16/05/2016

Fuocoammare - Fire at Sea: Greetings from Lampedusa



"Fuocoammare" al 25° Innsbruck International Film Festival
"Fuocoammare" di Gianfranco Rosi è stato selezionato alla venticinquesima edizione dell'Innsbruck International Film Festival, che si terrà dal 24 al 29 maggio 2016 nella città austriaca.

Gianfranco Rosi è andato a Lampedusa, nell’epicentro del clamore mediatico, per cercare, laddove sembrerebbe non esserci più, l’invisibile e le sue storie. Seguendo il suo metodo di totale immersione, Rosi si è trasferito per più di un anno sull’isola facendo esperienza di cosa vuol dire vivere sul confine più simbolico d’Europa raccontando i diversi destini di chi sull’isola ci abita da sempre, i lampedusani, e chi ci arriva per andare altrove, i migranti. 
Da questa immersione è nato "Fuocoammare". Racconta di Samuele che ha 12 anni, va a scuola, ama tirare con la fionda e andare a caccia. Gli piacciono i giochi di terra, anche se tutto intorno a lui parla del mare e di uomini, donne e bambini che cercano di attraversarlo per raggiungere la sua isola. Ma non è un’isola come le altre, è Lampedusa, approdo negli ultimi 20 anni di migliaia di migranti in cerca di libertà. Samuele e i lampedusani sono i testimoni a volte inconsapevoli, a volte muti, a volte partecipi, di una tra le più grandi tragedie umane dei nostri tempi. (15/05/2016, 11:38)









Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) 2016 Film Trailer


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Kc5wy0Rxg


The documentary captures life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis. Situated some 200km off Italy’s southern coast, Lampedusa has hit world headlines in recent years as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants hoping to make a new life in Europe. Rosi spent months living on the Mediterranean island, capturing its history, culture and the current everyday reality of its 6,000-strong local population as hundreds of migrants land on its shores on a weekly basis. The resulting documentary focuses on 12-year-old Samuele, a local boy who loves to hunt with his slingshot and spend time on land even though he hails from a culture steeped in the sea.

Release Date: 18 Feb 2016 (Italy) - 28 Sept 2016 (France)
Countries: Italy, France
Language: English
Genre: Documentary
Director: Gianfranco Rosi

15/05/2016

James Baldwin on freedom


I love this quote, of course:

"The importance of a writer is continuous… His importance, I think, is that he is here to describe things which other people are too busy to describe"...

Again, thanks to Branpickings.org. Such a great website for writers!

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/09/james-baldwin-freedom/?mc_cid=fa52e3d295&mc_eid=cd5a6845cc


James Baldwin on Freedom and How We Imprison Ourselves

“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.”

James Baldwin on Freedom and How We Imprison Ourselves
“Everything can be taken from a man,” Viktor Frankl wrote in his timeless treatise on the human search for meaning“but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” And yet, as Adrienne Rich observed in her sublime meditation on writing, capitalism, and freedom, “in the vocabulary kidnapped from liberatory politics, no word has been so pimped as freedom.” How, then, are we to choose our own way amid a capitalist society that continually commodifies our liberty? 
The peculiar manner in which personal and political freedom magnetize each other is what James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) explores in a piece titled “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,” originally delivered as an address at the 1960 Esquire symposium on the writer’s role in society and later included in his altogether spectacular essay collection Nobody Knows My Name (public library).

