Father Geek here along with Rigobert Song and Dr. SOTHA to treat you all to another healthy dose of our Africa-AICN column, buuuut first here's a little something that may really interest this column's readers that live in the Central Texas area...

Saturday, Nov. 3 is SOUL FOOD night at Austin's ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA NORTH. Not only are they showing us this fantastic fun flick (Soul Food), but they're throwing a Hell-of-a-Feed to go along with it. Foodie film fans can feast on very tasty cinema with a great meal served by top local restaurants in the comfort of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema North on Anderson Lane across from Northcross Mall and surrounded by tons of convinent parking. No valet service needed here! Where else could you see a movie, enjoy a delectable meal with your favorite beer, wine, or other beverage and make a significant charitable donation all at the same time? Just check out the menu for the night...

One of the characters in this family drama sums it all up by saying "Soul food cooking is about cooking from the heart. When we didn't have much, cooking was the way we showed our love for each other."

Guests will love the meal catered onto the Alamo's long screening room tables from "Hoover's Cooking" and "Gene's Po'Boys & Soul Food" which will include salad greens, crispy Southern fried chicken, juicy smothered pork chops, green beans, black-eyed peas, macaroni and creamy rich cheese, collard greens, real mashed potatoes with extra-thick gravy, fresh flakey biscuits and steaming hot cornbread, plus... Oh, lordy... large helpings of sweet potato pie and that southern favorite peach cobbler.

Tickets are on sale now, get your's soon, and ol' Father Geek will see you there!

DR.SOTHA here, and Rigobert Song has been a partner of mine on Africa-AICN for over a year now. His insightful knowledge on African film has graced this column over and over again. This week is no different as the Professor of film in his native Nigeria, has unearthed another gem for us all to find and cherish, ‘Daresalam’. Reading Rigobert’s review, made me want to find this film at all costs. I’d even go as far as bartering my prized medical gloves to land this film. As is usually the case with African films, they get pigeonholed by global products, and thus never get to see a theatrical run. This is a sad state of affairs, when something this good goes straight to video. Even the video release is limited to a few repertoire video stores. The only way to change this is by showing an interest in the films that we highlight on this column. Let’s show these archaic exhibitors that there is a demand for original, engaging African films. There are plenty out there that could! rival the best that any country can offer. Now I know most casual cinema goers don’t give a shit, but for those who have a genuine love for cinema, then you would be doing yourselves an injustice by neglecting African film. It’s not such a bad thing being open-minded. Sure cynicism has its perks, and narcissism is fly on the art circuit, but being liberal ain’t half bad either. Think about it…

SOUTH AFRICA

* This year's French Film Festival festival is a celebration of the important contribution by women directors to the world of French cinema. Among those being honoured are Marion Vernoux, Anne Fontaine and Laetitia Masson. Collectively the films on offer present a diversity of style, content and execution that ensures riveting viewing. The festival is presented in association with the French Embassy in South Africa, Air France, Renault, CNC and Ster-Kinekor. It runs 2-22 November at Cinema Nouveau, Rosebank and 16-22 November at Cinema Nouveau Brooklyn, Pretoria. All Films are in French dialogue with English subtitles.

* Michael Davie, originally from Zimbabwe is producing and reporting several episodes of Frontline Diaries. The first investigates post-Apartheid poverty and crime in South Africa, while the second examines the culture of violence against women in Pakistan. His work was introduced recently to the media at a lunch held during the MIPCOM market in Cannes. His first film for National Geographic Television's Explorer series, Renegade Africa, was a personal homecoming of sorts as Davie spent nine months hitchhiking from Cape Town to Cairo examining socio-political aspects of contemporary Africa

* The purpose of the conference is to examine ways of making viable films/videos within the economic realities of most African countries, says Ben Zulu who heads The African Script Development Fund. The conference will be held at part of the programme presented by Sithengi, the film and television market. The conference takes place in the Nederburg Room, Artscape Theatre from 1400 - 1530 and 1600-1730 on Wednesday, 14 November. The conference will address issues related to advancing the African story. This will include script development, production, distribution and marketing. The opportunities offered by digital technology will also be examined. Confirmed speakers are, Ben Zulu, Professor Alfred Opubor, Professor Mbye Cham and David Wicht. Confirmation of two additional speakers from Nigeria is still awaited.

