10 items to ‘Break the Internet’

 Black History is longer than a month..

   

Watch the trailer above and make a donation to help finish the film and bring it to cinemas

 Tell a friend and share the info. Each one, teach one

  

Beyond the Lights –  Trailer. From the people who brought you Love adn Basketbal.  This is simply essential viewing !

A rising young musician (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Belle) falls into a passionate love affair with the cop assigned to protect her (Nate Parker, Red Tails, Great Debaters), in this moving and inspirational romance from writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball).

You see her everywhere: an R&B star with an unforgettable voice, a flawless body and scandalous, hyper-sexual moves. She’s the stuff of fantasies, but because you know so much about her personal life, you feel like you know her. And when it comes to pop music, she rules the world.

In Beyond the Lights, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (the star of last year’s Festival hit Belle) plays Noni, a young woman on the verge of superstardom. Shaped from childhood by her steely manager mother (Minnie Driver), she’s checked all the right boxes so far. Catchy, ultra-produced tunes. Fetching British accent. A hookup with a sketchy rapper that becomes the talk of social media. But all this is threatened when Noni meets handsome, confident police officer Kaz (Nate Parker). Kaz knows what it’s like to be groomed for greatness, and he has a way of looking right through Noni’s camera-ready facade that throws her off her game.

In Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees (a 2008 Festival selection), writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood proved her ability to do that rarest of things in Hollywood: tell a widely accessible story with a black woman at its centre. Beyond the Lights may be her most satisfying film yet. She captures the seriously hot chemistry between Mbatha-Raw and Parker, delivering a romance with believable ups and downs. What’s more, she finds the human core of her sensational story, uncovering layer after layer of emotional truth to reveal the woman inside a diva. Review by 

CAMERON BAILEY . To add yourself to the BHW mail list click HERE

Active Afro Training

 

The Active Afro Training is a technique created and developed by Madee in 2010.

The mission behind the training  is to give people the key of African dances. 

You will find benefits within this training, no matter if you are looking to get fitter or if you aim to become a stronger dancer. This Training is a perfect mix between a dance class and a fitness class as traditional or popular African dances train musicality, rhythm and develop excellent physical power, stamina, balance, muscles coordination and isolation.

We break down moves from all over Africa in order to target particular muscles like abdominals, calves, pectorals, glutes, biceps, etc. 

 

 Tell a friend and share the info. Each one, teach one

  

HAIRitage, a short film exploring Black hair in Britain with extracts from Queen Nzingha Lecture 21 (African Hair police) featuring Kandace Chimbiri and Crystal Afro

 

Campaign for a memorial garden in Hyde park to recognise centuries of African resistance

Oku Ekpenyon has spent decades fighting for accurate British history which includes African people. Memorial 2007 is about a physical and permanent monument in central London

New film on Martin Luther King starring an almost unrecognisable David Oyewolo and Oprah Winfrey directed by Ava Duvernay 

The story of Britain’s Black Community and the First World War is told by Stephen Bourne in his book Black Poppies, which has sold 1,500 copies in the first three months since publication. It is therefore shameful that despite his past involvement with the Imperial War Museum he and others were not consulted on the new First World War exhibition. There is growing anger that it does not include any noticeable recognition of the African, Caribbean, Chinese and South Asian contribution.

 

Divided into three sections about the experiences of black servicemen, citizens and communities,  Stephen synthesises existing knowledge with new research in a very readable style. It is not intended as a comprehensive or definitive account.  He explains that ‘more research needs to be undertaken for a fuller appreciation and understanding of the subject’, especially as David Killingray suggested back in 1986 in the War Office and Colonial papers at what is now The National Archives.

Rich in detail it is a valuable handbook  for people wanting to prepare talks especially at local level as part of putting ‘Black’ into the public’s consciousness about the true nature of the First World War over the next few years.  It is not just London, Liverpool and Cardiff, but from Newcastle and North Shields down to Folkestone and Bournemouth, and across from Truro to Leamington Spa, Oxford and Northampton. Click here to read full article

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=1939 

The first plan for a war memorial was started in 1921. Reims was chosen 
due to the pivotal role played by African soldiers in defense of this 
town in September 1918. André Maginot, the minister of war (and also noted for creating the Maginot line), laid the first stone on 29 October 1922. Blaise Diagne 
also spoke on this occasion.

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=1940 

Édouard Daladier, then minister of colinies, subsequently Prime Minister 
of France was there at the dedication of the memorial and the subsequent 
sports festival which was held, in which 10,000 people participated.

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=1942 

Following the Nazi invasion of France, the monument was destroyed. 
Marcel Cocset clandestinely took a photograph of the monument being 
removed, and his family gathered at the spot to lay wreaths on the site 
that October. Needless to say they risked deportation to a concentration 
camp for challening the nazi authorities and their racist ideology in 
this way.

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=1943 
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, first a small stele (1958) and then a 
larger monument (1963) were erected

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=1950 
In 2009 the Association pour la mémoire de l’Armée noire (Association 
for the Memory of the Black Army) – AMAN was set up and soon started 
fundraising to integrate a recreation of the 1924 memorial with that of 
1963. They were also involved in creating an educational project around 
“La Force Noire”, the name given to the African troops in the French 
Army.

http://www.cndp.fr/crdp-reims/index.php?id=2154 
The reconstruction of the memorial was completed a year ago today! It 
was ready for November 11th 2013 commemorative ceremony.
There are, of course, other monuments to African soldiers in the First 
World War:Two monuments in the Jardin d’agronomie tropicale de Paris, one to Black 
soldiers and one to soldiers from Madagascar
There are another three in South East France:

One in Saint-Raphaël, erected in 1975
Another in Frejus, erected in 1994.
In the cemetery at Menton, the Association Mémoire du Tirailleur 
Sénégalais (Association for the Memory of the Senegalese Tirraieurs) 
erected a monument in 2012. This is where 1,137 colonial troops are 
buried.  Thanks to Fabian Thopsett for this information.