Time flys when you're happy in your work I've been told and it seems like just yesterday I (Father Geek) was posting Dr. SOTHA's column for Africa-AICN and here I am tonight doing it again. And once more Rigobert Song has turned in an excellent insightful report to add to the other news and reviews. So loyal readers prepare yourself for another delicious double dipped dose of the great Dr. Sotha's consciousness expanding patented cinema elixir... its good for what ails you!

Cheers to all, DR. SOTHA here for another rum punch of Africa-AICN. Not one to brag, but my eclectic team of doctors, mostly me really (they insisted I mention them because making coffee goes along way)game upon a breakthrough of sorts. If there is any single, universally accepted standard for declaring a man dead, it's when the attending physician encounters a condition of full and irreversible cardiac arrest coupled with brain death. Not so, as of yesterday, I have a patient as dead as Ringo Starr's career, walking around like a regular person, thinking decomposition is a new "it" word for the post mod generation, and if you're still reading this then I'm sorry to have put you through it. A triumph none the less.

E-mail me your zombie epiphanies to africaaicn@hotmail.com

Nurse, I know those are under your vest, I said cardiac arrest.

SOUTH AFRICA

* "It makes absolute sense for us to make epics in South Africa. There would be no point making small urban dramas in a country where you can achieve such high production values so cost-effectively," said Peakviewing Transatlantic's Liz Matthews at MIPCOM yesterday. The UK company, which has already shot many big features in South Africa, is on the point of commencing principal photography on Beserker, a Viking saga, which, according to Matthews, is even bigger than Merlin, the US$30-million film shot in South Africa over a year ago. Beserker will be directed by Paul Matthews, who also wrote the script. South African Vincent Cox, who has shot many films for Peakviewing, will again be the DOP. A Viking village is to be constructed in Irene, and two Viking ships in Cape Town. There are many "bloody battle scenes" scripted in the film.

* An ecstatic Kobus Botha from Cape Town-based Ballistic Party at the MIPCOM opening party last night in a co-production with Canada's Motion International, had been nominated for nine Gemini Awards. The Gemini's are Canada's equivalent of the Academy Awards. Dr Lucille's nominations include Best Picture, Best Director (George Mihalka) and Best Actress (Marina Orsini). The awards will be presented on 28 November. "On the basis of this success, I've managed to line-up three feature films for 2001, one of which will be entered into the Cannes Film Festival," said Botha.

"Jean Paul" sent this great wrap up of the Molweni Film Festival, with some interesting titles for us all to look out for:

TOMORROW'S HEROES (Doc) This is the riveting rite of passage story of Richie and Schoolboy, 2 Cape Flats youngsters who joined gangs at an early age and get caught up in the viscious cycle of violence and the juvenile justice system. The film follows their attempt to gain recocgnition within their own povery stricken communities. Directed by John. W. Fredericks and David Tosco 6/10

GUGULETU SEVEN (Doc) The tragic story of how 7 young cadres were ambushed and assassinated in Guguletu by the security branch in 1983. The tale is unraveled by a team of young investigators for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Their findings lie at the coor of the film. Directed by Lindi Wilson 7/10

MAMELA EKAPA (Collection of 5 short films directed by Cape Town's township based filmmakers) Included in the compilation are Ntombi Mzamane's tragic SILENT PROTEST, Munier Parker's gun toting HEADS OR TAILS, Shedrack's desperate portrayal of poverty DOWN AND OUT, and BLEADING HEART Sophie Gulwa's enlightening portrayal of a woman's release from the viscious cycle of domestic violence. Overall 7 ½ /10

ISIBANDE Set in Khayelitsha, it takes you on a spiritual journey with a young Amampondo woman, and her family, as they celebrate her coming of age according to their African traditional religion. Directed by Lungiswa Sithole. 6/10

BLOOD AND GUTS (Doc) The story about the parallel black rugby league during apartheid, and it's devastating effects it had on the talented black players of the era. Directed by Munier Parker. 5/10

Jean Paul plans to wrap the rest of the titles in next week's column.

NORTH AFRICA

* * "Ngingu Rocco" (My name is Rocco) is a new film that's in production from the brainseed of Josef Salimon who wrote the screenplay and will direct. It follows the "based on a true story" life of hoodlum and one time great pool player Rocco. From his early beginnings as a street hood, peddling alcohol for small time mafiosos, to his meterioc rise in the black community as "king of the wrackshot", an impossibly talented pool player with a penchant for stupefying shot selections, to his death by ironically being the victim of a bad sportsman finale, where the loser "Black Mamba" tossed the 8 ball and cracked Rocco's skull, soon after losing the Dakan Championship. (So it's a comedy then? - DR. SOTHA)

Time to hand over the reigns to Rigobert Song.

Hello readers. Before I start, just a quick clarification, there seems to be a famous African footballer named after me, I have no knowledge of this person, and the match I assure you is purely coincidental. Moving on "The Language You Cry In" Produced and Directed by Alvaro Toepke and Angel Serrano in a Sierra Leone/Spanish co-production. It tells an exquisiste scholarly detective story reaching across hundreds of years and thousands of miles from 18th century Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia. It recounts the even more remarkable saga of how African Americans have retained links with their African past through the horrors of the middle passage, slavery and segregation. The film dramatically demonstrates the contribution of contemporary scholarship to restoring what narrator Vertamae Grosvenor calls the "non-history" imposed on African Americans: "This is a story of memory, how the memory of a family was pieced together through a song with legendary powers to connect those who sang it with their roots."