NORTH AFRICA

* Miramax Films is in final negotiations to pick up distribution rights to helmer Stephen Frears' next project, the thriller "Dirty Pretty Things." The project is set to start shooting in London next month, toplined by Audrey Tautou, star of Miramax's upcoming French-language film "Amelie." The story centers on a Nigerian illegal immigrant working as a night porter who stumbles across evidence of a bizarre murder at a posh hotel. He joins up with a Turkish chambermaid and a few others to solve the crime. Tautou, who will play the chambermaid, stars alongside Djimon Hounsou and Sergio Lopez. The project, scripted by Stephen Knight, marks Tautou's first English-language role. BBC Films produces the project along with Celador Films, with financing coming from Miramax. Frears, repped by ICM, also directed "Liam," "High Fidelity," "The Hi-Lo Country" and "The Grifters."

* Rigobert Song dazzles us again with another magnificent review:

Hi there readers. Well now that I’ve moved on from African-American material, it’s time to return to my beloved Africa. ‘Daresalam’ is quite simply put, one of the greatest African films of all time, and believe it or not, the only film to ever come out of Chad. This is an astonishing debut film that was released at the beginning of this year in a scandalous 2 theatres in North America. This is a jaw-dropping debut film from Issa Serge Coelo. Nothing on earth prepared me for this inspiring piece of work. I urge you all to try and find this….right now. My God it kills me to think how under appreciated this film will be, because of marginalised exhibition protocols around the world. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Daresalam (Let There Be Peace) – Directed by Issa Serge Coelo -- Chad, 105 minutes
In Arabic and French with English subtitles

"Our heads are not just for holding gourds Nor our arms just for holding weapons We cannot waste energy wiping away our own blood." - A. Balou

Daresalam is the first African feature film to focus on the civil wars convulsing the continent from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It provides compelling insights into how ordinary people around the world get swept up in extraordinary events. Its timeless story of two childhood friends turned into political foes personalizes the terrible costs of internecine strife. Daresalam is not only director Issa Serge Coelo's first feature but along with Bye Bye Africa the first feature films from Chad.

Chad's civil war, one of Africa's oldest, in many ways prefigured the continent's subsequent conflicts. Its pre-colonial roots reflect the basic geopolitical division between an Islamic, pastoralist North and a Christian or animist agrarian South. (A similar cultural and religious rift is at work in neighboring Sudan as we see in Nuba Conversations). Northerners traditionally raided the South for slaves for the Ottoman Empire; the French banned that trade and advanced Sara speaking Southerners in their civil service. In the decades following independence, two factions of Northerners fought for control of the country, one with French and U.S. backing, the other advocating anschluss with Qaddafi's Libya. After three decades of civil war Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita GDP of only $600; in the Spring, of 2001 a new rebellion broke out in the north.

Daresalam begins in the 1970s with two young men, Koni and Djimi, starting adult life as a smith and farmer in a prosperous village. Their placid existence is broken when the central government insists on buying the farmer's millet at below market prices and then browbeats villagers to pay not only taxes but also a national loan to help fight the guerilla war. The estrangement between government and governed is symbolized by the fact that the government ministers must speak French, the language of the former colonial oppressors, because they don't know the indigenous language. When an over-bearing official attempts to arrest the village elder, Koni impulsively spears him; in retaliation the government burns the village and massacres the inhabitants.

Coelo makes it clear that it is the government's corruption rather than ideology which forces the villagers into the arms of the insurgents, FRAP, the Front Revolutionnaire du Peuple. At the same time he does not portray the rebels as uncompromised heroes. As Koni says. "We fight in one world so we can live in another." The rebel leaders, Adoum, Bicara, Tom and Felix, disagree on strategy and blame each other in defeat. Eventually the group splits; Djimi, wounded, remains behind with the hard-liners while Koni joins a faction which supports compromise with the government. When Djimi travels clandestinely to the capital to question Koni about his decision, their meeting degenerates into sterile political name-calling.