Baldwin writes:
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn’t got to have an enormous military machine in order to be un-free when it’s simpler to be asleep, when it’s simpler to be apathetic, when it’s simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important.
In a sentiment that calls to mind Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer’s piercing words on the writer’s responsibility as a bastion of freedom, Baldwin adds:
The importance of a writer is continuous… His importance, I think, is that he is here to describe things which other people are too busy to describe.
Perhaps the most vital things for the writer to describe, Baldwin argues, are the habitual ways in which we imprison ourselves and relinquish our own freedom. Exactly half a century after Lebanese poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s stirring reflections on the seeming self vs. the appearing self and shortly before Hannah Arendt formulated her enduring ideas on being vs. appearing and our impulse for self-display, Baldwin writes:
There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don’t believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it — and almost all of us have one way or another — this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.
Two years before he came to converse with Margaret Mead about reimagining democracy for a post-consumerist world, Baldwin observes:
We have some idea about reality which is not quite true. Without having anything whatever against Cadillacs, refrigerators or all the paraphernalia of American life, I yet suspect that there is something much more important and much more real which produces the Cadillac, refrigerator, atom bomb, and what produces it, after all, is something which we don’t seem to want to look at, and that is the person.
Echoing Eleanor Roosevelt’s clarion call for our individual role in democracy and social change, Baldwin adds:
A country is only as good… only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become… I don’t believe any longer that we can afford to say that it is entirely out of our hands. We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.
Complement this particular fragment of the wholly invigorating Nobody Knows My Name with Susan Sontag on literature and freedom and the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki on what freedom really means, then revisit Baldwin on the artist’s struggle for integritythe revelation that taught him to see, his forgotten conversations with Margaret Mead about identity, race, power, and forgiveness and with Nikki Giovanni about what it means to be truly empowered, and his advice to aspiring writers.

'Where do you draw the line?' Documentary



'Where do you draw the line?'

Documentary film exploring the complex issues surrounding an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian
Amazon fighting enforced oil extraction on their land.
WordSmith ProductionsFounded in 2013 in by Mike & Joseph, following the production
of Where Do You Draw The Line? in the Ecuadorian Amazon.


Extended Trailer




More about the film:


'Where do you draw the line?' is a documentary telling the story of a small indigenous community fighting enforced oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. 

Narrated by Daddy G of Massive Attack and filmed in Sani Isla and Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, this feature-length self-funded documentary film tells the story of the indigenous Kichwa community living in Sani Isla along the Napo River, bordering the Yasuni national park.

It features:
Academics who explain the governments push for oil in order to fund development;
Leading researchers who demonstrate the unique species and rich biodiversity existing within the region;
Community members explaining their long history in the area, and their plans for a sustainable future based on eco-tourism for future generations;
And a government minister who was part of a now cancelled initiative which could have saved the region entirely.

Repeatedly threatened with enforced oil extraction by both the government and military on their ancestral land, the people of Sani Isla have thus-far remained strong in the face of Petro-dollar$, resolving instead to maintain their traditional way of life.

Breaking their bond with a forest that has sustained their people for generations would be the death of their culture and community.

In a globalised world of mass consumption run on fossil fuels, could it be that we all play in a part in the destruction of this pristine rainforest? If so, 'Where do you draw the line?'


Production notes:
This is a first-time documentary planned, filmed, produced and edited by a self funded team of university graduates on an almost non-existant budget. This documentary is a labour of love released with the intention of giving the people of Sani Isla a platform on which to tell their story...


Like/Follow us on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/zukmvax
Twitter:  http://tinyurl.com/j83h8ko
Website: http://wordsmithproductions.co.uk/


Starting Festival Season


With:




Near Paris, in Vincennes, early June!!
Music and ethics. Friendly and green.

Read more:


«We Love Green» : le festival de musique éco-responsable

Verres en plastique non recyclés, mégots par terre, grosse facture d'énergie liée aux sonos et lumières... Les festivals de musique sont souvent de rudes moments pour l'environnement. 


-- 

La troisième scène du festival est une proposition ambitieuse et inédite, pour conjuguer pédagogie et ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives pour élargir notre champ de vision.
Au programme des conférences, rencontres, débats et projections de documentaires ou grands films.

--


Les Inrocks :

Cette année, We Love Green a décidé d’envoyer encore un peu plus de lourd en affichant PJ Harvey et LCD Soundsystem en tête d’affiche de sa programmation. Le festival vert, qui se tiendra au Bois de Vincennes les 4 et 5 juin prochain, a également pris des libertés en se dirigeant davantage vers la musique électronique : les noms annoncés ne sont autres que le duo versaillais AirFatima YamahaDiplo ou encore Hudson Mohawkepour les DJ sets. Pour ce qui est du live, Floating Points se chargera de nous ambiancer. Et surprise : c’est le duo rap PNL qui se chargera de la street cred de la prog.
Mais il y aura aussi FKJSuperpozeJacques ainsi que L’Imperatricepour la tendance frenchie. A prévoir également : les Anglais de Hot Chip, le Brésilien Amon Tobin et la chanteuse r’n’b Kelela. 
Des infos sur les pass sont à retrouver sur le site du festival.



