Sitraka Randriamahaly... Malagasy animator

Sitraka Randriamahlay has shown work at various international animation festivals. You can view his animations on his Vimeo channel here. The animation below is Hazalambo(2013)

hazalambo(lambo hunt) from sitraka randriamahaly on Vimeo.

And Rough Life (2015) that was shown at the Rencontres du Film Court de Madagascar For more information about the Malagasy cinema and the culture of filmmaking see the Artists on Africa interview with Laza the festival director.

AOA Season 1 | Episode 6 | Laza on "The Cinema of Generation RFC" from Artists on Africa on Vimeo.

Bino and Fino post on African Animation

For a great collection of different African animations have a look at Bino&Fino's blog post here.

AFRICA IN MOTION 2017 - Animation Galore

Another great contribution from the Africa in Motion team this year, with special screenings for animation from the continent, showing in Glasgow and Edinburgh. You can read all about this years selection of films and animations and an exhibition, African Film: Looking Back Through the Lens, which is definitely worth a visit!

Advertised as follows on the AIM website for Thursday the 2nd November at 6.30 at Woodland Creatures, 260-262, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5EL

AfriCA Animated 

This evening will bring you a selection of African animations from Egypt, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Martinique, Nigeria and South Africa. Animation has the extraordinary power to bring to life oral storytelling. The films cover a spectrum of stories, including hilarious propaganda, heroines of the past, mythical creatures, political and emotional issues such as LGBT identity, colourism, domestic abuse, and an annoying mosquito that just won’t buzz off. Each film showcases different styles and techniques such as stop-motion, 3D and hand-drawn animation. Some rarely-seen gems from as early as 1940 are also included in the context of our Africa’s Lost Classics project, to show that animation has a beautiful and long history on the African continent.

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INCLUDED FILMS

• Because I Am
• Black Barbie
• Got Flowers Today
• Husse Met Lang Ore
• La Femme Mariée À Trois Hommes (The Woman Married To Three Men)
• La Princesse Yennega (Princess Yennega)
• Mosquito: The Bite of Passage
• National Defence
• Uilhuisie (Owl House)

More African animation on the Blogosphere...SQUIDMAG

Another great little find, SQUIDMAG is a blog on African animation, comics and games. With some great posts about events happening on the continent - such as screenings for Afro/Animation in Accra, Ghana, or Comics at the Literary Festival in Accra. 

ANIMATE AFRICA: StoryLab Webinar 4th November

On the 4th November the Animate Africa will be running a StoryLab webinar 'How to Bring a TV Series to Market' in collaboration with Triggerfish (South Africa) and a host of speakers including: 


Malenga Mulendema, Creator of Mama K's Super 4

Wanuru Kahiu, Kenyan award winning Writer and Filmmaker (Pumzi)
Babalwa Baartman, Co-founder/Producer at Sanusi Chronicles
Thulani Simantov, Animator and Co-founder/Art Director of Sanusi Chronicles
Kelly Dillon, Animator and Co-creator, Ninja Princess

The event is promoted on ANIMATE AFRICA as follows, 

If you have ever thought about bringing your own characters to life as an animated TV series, you should attend this webinar to be streamed on YouTube Live on Saturday, 4 November to registered delegates. You'll learn insights that Triggerfish gained over the last 2 years while developing TV series with Disney’s support, resulting in 2 worldwide distribution deals to date....

Your idea could be the next African TV series to be produced and distributed internationally. You’ll get insights into what international distributors are looking for when they review projects.  You’ll also learn directly from creators who have just been through this process and have signed distribution deals for their shows.  And you'll get a chance to ask questions via Facebook & Twitter.  

You can sign up for the Webinar at ANIMATE AFRICA

FupiToons African Animation Festival

If you happen to be in Joburg, South Africa check out the 

FUPITOONS Festival  supported by Africa Animation Network, and the Gauteng Film Commission the festival will run in Johannesburg between the 26th - 29th October. The selection of animations screening are from all over the continent and aimed at children. See the final list they announced below:

FupiToons Final Selection:Gyrow (Nigeria)
Machismo - The Substance (Kenya)
Is that believable? (Egypt)
Please Frog, just one sip (South Africa)
Snow (South Africa)
Way Better (South Africa)
Jabu's Jungle - Warthog (South Africa)
Becca & Bongani EP2 (South Africa)
The Parlotones - Stay A While, (South Africa)
Orisha's Journey (Ghana)
Crocodile River (South Africa)
Crumbs (South Africa)
Doodle Duo (Imagination Studios)
Llama Drama (Imagination Studios)
Smarter Phones (Imagination Studios)
The Great Escape (Imagination Studios)
Hatch (South Africa)
Monday Man EP1 - Seat Belted (South Africa)
Monday Man EP2 - Tapped out! (South Africa)
TheWoods - MaJozi Music Video (South Africa)
Bun & Bunee - A collection of 60 second shorts (South Africa )

All About African Animation... a blog

It was great to come across this blog on African animation reviewing the Lola and Chuchu animation made by AnthillStudios from Lagos, Nigeria. The blog has a good number of entries on different animation from the continent and is another contribution to the much needed voice of African animation.

ALLABOUTANIMATIONAFRICA

Liyana at BFI. London and AIM (Africa in Motion), Edinburgh

The Swaziland production, Liyana, a creative documentary interwoven with animated fiction by Aaron and Amanda Copp with Nigerian artist Kenneth Coker as art director is screening at the BFI on the 7th October in London and in November at the Africa in Motion Festival. This film is a must see for animation/documentary enthusiasts... and for those fans of Kenneth Coker's work!

MOMA and Moustapha Alassane

Between the 12 -15th of May, 2017 the MOMA hosted an exhibition on Moustapha Alassane, Pioneer of the Golden Age of Nigerien Cinema. The exhibition is the first 

'North American retrospective of Moustapha Alassane (1942–2015), a pioneer of populist cinema in newly independent Niger in the 1960s and 1970s, is presented in association with La Cinémathèque Afrique de l’Institut français.'

Moustapha Alassane is widely considered the father of Sub-Saharan animation and his contributions to the history of animation from the continent are seminal as they went on to inspire other animators such as Jean Michel Kibushi from the DRC.

#CollabNowNow - Opportunities for digital arists and storytellers on the continent

Great news from Jepchumba from AfricanDigitalArt - you can apply for this by clicking here: BritishCouncilConnect.ZA. This is one great project that animators in Africa should be looking out for... 

#ColabNowNow is looking for you: the artists, coders, architects, storytellers, bending your artform in the digital now for the NowNow.
British Council Connect ZA invites young digital storytellers and artists working in digital, from Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa and the UK to take part in ColabNowNow. This platform for collaboration will showcase innovative digital work which will be shown during the Fak’ugesi Festival. The artists will partake in a 10 day programme curated by, Jepchumba, the founder and creative director of African Digital Art, and take part in the larger Fak'ugesi Festival programme.
Call for Artists10 artists working in the digital realm who will create work independently or collaboratively, to be shown at the Fak’ugesi Block Party. Artists include, but are not limited to: visual/graphic artists, architects, technical artists, programmers, music/sound artists, performers and animators.
Call for Digital Storytellers5 Digital Storytellers who will document and engage in the collaborative activities of the artists, telling the story to audiences in their respective countries. They are also encouraged to work with the artists. Digital storytellers include, but are not limited to: writers, photographers, videographers, bloggers and vloggers.

Eligible CountriesSouthern Africa: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Mauritius, and Namibia
East Africa: Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Rwanda West Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone
United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland

This project will take place in conjunction with the Fakugesi Festival.

Documentary Educational Resources: Guest Article

I recently contributed to the DER (Documentary Educational Resources) website with an article/ interview with Jean Michel Kibushi. For those who are not familiar with the Congolese stop-motion/animation director here is a short biographical introduction.

Although widely considered a pioneering artist in the field of stop-motion and animation in Central Africa, J. M. Kibushi Ndajte Wooto is an understated man. Always measured and philosophical in his approaches to his art, his films are a reflection of this. That stop-motion is his medium of choice is not incidental. This process requires absolute control of every minutiae and such conscious and considered treatment of the image frame. Moreover Jean Michel is not only an artist in his own right, but critically a cultural proponent for the DRC, a curator and historian for animation from the region.

Kibushi was born in 1957 in Lubefu in the Kasai Oriental region, and grew up in Tshumbe in the DRC. His background is in drama and cinematography with an education from Kinshasa's National Institute of the Arts (INA) between 1985 and 1989. In 1991, he made his first stop-motion film of a Tetela tale, Le Crapaud Chez Ses Beaux-Parents. He was isolated in his endeavours as the only animation artist in the DRC at the time. Nevertheless, he continued making work inspired by local narrative whether fictional or real, as in the documentary animation Septembre Noir (1992).  Perhaps it was this solitary experience that drove him to become an agent of change, promoting the development of animation amongst local artists in the region. As Studio Malembe Maa he continues to undertake socially motivated work with more of an educational and developmental agenda, through creative workshops with young people using local storytelling and theatre and the Caravan Sankuru (a mobile-cinema that travelled the Sankuru region that would otherwise have no access to film or animation).

You can read the article here: and more importantly you can purchase a DVD of his collected films on DER. 

VR in Africa...

Although discussions on VR are not usually thought of as taking place in Africa, in 2015 an exhibition in Johannesburg, NEW DIMENSIONS, sought to curate a collection of different pieces intended to explore new storytelling practices from artists from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa. Supported by Electric South and curated by South African Ingrid Kopp, a Senior Consultant at the Tribeca Film Institute - this exhibition drew attention to the experimentation with new processes including animation and games engines such as Unity to rethink the moving image. Exhibition included artists, such as Ngendo Mukii, Jim Chuchu, Jonathan Dotse and Kabiru Seidu.
You can read more about this exhibition on the i-doc website.