Coelo deliberately does not take sides in the struggle within FRAP. While the split reflects the actual 1978 schism between Hissène Habré and Oueddei Goukouni in Chad, other incidents refer obliquely to the assassination of Thomas Sankara in nearby Burkina Faso and even Che Guevara's fate in Bolivia. Coelo vividly captures the atmosphere of civil war, poisoned by rumor, betrayal, posturing, a world held together by unreliable dispatches from partisan radio stations. He wants us to share the confusion of the combatants themselves, torn between rival opinions and ideologies, yet forced to choose sides. As Djimi says "Who is to blame, the revolution or this bloody dictatorship? Neither prevented our misery."

In the end, Djimi leaves FRAP to return to his village in the liberated zone. He brings with him a war widow Achta, and a sewing machine left to him by a fallen combatant. He may not be able to "sew" together his divided country but he can attempt to start a new life for himself and his family. Just as at the film's beginning the rupture of society by civil war was signaled by the death of Djimi's young sister, its continuity and renewal is symbolized by the birth of Djimi and Achta's child at the film's end. As the disabled Djimi stumbles through the village searching for a midwife, the other characters in the film appear as in a dream and we learn their fates: some are lost in action; Koni has been executed in a coup; Captain Felix has become President of the fictional Republic of Daresalam. As for Djimi and the majority of those whose lives have been shattered by civil war, the most that can be said is that they are "still alive," still suffering and struggling. Some q! uotes that share my love for this film: "A poignant essay on civil war in modern-day Chad, is so achingly beautiful and sad I watched with tears in my eyes...Ends on a note of un-ironic optimism that is more radical than all he calculated nihilism served up on Western movie screens." - LA Weekly "Spectacularly photographed… Few films have left me weeping for their beauty on a small screen. Daresalam brilliantly weaves memory, hope and despair." - San Francisco Weekly

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* The "blaxploitation" genre of the '70s is making a return with the mid-week release of New Line's Halloween offering Bones starring Snoop Dog. Like most of those '70s flicks, this one is garnering mixed reviews. By far, the best one comes from the country's most prestigious newspaper. Stephen Holden writes in the New York Times: "One way to judge the relative quality of a horror movie is by examining its vision of hell. Just how original and how hellish is it? By that standard, Ernest Dickerson’s Halloween-ready scream fest, Bones ranks high. ... In exalting the very worst of humanity, Bones displays a special glee and an unusual density of scary imagery." Other reviewers are less ecstatic. "The movie is over the top and garish. Its transitions often are sloppy and crude. But it brandishes its excesses like a loud, retro suit," writes Gene Seymour in Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. "You'll laugh at Bones a lot more often than you'll be scared by it, assuming you'll be scared at all," comments Jay Carr in the Boston Globe. Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News says that the movie "gets revved up as soon as it gets gross, funny and stupid." He then adds: "Actually, it's pretty stupid from the start." But Lou Lumenick in the New York Post can't find much redeeming worth in Bones at all, writing: "There isn't much meat on " Bones" a silly, boring supernatural thriller that squanders a potentially interesting premise and the rapper Snoop Dog in his ostensible starring debut." And Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News can't find much to like about it either. Bones he comments, "is horror ordinaire, with a joked-up finale that feels like an apology for the somber nonsense that precedes it." (So everyone liked it then - DR.SOTHA)

* Superstar Will Smith’s role as boxer Muhammad Ali in Ali seems to have inflated his ego even more. The Men In Black star tells of his future plans for greatness in the December issue of Playboy magazine. He says, "Making movies and music and entertainment are just a pit stop on the way to my true greatness. I honestly think I could be the President of the U.S. if I really wanted to." The former Fresh Prince believes he is above his hip hop rivals too. He explains, "A lot of people who have been blessed with this forum aren't really smart. I have educated myself beyond a lot of my peers." (Ali could’ve been president, Smith? I don’t think so – DR.SOTHA)