"Another hidden treasure from Bristol”: Lady Nade's album launch - Sat. May 21st


Not to be missed!!!


1 week until my official album show at tickets avalible @ www.ladynade.co.uk until Wednesday! X



Lady Nade ‘Hard To Forget’ Album Show

Saturday 21st May Bristol Folk House

Doors 7pm | 8-11pm  

Lady Nade has been described as having a voice that speaks of long-lost jazz clubs, with a poise that belies her age. Mixing modern soul and folk. Her sound has been likened to “Anthony and the Johnsons and Nina Simone”  

Lady Nades first album single ’Mind’s Made Up’ is already being acclaimed by local press gaining airplay on both BBC Bristol’s Introducing Show and Tom Robinsons BBC6 Fresh Net show. 

Lady Nade will launching her debut album on Saturday 21st of May The Bristol Folk House, featuring special guests and support performances from: 
    Access To Music
    The Rock Project 
Tickets on sale at www.ladynade.co.uk
FolkHouse Bristol 0117 926 2987
£5.00 in Adv £8.00 on the door
Reviews:

"To call Lady Nade a ‘singer-songwriter’ hardly hints at the emotional weight of her lyrics, let alone the unique richness of a unique voice. Some of the best soul music lives where blues meets jazz and Lady Nade is right there, too". 
Tony Benjamin from Bristol 24/7 

"Whatever the aliment, Lady Nade is the cure…a satin voice." 
Sam Bonham BBC Introducing

"Unique, wonderful, voice which has the power to move you.” 
Ian Matthews of Kasabian

"Great voice, distinctive and original, another hidden treasure from Bristol.” 
Roni Size

"Lady Nade ‘a captivating soul singer ‘one to watch’ ".
The Musicians union

--
info@ladynade.co.uk
www.ladynade.co.uk
Facebook: Lady Nade
Twitter: Lady Nade


--

My review from Nade's performance in WOMAD 2015 - in French fro RFI Musique:



Festival

WOMAD 2015 
Reportage  

28/07/2015 - 

Le festival WOMAD – World of Music, Arts and Dance – créé en 1982 par Peter Gabriel et quelques acolytes passionnés de musique, dans le Somerset, comté du sud-ouest de l’Angleterre, s’est depuis étendu sur d’autres continents. Cette 33e édition anglaise se tenait à Charlton Park, dans le Wiltshire près de Bristol, et confirme son statut de plus grand festival en matière de musique du monde, avec des têtes d'affiche comme le chanteur sénégalais Cheikh Lô, ou l'Ivoirien Tiken Jah Fakoly, mais aussi quelques groupes en devenir comme les Congolais du Mbongwana Star.


Un festival anglais sans pluie ni boue ne serait pas un festival digne de ce nom… Le WOMAD 2015 s’est donc ouvert le jeudi 23 juillet au soir sous une pluie battante. Cela n’a pas empêché les festivaliers et campeurs d’arriver en masse sur le site de Charlton Park, où se tient l’édition historique de ce festival à déclinaison. Ce qui caractérise le WOMAD est un mélange de découvertes locales britanniques et des performances des meilleurs musiciens des cinq continents, associées à de nombreux ateliers, des événements parallèles, des débats et projections de films. Cette année, parmi les artistes attendus dès le premier jour de concert, le vendredi, figuraient le duo des Franco-Cubaines Ibeyi, l’électro franco-orientale d’Orange Blossom et la formation nigérienne de Tal National. Pour la première soirée, la scène de la Siam Tent a ensuite accueilli le blues du désert des Maliens de Kidal Tinariwen sous des tonnerres d’applaudissements.

Parmi les sept scènes du festival, celle du Molly’s Bar a reçu les formations plus intimes. Vendredi, s’y sont produits les percussionnistes ghanéens de Kakatsi Drummers suivis de la chanteuse de Bristol, Lady Nade. De son vrai nom Nadine Gingell, elle fait partie des groupes qui montent dans l’ouest de l’Angleterre. Venue l’an dernier en spectatrice, Lady Nade a depuis produit un premier single, Mind’s Made Up, et joué intensément dans la région sa soul musique qu’elle qualifie de "folky et moderne", inspirée par les ladies du jazz Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, ainsi que par Leonard Cohen, Lianne La Havas, Katy Perry ou encore Anthony and the Johnsons.

