track... Yancouba Dieme

Track is a 3 week project produced all over France by 4 visiting student directors in 2007.The directors are Tanvi Bhatia (India), Anatoily Lavrenishin ( Ukraine), Yancouba Dieme ( Senegal) and Paola Guigou ( France)

dak'art

animation in Senegal...

Little is known about the emergence of animation in Dakar, Senegal. Most hits for a search on animation in Senegal will point you to the company Pictoon that ran the animated series Kabongo Le Griot, but that has now folded. The local artists that were trained in-house by the company acquired the skills of traditional animators, and some of them have gone on to direct their own work. Recently on the radar is the young, Yancouba Dieme - who also has a blog and it would seem is currently undertaking his studies at Supinfocom. His appearance on the festival circuit is evidenced at FCAT African Film Festival, Tarifa , with his stop-motion film Champion 2005.
An other contemporary,Piniang - as he is known (Ibrahima Niang)- shares a similar work background at Pictoon, with evidence of commissioned animated work, as well as collaboration and participation on UNESCO's Africa Animated Project. His work includes referencing his own paintings and the use of found objects. He also featured in the 8th Biennale of Contemporary African Art at IFA (Berlin)
For more information on Piniang's work see the article on Africultures

One early Pictoon Animation

on politics and animation in Kenya

Kenyan animation has recently been on the increase with evidence of animated shorts popping on the web through distribution mechanisms like youtube. Of interest is perhaps the emergence of political satire as a format, perhaps with links to political cartooning as the in the case of cartoonist GADO's recent puppet and 2D animation - The XYZ Show. Other examples can be seen on the Kenyanimation blog with Ihira's 2D animation "The Stated Opinionn Show" that follows a similar format and also uses political satire as its content. However trailing through U-tube one also comes across various other little animated skits that are akin to political cartooning using the same visual devices here are a couple of examples from Politoons






These animations may be inspired by the news/political spoofs on local stations like KTN's News Shot and CTV's News Aside, that are satirising local politics.





and finally Kenyan's interest in politics takes on any form as this article by the BBC on a inventive young political cartoonist shows...
Kenya's Busstop Cartoonist

nigerian artist and animator...

Kenneth Shofela Coker's work is inspiring, retaining a strong sense of an illustrative aesthetic that is derivative of African landscapes and imagery... check out his blog! Really exciting stuff.

african animation online articles...

With the recent attention that African animation is receiving globally, more and more online journals and animation websites are directly there attention towards the continent. With this in mind one can read up on the recent news from the continent at the following links...

Animation World Network
AnimationSA

Africa in Motion
AnimationSA2

also worth noting is the presence of animation in recent African film Festivals...

Africa in Motion / Cambridge African Film Festival / Africa at the Pictures, London

animation in Nigeria

although there has been little evidence of the developments of animation in Nigeria, I have been kindly contacted by Lanre Oluwafemi, a 29 year old 2D Animator who currently has a registered company called Lafem Animation. His work can be viewed on you tube, here is a sample...



Another animation in development that is using 3D Computer generated technology, Nigerian Legend - by prominentcease.com




Pick Ya Phone



on Nigerian politics...



check out musician/ animator who makes his own music videos Mak-Jay



The animation reel of The Frame Factory, an animation company based in Lagos Nigeria...

world animation blog...

One of the animations featured on the animationblog, from South Africa
"Sea Orchestra" by Shy the Sun



Sea Orchestra from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

more from Shy the Sun

Bakers: The Making of from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

Africa in Motion Film Festival

This year the Africa in Motion Festival, Edinburgh, will be screening a collection of animated shorts from the Continent. These include amongst others, some shorts from the Africa Animated UNESCO project, JM Kibushi's films, and J. Trowell's Beyond Freedom. The lineup was intended to provide a diverse overview of techniques, aesthetics and narrative content, that stems from different African countries. With this in mind, one can see anything from 3D Computer Generated animations, to hand-drawn or stop-motion animations. A more detailed article about the work can be found on the site: http://www.africa-in-motion.org.uk/

Project Ngando documenting JM Kibushi

For three weeks between 11th and 31st of May, Jean Michel Kibushi and a team of four professionals in scriptwriting, videography, sculpture, and 3D Computer Animation from Belgium and Bournemouth University travelled to the Academie des Beaux Artes in Kinshasa to work on the preproduction development of PROJECT NGANDO, directed by Jean Michel Kibushi. Project Ngando is the first feature length stop-motion film to be made in the DRC, based on an adaptation of the book Ngando by Lomami Tshibamba, the first Congolese writer. His book Ngando is set in colonial Congo written in the 1950s, but Jean Michel's adaptation will be a modernised take on the book, with resonances to current day scenarios in the DRC. The project consisted of a series of workshops delivered to writers, actors, dancers, sculptors, and painters, including students from the Academie itself.




The purpose of the time spent there was to inform and equip local artists with the professional skills required to undertake similar projects of their own. Through working on the preproduction development of the script (for animation), design and maquette building of primary characters within the narrative and studies of movement through acting workshops geared towards movement for animation, the artists were able to address aspects of their art in relation to the requirements of animation.