* Hip-hop mogul Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs has his gay uncle George to thank for his style. The superstar, who was crowned best Sharp Dressed Man at last Friday's VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards in New York, admits his dress sense has a lot to do with his camp relative. He says, "He taught me that there are no restrictions in style and fashion. I thank him for showing me that. I also thank my mother who would wear a ballgown to the store to buy a carton of milk." (I think I almost choked on the irony – DR.SOTHA)

* Mariah Carey has shrugged off the box office failure of her movie debut in Glitter to book a guest appearance on Ally McBeal. In an episode to be aired on January 7th, the singer and actress will take a central role in a lawsuit filed by a woman, played by Jami Gertz annoyed by a matchmaking service that refunds her money claiming she's "unmatchable". Carey will also perform her track Lead The Way, which is featured on the Glitter soundtrack. Carey's episode also marks the Ally debut of rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who's signed up for a multi-episode run on the Fox drama. (I don’t think she can ‘carey’ this off – DR.SOTHA)

* Oprah Winfrey has rescinded an invitation to writer Jonathan Franzen to appear on her TV book club after Franzen expressed mixed feelings about the invitation to the Portland Oregonian and other media outlets. In an interview with the Oregonian, Franzen aired his misgivings about his selection saying, "I considered turning it down. ... I see this as my book, my creation, and I didn't want that logo of corporate ownership on it." (A logo stating "Chosen for Oprah Winfrey Book Club" is generally stamped on the cover of the selected books.) According to today's (Wednesday) New York Times, he later said during an interview with Powell's bookstore in Portland, "She's picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe." Winfrey issued a statement to Publishers Weekly stating, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and confl! icted about being chosen as a book club selection." (I’m with Franzen on this one – DR. SOTHA)

* Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly and Christine Baranski are in negotiations to round out the cast of Miramax's big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical "Chicago." Shooting begins shooting Dec. 10 with Rob Marshall directing. Already set for the lead roles are Renee Zellweger as Roxie Hart, a chorus girl on trial for the murder of her lover; Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly, a tough murderess who befriends Roxie in jail; and Richard Gere as Billy Flynn, the slick lawyer who represents the two women. Queen Latifah will play no-nonense prison matron Mama Morton, who presides over the Cook County Jail. Reilly is in line to play Amos Hart, Roxie's sad-sack husband who complains in his "Mr. Cellophane" number that everyone looks right through him, and Christine Baranski will step into the high heels of Mary Sunshine, the tabloid newspaper reporter who covers Roxie's trial.

* An opening-weekend per-screen average of $4,310? Is that the number earned by "From Hell"? Or does it belong to "Riding in Cars With Boys"? Not quite. Unbeknownst to most of Hollywood, a small film called "One Week" opened at 18 theaters in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and Chicago on Oct. 19 and drew audiences at a clip that rivaled the weekend's top grossers. Released by Film Life Inc., whose president, Jeff Friday, is one of the producers of the Black Acapulco Film Festival, "One Week" tells the story of a soon-to-be groom who finds out one week before his wedding that he might have contracted HIV. The film follows him through seven harrowing days as he awaits the results of a blood test. After studios balked at releasing the film, Friday said, he opted to distribute the film himself with the help of corporate sponsorship from such companies as Starz! Encore and BlackPlanet.com. "Basically, the studios told us they didn't think the black audience would come out to se! e a film about HIV," he said. "They said, 'It's a good film, but, we don't know how to market it.' " (Another example – as if we needed one – that studio execs are morons disguised as idiots – DR.SOTHA)

* Responding to stern criticism by NAACP chief Kweisi, ABC and the Screen Actors Guild have launched the ABC Talent Development Casting Project. Under the program, minority actors will be encouraged to participate in showcases that will be open to other networks and casting agents, the Los Angeles Times reported. The newspaper said that the first showcase, a reading involving the Asian-American theatrical company East West Players, took place Wednesday night.

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT