Films
Sunday 28 February 2 to 5pm. Phoenix Cinema,
Tube: East Finchley (2 mins walk)
Admission £8.50 best to book early. Part of African Odysseys
This film is about tracing the through lines running from the African communities' spiritual drumming practices, the dancers and musicians who've preserved those traditions, through to the younger generation who've plucked out and re-contextualised the elements most exciting to them.
The history of rumba, inextricably tied up with the slave trade, uniquely intertwines West African and Iberian musical styles. With roots in the Congo, Nigeria, Benin and Cameroon, different African religious institutions such as Ifa, Ekpe and Nkisi were remade in Cuba as Lukumi (Santeria), Palo, Abakua and Arara. As such, the religious and social realities instituted by the African diaspora have a distinct, if complex, connection to the rhythms foundational to contemporary club music.
The three main styles of rumba are guaganco, yambu and columbia. As well as forming an important part of the documentary, unpacking these differing styles has become an important part of the wider Havana Cultura project's exploration of rumba. Giles Peterson worked with the esteemed rumberos to record versions of the three styles now set to be reworked by a number of producers working in electronic music in the UK and beyond. Where the film depicts the lineage descending from the working class communities of Havana and Matanzas to modern-day dancefloors, this other arm of the project allows for an exciting, global re-interpretation of rumba's roots. An album with these original tracks will be released next year.
“Rumba is in every set that I play as a DJ. Being invited to take part in rumba culture, with some of its most influential players, couldn't have made more clear what a vital force it still is in modern Cuba. From the homemade claves you find in most houses to the quinto drums driving Havana's clubs, rumba influence is everywhere." Giles Peterson DJ
This is an amazing film full of links between African spiritually and dope club beats in everyday music. A must see
'La Clave’ clearly connects the dances to the music and shows the dance moves are not random individual interpretations of what the the drummers are playing. It is a physical conversation between men and women. It is an art passed down through generations and kept alive within the community. It exists in the conservatoire and thrives and evolves on the street. Maybe it’s because the implicit language of rumba as a dance which continues to thrive in Havana’s working class neighbourhoods is not understood outside Cuba that rumba remains too complex for a global generation of clubbers schooled on 4 to the floor or ballroom people devoted to “StrictlyCome Dancing…” Ancient to Future
Sat 27 February 2 to 5pm plus Q and A
BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road SE1
Tube: Waterloo more info and Book HERE
Admission £6.50 best to book early
Part of Black History Walks African Science Fiction & Fantasy season. Come and see why this inventive sci-fi docudrama was showered with awards and critical acclaim.
Part of African Odysseys at BFI Southbank
Adirley Queirós' high-concept, lo-fi futurist docudrama explores the trauma of victims of racist violence in Brazil
Set in Ceilândia, a city established by the Brazilian government to prevent the poor from settling in the capital of Brasilia, this biting critique of race mixes science fiction with testimonials from two men physically disabled by police violence in 1986. A “researcher” from the future comes to collect evidence against the state, and the pair give testimonials of their lived experience; meanwhile, an act of terrorism against this “apartheid” is being plotted… Queiros’s take on Afrofuturism is subtle, ingenious, and utterly contemporary.
Adirley Queirós' film is best described as shantytown sci-fi. Transforming a "suburb" of Brasilia into a ghostly no man's land, tl migrants from moving into the Brazilian capital. What was once dressed up as an urban planning strategy has slowly revealed itself to be a move aimed at limiting the freedom of movement of the mostly non-white have-nots, and it's perhaps hardly co-incidental how state-backed violence have literally reduced the mobility of the film's two protagonists. Both victims of brutal assaults by the police in the mid-1980s, musician Marquim (Marquim do Tropa) is now wheelchair-bound while ex-dancer Sartana (Claudio "Shokito" Irinaeus) walks with the help of prosthetics. The pair are tailed by Dimas (Dilmar Duraes), an agent arriving - via a time machine in the shape of a cargo container! - from 2073 to derail the "Big Boom" which will change the country's future forever.
Just as Interstellar conquers the galaxy with its Imax-catering budget, Queiros and his producer-designer Denise Vieira have countered that by producing a well-crafted vehicle about the future with canny twists of the present. Their efforts in conjuring the future through ingenious representation of the ordinary and mundane - Ceilandia's empty roads crissed-crossed by an overhead railway; Do Tropa's self-built home to facilitate his handicap; Sartana working with mountains of plastic limbs - could be seen as a 21st century Brazilian take on Afrofuturism, with Queirós' subjects (or collaborators) the logical heirs to Sun Ra, Afrika Bambataa or the Black Audio Film Collective. White Out, Black In is an understated wonder, its voice - the director's and the characters' - deserving to be heard