CCA, Lagos

Public Programmes

CCA,Lagos in collaboration with AfricaLab presents the first of future arthouse film screening in our programme, the acclaimed film This is My Africa by Zina Saro-Wiwa on Saturday Sept 13th at 2pm.

This Is My Africa

What is Africa to you? This is a question Zina Saro-Wiwa has explored in her latest film This Is My Africa. A delightful, thought-provoking and utterly unique film This Is My Africa seeks to create an alternative image of Africa created out of the memories, tastes and opinions of 20 London-based Africans and Africaphiles. "I wanted to make a film that used private reminisces to challenge the way Africa is talked about publicly - which is often negative, reductive and wholly defined by the current affairs and NGO sector" says Zina.

A 50-minute crash course in African culture, This Is My Africa offers glimpses of African food, books, artists, music and films that have personally resonated with the interviewees who are: artist, Yinka Shonibare MBE; film-maker, John Akomfrah OBE; Channel 4 news anchor, Jon Snow; actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor; actor, Colin Firth; author, Biyi Bandele; fashion designer, Bayo Oduwole; writer, Mazzi Binaisa; DJ, Duncan Brooker; cultural historian, Nana O. Ayim; This Is My Africa comes at an important time. "Africa is still very much The Dark Continent in the eyes of the world,' says producer/director Zina Saro-Wiwa.

About the director:

The producer/director Zina Saro-Wiwa is a film-maker, writer and presenter for the BBC. She is also the founder of AfricaLab a multimedia company dedicated to changing the way the world sees Africa.

To see the CNN feature on This Is My Africa please click here.

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos launches a new professional development platform called Work-in- Progress on Thursday the 21st of August 2008. WIP provides an opportunity for artists, critics, curators to present a project during the developmental process and in return receive constructive critiques from an engaged audience.

Work-in-Progress provides a much needed platform to flesh out problems, elaborate on ideas, to explore varied possibilities and to get feedback from colleagues.The aim is to tackle the isolation cultural practitioners sometimes feeling in creating new work and developing their idea and moving to an advanced level in their work and experimentations.

Expected Results include

• Presenters benefitting from early feedback from their peers and colleagues.
• Presenters can hone their ideas further, take what is useful, play around with what is not so useful and make useful what is useless.
• Presenters can develop their communication skills and learn to articulate their ideas fully within 20mins.
• Audience member will also develop their communication and critical skills. They must be able to convincingly substantiate/argue their points for and against a particular ideas.
• In the process it is hoped that presenters and audience come away from WIP with a mutually beneficial exchange.

 

WIP 1 Presenters, Thursday 21st August 2008 2pm - 4.30pm

TY Bello presents Atoned, a yet to be released music video in which she aims to develop a synergy between her music, her photographic experience and now her directorial skills to the artform of video.

George will present Devil's Dexterity, (Draft title) the beginning of a new body of work which is taking on a more conceptual framework than his previous documentary work. The starting point is the remnants of accidents that we see on the Nigerian roads to explore the vulnerability of life, governmental and societal neglect but also paradoxical the tragic beauty captured through the lens.

Bisi will present Precious little things in life, (Draft Title) an exhibition proposal for a major institution in the UK that will tour to 3-4 venues from 2010 and then internationally including to Africa. Through this exhibition she explores the way in which visual artists explore the different facet of globalisation highlighting its predatory aspects especially in relation to Africa.

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