Each workshop ran for approximately 3 weeks, with different specialised groups of participants that were shortlisted. The process was at times frustrating due to physical restrictions, such as frequent power failure in the area, shortages of water and unreliable transport services that caused delays in the process. However not withstanding the participants were all able to actively contribute to this production and finish with tangible results that would later be implemented in the animation.

This whole process reflects Jean Michel Kibushi's ethos, one that returns to the DRC not only as a source of inspiration for his films, but to continue to expose local narratives to a local audience. This production, like his previous work, resides alongside other projects, such as the SANKURU Mobile Cinema Project, which takes a cinema, that projects African films, into rural communities in the Sankuru, Kasai Oriental Region. His work is always a considered reflection on local narratives that ring true both aesthetically and narratively to an audience from the DRC. This film will be Jean Michel's first film that is attempting to enter not only the European circuit but the global one. For this reason the development of this film has had to consider both a sense of local authenticity whilst at the same time ensuring that is does not become too specific that it does not read across audiences. One of the considerations for example is the intention to reduce the conversational elements to a bare minimum and to rely on movement to narrate the story.

Kenyan animation blog

a great blog documenting new up and coming independant animations, some very exciting and novel work! Hope to see more postings...

marionette, puppets DRC

H Paluku

animations by Paluku... there seems to be a Congolese link, still need to establish what and how. But some really exciting work...

wedding and funeral DRC

more music and the drc

groovy music from the DRC

the kasai allstars

Meknes Animation Film Festival

Kibushi at Meknes in 2006 exhibiting his props and characters for his film Prince Loseno


For the first time the Meknes Animation Film Festival has included specifically an African Animation Competition. Although it is unclear how much support and entries this will attract from Sub-saharan Africa - it offers more opportunities for people on the continent to screen their work and can only be a good thing!
An article of previous years festivals can be found on the AWN website - or click here....MEKNES

perspectives on the DRC for an article on JM Kibushi's animations....

BBC Timeline of DRC

For more information on Kibushi and other African Films with articles on FESPACO click here:
clapnoir

Urban Congo - with a short article on Kibushi's work Prince Loseno...URBAN CONGO

A collection of examples of Congolese films/ documentaries and animations can be found on a DVD set (2) YAMBI - I am still looking into whether this DVD can be ordered from the site cinergie.be : you can read about the DVD collection on the link provided:
CINERGIE.BE

also related site to this collection of films see the event YAMBI Congo

kagablog : portal to art/ film/ photography and more

For an insiders look at the south african film industry and related themes see:

state of industry

also see observations and remarks on south african media vs West importation by Sabelo

kagablog_rest vs west

more from kagablog on Africa in Motion click below...

AMotion

Jean Rouch, the ethnographic filmmaker with his penetrative and performative camera

Les Maitres Fous (1954)

A timeless controversial film, Les Maitre Fous depicts the Hauka (West African) religious ceremony, predominantly found at the time to be practised amongst the Songhay and Djerma of the Niger river Basin. Described as ritual exorcising of colonialism.

from the Documentary Educational Resources;
The imagery in Les Maitres Fous is powerful and often disturbing: possessed men with rolling eyes and foaming at the mouth, eating a sacrificed dog (in violation of taboo), burning their bodies with naming torches. Beyond the imagery, the themes are also powerful, and have had an impact in our own culture:Jean Genet's The Blacks was modeled upon the Hauka inversion in which blacks assume the role of masters, and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade was influenced by the theatricality and invented language of Hauka possession. Yet, as Rouch reminds us in an interview in Cineaste, possession for the Hauka cultists was not theater but reality. The significance of this reality is left ambiguous in the film, although Rouch's commentary suggests that the ritual provides a psychological release which enables the Hauka to be good workers and to endure a degrading situation with dignity. The unexplored relation of the Hauka movement to their colonial experience 1-S perhaps the most intriguing issue raised by this ceremony in which the oppressed become, for a day, the possessed and the powerful.

In order to truely be able to contextualise this film and read it within a specific cultural context, Paul Stoller's article "Horrific Comedy; Cultural Resistance and the Hauka Movement in Niger (Ethos, Vol 12 No. 2, 1984) is recommended. Stoller states,

In this paper I consider the Hauka movement of Songhay possession
dance as a dramatic form in which the deities practice horrific
comedy. This comedy, I suggest, provides a symbolic means by
which the Songhay anchor themselves culturally in a world which
the way of the European is rapidly changing. By aping the European
they have resisted culturally the way of the European and have expressed
metaphorically their preference for the traditions of their
ancestors. In so doing the Songhay have used symbolism to protect
their cultural identity from the ever expanding encroachments of
European civilization.

"If a cultural institution is laughed at, its meaning cannot be taken at face value. Laughter must be regarded as a denial of cultural automation and the affirmation of a complex human freedom to follow, change or create culture"(Codere 1956:349-350). The comedy of paradox is therefore a major tool which can be used by people to resist culturally the influence of powerful foreigners.

interview with rouch...


les tambours d'avant Tourou et Bitti - Rouch