Film screening & Discussion at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham in collaboration with Long Journey Home. Thursday 5th August, 7pm.

Venue: New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Hyson Green, Nottingham, NG7 6BE

Tickets: £3/2 (concessions) – available at the Box Office on 0115 924 8630.

Sorious Samura becomes an illegal immigrant. He travels from Morocco into Europe, finally crossing the English Channel to Britain. He lives in the same conditions and experiences the same gruelling hardships as his companions. New Art Exchange in collaboration with Long Journey Home are pleased to be hosting a post screening discussion to address some of the issues within the film. Sharing the panel will be Stuart Brown (Long Journey Home) and Amdani Juma, a refugee whom left Burundi in 1991 and was evacuated from Rwanda by the UN during the 1994 genocide. After the conflict he returned to Burundi as a university graduate, but was held captive, tortured and put under surveillance. In 2003 Amdani fled to Britain and was granted 3 years Humanitarian Protection in the UK. During his time in Nottingham Amdani became a popular and enormously well respected community worker; assisting refugees to adjust to life in Britain and was also instrumental in providing awareness of HIV/AIDs within the African / Caribbean communities. However Amdani’s Indefinite Leave to Remain, has been denied. He now faces the prospect of being deported back to Burundi at anytime.

Long Journey Home is an East Midlands-wide network that recognises the important role the arts can play in breaking down barriers, challenging stereotypes, empowering the disenfranchised and enriching the cultural wealth of society as a whole; working with artists in exile and those communities that have recently arrived in the region from all over the world. www.longjourneyhome.org.uk

The first ever demonstration against a detention centre in Bulgaria organised by the Bulgarian Anarchist Federation of Anarchists in Bulgaria (FAB-IFA). March 20th, 2010 (no sound):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrFEFpmkMqU

Documentary about Frontex (EU border control operation) in 2009:
Frontex: The Movie (featuring noborder camp in lesvos 2009) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOuFo5egBqE

Forthcoming events (click ‘Read more’ for details’):

• 8th April Who wants to be a Zimbabwean Trillionaire UK Citizenship Test, first prize 100 Trillion Zimbabwean dollars. Food* at 7pm Quiz at 8pm
• 22nd April African Night. Fundraiser for Nottingham Refugee Forum and Aegis Trust. Food* at 7pm Film 8pm
• 29th April Iranian Night. Fundraiser for Nottingham City of Sanctuary- Food* at 7pm Film 8pm

• Wednesday 7th October: FLAME (Zimbabwe)
• Wednesday 28th October: LUMUMBA (Congo)

Food (for a donation) served at 7pm. Films start at 8pm. Details of the venue can be found in the Veggies/Sumac events diary and info about the films can be found at:- http://smallworldcinema.wordpress.com

There is always a good discussion afterwards. See you there!

There will be Afghan Vegan food (for a donation) served at 7pm. The Film is called Afghan Star and will start at 8pm. Details of the event can be found in the Veggies/Sumac events diary and info about the film can be found at:-
http://www.afghanstardocumentary.com/

An exhilarating jaunt through the ghettos of Kinshasa to meet musicians who struggle to emerge from the chaos: rappers, handicapped bluesmen, griots, street children, inventors of instruments, and ndombolo musicians. Jupiter, the charismatic leader of the band Okwess International, serves as guide and narrator as he describes his city and his long battle to break out of the ghetto with his music. “The DRC has 450 ethnic groups and thousands of untapped musical resources. We’re sleeping on a mattress stuffed with dollars, yet we’re starving!” Jupiter’s Dance presents a very different African reality than the one we are accustomed to witnessing in the news media.

Trailer

Review

This has to be one of the outstanding packages on Congolese music of the past decade. French producers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye have made this panorama of Kinshasa’s urban sounds something of a labour of love. Thanks to the multiplicity of engrossing characters, in-depth research and superb editing, the viewer is hooked from the start. The 73’ documentary takes us into the depths of Congo’s largest ghettoes where street children, beggars, prostitutes and disabled victims of polio, strive to find their daily bread in an urban jungle that has plummeted into poverty and violence unimaginable four decades ago. Yet, in their first-ever film La Tullaye and Barret have shown how music is allowing these disenfranchised Congolese to stand up and be counted.

