African Animation Scholarship Programme

News update from my contacts:

SAE presents the African Animation Scholarship Programme

Calling all aspiring African animators! From pixels to puppets, cutouts to claymation, the world of animation is becoming an increasingly popular area of study.
For those looking to join SAE to expand their animated horizons, SAE is proud to announce the availability of 15 coveted part-scholarships.

SAE Cape Town will be offering 10 scholarships for Sub-Saharan African students and 5 South African students, allowing prospective students the opportunity to pursue their dream career in animation.

To secure your head-start in this exciting field, simply log www.saescholarships.com

a great link on contemporary african culture : African Digital Art

The African Digital Art website is a real find for anyone interested in contemporary african digital art culture. I highly recommend this link for some great finds related to not only African animation but digital art at large.
see:
African Digital Art

some new animated finds....

here are some links/ videos that have been sent to me from various African animators... enjoy!
Kenneth Coker - Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, he studied at Memphis college of art and completed the film below as his graduate showreel.

Iwa from Kenneth Coker on Vimeo.

Oni Ise Owo from Kenneth Coker on Vimeo.

Micheal Rix - Based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The film was originally produced as a music video for South African rock band The Parlotones, but was rejected.

Strings from Reel 13 on Vimeo.

Binyavanga, "How to write about Africa"

Just by accident I stumbled across Binyavanga's article "How to write about Africa" published in the Africa in the Picture 2008 program (Amsterdam).It can also be found on-line on the GRANTA magazine. Binyavanga's sense of humour is acutely perceptive, for anyone in the field of African studies or writing about Africa... to give you a taster here is Binyavanga's opening paragraph...

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'....

Highly recommended!

SCOLMA Annual Conference: Africa and the Moving Image: the Role of Libraries and Archives

The recent conference held at Newnham College, Cambridge, was a veritable attempt to begin to address the difficulties facing the future of African film, or rather specifically more so film made by African's for an African audience and its urgent need of suitable archives.

The lineup of guest speakers included:

Dr Guido Convents: Current Issues in African Moving Image and its Preservation

Mr Keith Shiri: African Film and Documentary: The Contemporary Scene

Prf. Vivian Bickford Smith : Film as Evidence, Film as istory and Film in History

Dr Emma Hunter: African History on Screen and in the Classroom: Moving Images in the teaching of African History

Dr Emma Sandon: Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire. A 3-year AHRC funded project

Susanne Hammacher: Looking back - Looking Forward: Tasks ad Challenges of an Archival Ethnographic Film Collection and the Digital Future.


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The opening paper by Guido Convents presented an overview of some of the problems facing the archival of African film within the local context, with a focus on the DRC. This was supplemented by a screening of documentary made by a young Congolese filmmaker about the current state of an archival unit in Kinshasa.

The presentation and documentary highlighted Convents; key arguement, that whilst there are archives of colonial film (for a European audience and also propagandist or educational film for local African audiences), there is hardly any interest in archiving film that was produced after colonialism.

He develops this further by later proposing that the archive within an African context could also include key films that have influenced early African filmakers, such as European Neorealistic films screened in the 50's, the Western film, etc.

Convents asks whether these films should be considered when thinking of the purpose of the archive within a local context, alongside the local post-colonial productions? That is to say, an understanding of the images that early African filmakers were exposed to, in some way provides an understanding of their own approach to filmmaking, and in turn their cultural influences that pervade all aspects of life. When talking of the diverse cultural influences, Convents gives as an example Papa Wemba's musical influences from the rumba, and his early exposure to the music of Luis Mariano.



Convents provided an exhaustive list of key organisations that have been involved in the archival of African film, FIAF, FIAT, URTNA, UNESCO to mention a few. However the successes of these organisations in prioritising archiving, would seem is dependant on finance and access to technologies that allow for the digital storage of these films, as well as sourcing the films themselves.

Convents' examples from the DRC point at two key problems with the current state of play in archiving African film: firstly the need of local archives for the local, and secondly the lack of interest by Western archives in post-colonial film, both as historical evidence and as a cultural narrative.


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Keith Shiri, director of London's African film festival, "Africa at the Pictures", proceeded Convents with a brief personal account of his experience of African film, and a sample screening of the variety of work emerging on the continent ranging from Nollywood to higher production value "Relentless" see below:

RELENTLESS from Fortproject on Vimeo.

You can read more about this film by Andy Amadi Okoroafor at this blog:
Dodge and Burn

or go directly to the films official website:
clamfilms


Keith Shiri's presented his current project; the setting up of a UK based distribution company for African film which will be officially launching towards the end of the year. He believes that this will act as a platform to ensure that African filmmakers interests are best served and to promote African film in the UK.

Although the title of the scheduled talk was "African Film and Documentary : The Contemporary Scene", Mr Shiri's talked veered away from the topic, and focused more on the workings of the distribution company. It did not deliver the expected overview or flavour of contemporary African film or documentary, and was dissapointing to a degree.

The setting up of an official distribution company was met with support as it is clear that African filmmakers face an increasingly difficult task in disseminating their films to larger audiences. However there was little further discussion on what the greater implications of distribution:
such as creating audiences,
where they intend to screen the films,
what selection criteria they use for programming,
what are the problems African filmmakers face,
what are the current emergent technologies and how they are impacting on distribution, such as DVD or DV?