Autre star de Bristol en vedette, le DJ pionnier Daddy G, membre du groupe Massive Attack, s’est produit sur la scène de la RedTent samedi soir, pour une soirée de mix reggae et dub, accompagné du jeune britannique MC Deemas J.

À l’autre bout du spectre musical, l’un des temps forts de la soirée de samedi, reste la prestation jazz de l’Israélienne d’origine éthiopienne Ester Rada et de son groupe aux trois magnifiques cuivres, sur l’Open Air Stage. Elle a été suivie dans un immense enthousiasme par l’apparition de l’Ivoirien Tiken Jah Fakoly.


(...) Enfin, dimanche, le festival recevait également les très attendus Ghostpoet et Laura Mvula, ainsi qu’une seconde performance du chanteur sénégalais Cheikh Lô, ovationné, et celle du Français surdoué Chassol. L’Analog Africa Sound System a clos les festivités par un DJ set multiculturel.

Mélissa Chemam

--



My review for Toutelaculture.com:


Le WOMAD est le point de rencontre entre un pays extrêmement riche musicalement, le Royaume-Uni, sur ses terres culturellement fertiles du sud-ouest, et de ses multiples influences et passions, venant des cinq continents. Rendez-vous de multiples talents, le festival attire forcément des artistes locaux.
Incarnation de la musique de l’ouest de l’Angleterre

C’est le cas de Lady Nade, de son vrai nom Nadine Gingell, venue de Bristol. C’est sous une pluie battante qu’elle quitte vendredi matin son quartier de St Werburghs, connu pour sa superbe ferme urbaine et ses légendaires soirées sound systems reggae, qui ont fait le son de Bristol. Ce concert est son premier lors du festival de renom. « Je suis venue l’an dernier en spectatrice et je savais que l’année suivante je serai ici sur scène ! », s’enthousiasme Nade. Tentes, parapluies, sandwiches et rhum coca sont prêts ; le mini van peut démarrer !
Au sein de sa formation, Nade est accompagnée par trois musiciens : le guitariste Seb Gutiez, un Français vivant à Bath, le contrebassiste de Bristol Dan Everett, qui compose avec elle nombre de ses morceaux, et le jeune batteur Mike Cooper. Nade travaille également avec Allan Keen, son producteur et co-auteur, également fondateur du label indépendant Kitchen Studio.
Le groupe est déjà bien connu de la scène de Bristol, où il se produit régulièrement comme ce dimanche dans le quartier de Clifton, après ses deux concerts du WOMAD. Lady Nade a produit cette année un premier single, ‘Mind’s Made Up’, qu’elle a présenté sur la scène du Molly’s Bar du WOMAD, qui accueille de nombreux musiciens de l’ouest de l’Angleterre. Née à Bristol en 1988, d’une mère anglaise et d’un père de Sainte-Lucie et La Barbade, Lady Nade s’est formée au chant et à la guitare à partir de seize ans et se produit dans la région depuis trois ans. Sa musique, qu’elle décrit comme de la « folky soul moderne » s’inspire aussi bien des grandes ‘ladies’ du jazz, dont Nina Simone et Ella Fitzgerald en tête, que de Leonard Cohen, Lianne La Havas ou encore Anthony and the Johnsons et Maroon 5.
Pour ses textes, elle construit un univers personnel qui parle d’amour, de pertes et déceptions mais surtout d’espoir. « Bristol a beaucoup à offrir aux jeunes musiciens, mais il est temps pour moi d’en sortir et de partir en tournée », explique Nade, qui rêve de jouer à Paris. Son premier album sortira en en octobre, suivi d’un second single en novembre et d’une tournée en Angleterre.
--