At the heart of this defiance stands Jupiter, an African Don Quixote with a cavernous voice and straight-shooting vision. “Kinshasa is the capital of the world, but for the moment, it’s a pile of shit,” he quips over a beer. Somehow, this self-styled “rebel general” has culled traditional music from the 450 ethno-linguistic groups that make up Congo, and forged them into a luminous folk-blues he calls “Bofenia rock”. Where he comes from and how he managed this prowess, is left to the viewer’s imagination, as the producers concentrate on the here-and-now. Thus, we are plunged into the entrails of a city that used to be called “Kinshasa the beautiful” and is now labelled “Kinshasa the dump”.

The poverty, filth, heat and humidity today dominate the metropolis and its 7-10 million inhabitants. It permeates each shot of Jupiter’s Dance. But so does the energy and imagination of the dozens of artists that the film encounters. Instruments are fabricated from string, water, discarded wood and tin cans. Verses are snatched from the hallucinating day-to-day life of these musical survivors to form lingala rap, urban soul, rumba-blues, electro-trad or Swahili ragga. “Always repressed, never depressed,” is the defiant catch-phrase of urban artists that go by the name of Staff Benda Bilili, ABC Star, Rinka, Benson de la Rue or Lexus Legal. These street poets denounce the spiralling war, injustice, misery and corruption around them. They point to the most vulnerable victims: hordes of children who have been abandoned by a phantom state and an impoverished education system. They are at the heart of this documentary.

“This is the time to speak out,” says Jupiter, “otherwise we are worthless. There is still a dictatorship here, but things are changing.” Adds Rock B, who is the city’s first rapper in lingala: “We’ve got fire in our stomachs. We have things to say.” Despite the squalor, Jupiter is convinced his life-mission to change the country will be attained, if not by him then by the generation that is yapping at his heels. The documentary ends with the skeletal singer organising a free concert in one of Kinshasa’s most impoverished neighbourhoods. Predictably, an electricity power cut brings the curtain down in the middle of the concert – and sweeps the film to an abrupt end.

We are left with the 11 tracks of the CD, a production lovingly recorded by Yoral Poupaud, former member of the mythical Fédération Français de Funk, FFF. This album captures the vibrancy of Jupiter’s ten musicians who hail from a diversity of Congolese regions. Its highlights, “Mwana Yoka Toli”, Solobomé” and especially “Bana Congo”, underline the attaching qualities of Jupiter’s voice and his excellent arrangements. The “rebel general” and his Okwess International band are preparing a second, all-electric, album. Meanwhile, his French producers are working with the eight members of the Staff Benda Bilili. These street musicians are victims of polio and confined to wheelchairs. Their disability did not prevent them from releasing a song called “Let’s Go and Vote” which was a major hit in 2006.

The song is also at the heart of a heated polemic. The group is hoping to take the United Nations peacekeeping mission, the MONUC, to court after they were only paid 50$ each for it. “It is thanks to our song that people went and voted,” protested band leader Nzale Makembo, in an interview with the BBC, “But MONUC did not pay us…This is slavery.” SBB are asking for $100,000 in reparation. The MONUC has an annual budget of $1bn. This showdown is likely to be part of the film that Barret and La Tullaye have made on the group, due out in October 2007. Meanwhile, their masterpiece Jupiter’s Dance should be obligatory viewing for all lovers of African music, as well as those who want to admire the defiance of the human spirit in this beleaguered nation.

Daniel Brown – June 2007

Come to the first of the Small World Cinema events for the new year on Wednesday 11th February 2009. Gather for food and bar from 7pm; presentation and films from 7.30.

DEALING AND WHEELING IN SMALL ARMS is a political documentary on the uncontrolled widespread of small arms, which rule and ruin the lives of a growing number of people in developing countries.

Please see *Sumac/Veggies Events diary* for further details.