Although Mr Shiri evidently carries a knowledge of the contemporary landscape of African film, he was not clear in identifying some of these key issues.

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Prof. Vivien Birkette-Smith's paper on film as historical evidence, and film as history raised some interesting salient observations about the uses of the moving image by the historian. Here he identifies three key ways that historians engage with film; film as evidence, film in history, film as history.

The questions that were raised here presented the difficulties that historians face when turning to the moving image as history, such as the possibility of error, oversimplification, a lack of context. He also provides the counter position in defense of film stating that it can draw attention to 'uncomfortable truths' and reveal a sense of history.

Birkette-Smith provides ample sources of literature in this field, and developed his arguement thoroughly, presenting a strong case for the possibility of seeing the uses of different types of film as history in history.

animation theory... the limits of Cholodenko / or limiting the limitless

the observations below are still work in progress and do not reflect the extent of my arguement, nor that of Cholodenko's writings... it is if you like intial musings on this book - with probably more to follow....


The Illusion of Life II, Alan Cholodenko's second publication, is an attempt to address or re-address the perceived lack of critical theoretical literature in this field. The premise of Cholodenko's argument posits that it can only be through post-modernist discourses that any true attempt at theorising on animation can take place.

Although Cholodenko correctly identifies that problems associated with animations peripheral position in relation to "traditional" film theory, and other media - his focus on the pervasive-ness of animation in contemporary visual culture lends itself to becoming all encompassing of any media/ or art. He argues that as animated technology predated and informed film, theoretical positions should see all film (and other forms) as animations. Therefore rather than animation being subservient to film, and lesser than, in actual fact the reverse is true.

This position is not a new idea, and echoes the preoccupations of Cholodenko's contemporaries, whom he proceeds to critique for their limited view of the form. However although the premise is correct Cholodenko's limitless paradigm, applying the term animation to refer to any visual media, makes it impossible to begin to address the specific details of this medium.

He frames most of his argument by claiming that he draws from Derrida, Freud, Baudrillard, and other postmodernist thinking, but fails to specifically identify which aspects of these writings are used to inform how he theorises animation.

I suppose my personal biggest bone of contention with Cholodenko's 100 page introduction to his book, is his repeated claim

"The theorizing of the first (theorizing film as a form of animation) at once calls for the re-thinking of all aspects o film through animation and opens the door to thinking animation beyond film, including theorising all other art and media as forms of animation - drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, TV, video, computer, new media etc."

Herein lies the paradoxical position of Cholodenko, it is apparent that other art forms (as he lists) are NOT animation ALL of the time, and therefore it would be fair to say that animation draws from the artistic practices such as those listed above, and employs aspects of each medium, within the realm of the animated form.
The animation retains qualities to it that are particular and specific to the medium, of course it pervades into various forms and vice-versa, however I feel that Cholodenko's argument is too ambitious in its grand claims.

The risk Cholodenko's discourse faces, is the inability to realise and identify the aesthetic formal qualities that do make the experience of watching an animation still to date, different to watching a film, or looking at a painting, etc. His examples of cases whereby animation appears (or as he argues IS) evident in contemporary visual media whether in Kill Bill, The Matrix, Computer Gaming, etc is true, but inorder to identify this as such one needs to be able to define what it is we are looking at. Consequentially if we know WHAT animation is, then we can begin to see HOW it appears in our visual culture. The reverse arguement, that Cholodenko puts forward, that all visual media are animation, does not move as any closer to identifying what we are looking at, and how it bears similarities and differences to other forms.

When Cholodenko refutes Richard Leskosky's heralding of animation studies as a new discipline, he defines the notion of the discipline as something that requires coherence, stability, a state of oneness. Here Cholodenko is self-contradictory: positioning the notion of discipline as if it were a singular undifferentiated body of knowledge. Considering Cholodenko's advocation of the postmodern, this definition hardly resembles a postmodernist stance; that acknowledging the possibility of a variety of discourses, positionings, forces and tensions, within one discipline.

How and why is this relevant to the study of African animation?
If contemporary writing on animation theory has been limited or limiting (as Cholodenko states), then writings on African animation within theoretical paradigms of the moving image and visual culture are practically non-existant.
My own approach to discussing African animation within a theoretical framing, has had to be one that draws from analogous modes of opperandum when discussing the image, moving or otherwise, and visual cultures.

In short, although I agree with Cholodenko in his identifying the limitations of animation theory and in his mission to promote animation as a the medium that superceeds and consequentially informs all others (here I would put a clause and state MOVING image) - I cannot negate that the versatility of its aesthetic form draws from other practices that inturn inform HOW we understand and read the image. Its context of production and distribution, the implications of the technology, and the speciic cultural underpinnings that make African animation what it is today, are all relevant to my understanding of it.

In a sense, I too draw from postmodernist thinking, drawing webs of links, forces and tensions, that make the artefact reside in this visual culture space. My method has been one that looks at anthropological literature, post-colonial theory, media theory (to an extent), film theory, genre, the relationship between form, practice and aesthetic, art theory, iconography or otherwise, etc - all this in an attempt to understand what makes animation unique, and what makes African animation (used loosely here, but meaning different examples of animation from various African countries) unique and unlike its Western counterpart....

The task at hand... a hard one that makes deciphering the subtleties all the more difficult, more so if I was to approach the task utilising Cholodenko's position.

For more information on Cholodenko's position you can read his article on the Animation Studies On-line Journal