on Akan SpiritualityFrom Kiss My Black Ads Pharrell Williams always seems to have something cooking, so it should come as no surprise that the renaissance man has launched an uplifting video for his media venture, i am OTHER. Seen as way more than merely a record label, and instead a cultural movement of sorts, i am OTHER […]
Read More Otherworldy Videos: I Am OtherVia Liberator Magazine “Nijla Mu’min’s “Deluge” / Magical Realism, post-BP oil spill New Orleans, and Black Mermaids” By Kameelah Rasheed Nijla Baseema Mu’min is a writer and filmmaker from the San Francisco Bay Area. A 2007 graduate of UC Berkeley, she is now pursuing a dual MFA degree in Film Directing and Writing at Calarts. […]
Read More Otherwordly Videos: DelugeThe Nuyorican Poets Cafe Presents “Aja Monet – What I’ve Learned” A Camovement by Cam Be & Aja Monet Aja Monet is the youngest to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grandslam Championship title in 2007 at the age of 19.
Read More Otherworldly Videos: Aja Monet’s What I’ve Learned…From Miatta Kawinzi Created during my iaab artist residency in Basel, Switzerland, Cosmosis reflects on dualities of alienation and belonging, inner and outer space, and human-shaped and natural environments. The title references osmosis, the process of absorption, as it applies to navigating an unfamiliar environment, and as it applies to the cosmos as the realm […]
Read More Otherworldy Videos: CosmosisWangechi Mutu Sanford Biggers Barron Clairborne On MAY 24th at BROOKLYN MUSEUM, Afro-punk pictures presents “The Triptych,” in association with Weeksville Heritage Center. This short-film series (Dir. Terence Nance, Dir. of Photography Shawn Peters, Co-Dir. Barron Claiborne) highlights the work of artists Sanford Biggers, Wangechi Mutu, and Barron Claiborne. Live music and a Q&A with […]
Read More Otherworldly Videos: Afropunk Presents….German director Oliver Hardt, who produced Black Deutschland, and writer Darius James, author of That´s Blaxploitation!!!! and Negrophobia: An Urban Parable, have come together to produce the “spiritual road movie,” United States of Voodoo. The documentary explores how voodoo and hoodoo are still present in contemporary society through music, art and culture. The filmmakers describes […]
Read More Otherworldly Videos: United States of Hoodoo“We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.” — Erykah Badu in the Black Power Mixtape Although these series of posts will focus […]
Read More The My-Stery: Independent Media
Sherese Francis 