14/05/2016

Dadaab's closure: Somalia's reaction



Somalia protests against Kenyan plan to close refugee camp

Thu May 12, 2016 4:35pm GMT
 
Refugees stand outside their tent at the Ifo Extension refugee camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border in Garissa County, Kenya October 19, 2011. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia protested on Thursday against Kenyan plans to close a refugee camp packed with hundreds of thousands of Somali citizens, saying the move would increase the threat of militancy in the region.
Kenya had announced a day earlier it was drawing up a timetable to shut Dadaab camp, shrugging off pleas to reconsider the move by the United Nations and rights groups. [nL5N18902B]
The vast settlement on the Kenyan side of the Somali border houses about 350,000 Somalis and other refugees taking shelter from conflicts raging across the region. Kenya says militants have also used it as a base to launch attacks.
But Somalia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said any move to close it would only hurt the refugees and possibly drive more people into militancy.
"Expelling vulnerable Somali refugees at a time Somalia is making internationally recognised progress towards stability and institution building, will only increase the risk of insecurity in the region," the ministry said.
"This decision will negatively affect the majority of Somali refugees ... and will make the threat of terrorism worse, not better," it added.
Somalia's Western-backed government is struggling to rebuild the country after more than two decades of turmoil, first at the hands of clan warlords, then Islamist militants.
Kenya says fighters from Somalia's al Shabaab militant group have used the camp as a launch pad for attacks on the nearby Garissa university in 2015 and other targets.
Last year, Kenya said it was setting a three-month deadline to close Dadaab, but backtracked on following U.N. condemnation of any forced return.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, Kenya and Somalia signed a tripartite deal in 2013 to repatriate Somali refugees voluntarily, including 50,000 in 2016.
But UNHCR acknowledged at the time it would be difficult to carry out, given the continuing al Shabaab insurgency and the poor state of schools and public services in Somalia.
(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Editing by George Obulutsa and Andrew Heavens)

Changements en vue à Grande-Synthe



Les dernières infos, dans le quotidien La Voix du Nord :

http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/region/grande-synthe-l-etat-et-la-ville-veulent-remettre-de-ia17b47594n3504085


Grande-Synthe : l’État et la ville veulent remettre de l’ordre au camp de migrants de la Linière 

PUBLIÉ LE 
--



L’association Utopia56 a coordonné l’ouverture du camp humanitaire de Grande Synthe depuis son ouverture le 7 mars. L’Etat a annoncé qu’il va en reprendre la gestion et nous sommes actuellement en attente d’information. 
Les réfugiés peuvent compter sur nous : entre 50 et 100 bénévoles, venus de toute l’Europe, s’inscrivent tous les jours aux différents postes nécessaires à la vie quotidienne du camp, pour assurer la distribution de repas, de vêtement, la veille incendie, l’accueil des nouveaux réfugiés, la laverie, la construction de cuisines collectives, etc.
Nous soutenons et remercions la Mairie de Grande-Synthe pour sa confiance. Nous rendons hommage à Médecins Sans Frontières pour leur engagement et leur aide indéfectible. Nous remercions particulièrement les associations locales qui nous appuient quotidiennement et les bénévoles qui ont travaillé jour et nuit en collaboration avec les réfugiés pour obtenir le feu vert de la commission de sécurité du 25 mars.
Nous appelons les bénévoles à rester mobilisés et à s’inscrire sur Utopia56.com pour venir aider dans les camps du Nord Pas de Calais où notre action est nécessaire.
Les réfugiés peuvent compter sur nous et nous comptons sur vous smile emoticon

--
We, the association Utopia 56, have been running the Grande Synthe humanitarian camp since it opened on 7th March. The state has announced that it is going to take over management of the camp and we are currently awaiting more information. 
The refugees can count on us: between 50 and 100 volunteers from all over Europe are here each day, helping to run the camp - distributing meals, clothes, keeping an eye out for fires, welcoming new refugees, doing laundry, building shared kitchens, etc.
We support, and would like to thank, the mayor of Grande Synthe for placing his trust in us. We pay homage to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) for their commitment and tireless assistance. We would particularly like to thank the local associations who support us each day and the volunteers who worked day and night with the refugees to obtain the go-ahead from the security commission on 25th March.
Volunteers! Please remain available and sign up on Utopia56.com to come and help in camps of the Nord Pas de Calais region where our help is needed. 
The refugees can count on us, and we are counting on you smile emoticon