The story begins in the early 1930s with Lorenzo Turner, an African American linguist who cataloged more than 3000 names and words of African origin among the Gullah of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. He discovered that some Gullah could recite texts in African languages, including almost certainly the longest, a five-line song he learned from a woman living in a remote Georgia fishing village, Amelia Dawley. Although Amelia did not know the meaning of the syllables in the song, a Sierra Leonean graduate student in the U.S. recognized it as Mende, his native tongue.

These dramatic clues were taken up again in the l980s by Joseph Opala, an American anthropologist at Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College. Studying Bunce Island, an 18th century British slave castle, Opala discovered that it sent many of its captives to Georgia and South Carolina where American rice planters paid a premium for experienced slaves from Africa's "Rice Coast." The comparative coherence of this slave community may account for the high degree of African cultural retention among the Gullah. Opala joined with ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt and Sierra Leonean linguist Tazieff Koroma in an arduous search to see if Amelia Dawley's song was still remembered anywhere in Sierra Leone. Although the Mende are the largest ethnic group in Sierre Leone, Koroma recognized one word as unique to a dialect spoken only in southern Sierra Leone. On their last day in the area, Cynthia Schmidt discovered a woman, Baindu Jabati, living in the remote interior village of Senehum Ngola, who had preserved a song with strikingly similar lyrics, a dirge performed during a graveside ceremony called Tenjami or "crossing the river." Her grandmother taught her the song because birth and death rites are women's responsibilities in Mende culture. At the same time she made the uncanny prediction that there would be a return of lost kinsman and that Baindu would recognize them through this song.

Schmidt and Opala then went to Georgia where they found Amelia Dawley's daughter, Mary Moran, age 69, who remembered her mother singing the song. Though transformed in plantation culture to a children's rhyme, there was also continuity since the song was passed down by women on both sides. A reunion between Mary and Baindu had to be postponed because of a devastating rebel war in Sierra Leone which left millions homeless, including Baindu herself. Finally in 1997, Mary Moran and her family could travel and, after a painful visit to Bunce Island, were received with jubilation in Senehum Ngola. The village's blind, 90 year old chief, Nabi Jah, organized a teijami ceremony for Mary, even though it had been in desuetude since the introduction of Christianity and Islam earlier in the century. Thus Mary's homecoming became a catalyst for Mende people to rediscover a part of their own past. When Opala asked Nabi Jah why a Mende woman exiled two hundred years ago would have preserved this particular song, he replied that the answer was obvious. "That song would be the most valuable thing she could take. It could connect her to all her ancestors and to their continued blessings." Then he quoted a Mende proverb, "You know who a person really is by the language they cry in."

The Language You Cry is a striking example of scholars working with their informants as colleagues. Events, sometimes national in scope, were organized so that individuals and communities could make new research findings their own as part of a "usable past." Meaning thus emerged out of the deliberate clash of present and past. As we watch Mary and Baindu reunited in a tearful rendition of this ancient song, we realize how 20th century scholarship and media technology are making their own modest contribution to preserving bonds within the African Diaspora. People have e-mailed before curious as to why my reviews are always so enthusiastic and positive. Wouldn't you rather hear about African films that stir waves across the world, African films that feel like they've made a universal impression on people far and wide? Or would you rather have me write up a scathing critique on something that doesn't even warrant the time spent on it? Watch "The Language you Cry" and judge for yourself. E-mail me at Rigobertsong@hotmail.com and we can talk African film (not soccer).

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Hollywood star Samuel L. Jackson left a stuntman badly bleeding after whacking him with a golf club. He accidentally hit actor Ray Nicholas on the head with a five-iron when an action scene went wrong on the set of their movie, 51st State, The (2001). Jackson, who plays an American drug dealer based in Liverpool, was in a state of shock after realizing his mistake. Nicolas, who needed three stitches, was eventually released from a city hospital and will return to film next week. The hotly-anticipated gangster film co-stars Robert Carlyle and Ricky Tomlinson. (So typical Sam - DR. SOTHA)

* Spike Lee will direct "A Huey P. Newton Story" for BET movies. Roger Guenveur Smith, who created a one man show about Newton, will play the role of the late co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Smith has appeared in several of Lee's films including "He Got Game", "Do The Right Thing", and "Malcolm X". The movie will be produced in association with PBS and the African Heritage Network.

* Don Cheadle is in talks to join "Swordfish" starring John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. Sam Shepard will have a cameo role in the pic. Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) will direct the Skip Woods script for Warner Brothers (Thanks to Elston Gunn).

* Jason Richman has written the action comedy script "Black Sheep" for producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney about an African American who must fill his late twin's shoes on a CIA assignment which his brother had been working. Jon Turteltaub (Phenomena) may direct the pic, with shooting scheduled for February.

* Angela Bassett will star and produce the Showtime film "Ruby's Bucket of Blood". Bassett will play the owner of a Louisiana juke joint who hires a white singer to fill in when things don't quite work out. Whoopi Goldberg will serve as the executive producer of the film that's set to go into production later this month. Meanwhile, Bassett has closed a deal to make her directorial debut also with Showtime. In addition she just wrapped shooting on "The Score" opposite Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando (I will not bow to popular fanboy pressure and include a crude weight joke - DR. SOTHA). She also appears with Danny Glover in playwright Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena", which will premiere at this year's New York Film Festival.

* Gregory Hines and Michael Clarke Duncan have been tapped to be part of 2 separate network family film projects. Duncan will costar in "Sirr Parker" as the high school football coach of Parker, played by Kente Scott, who secretly raised his younger brother on his own while becoming an acclaimed football star. Meanwhile, Hines will make his TV directorial debut with "Red Sneakers", about a high school student who turns into a great basketball player after receiving magic sneakers (this sort of cutting edge entertainment makes you wonder why they complain about bad television? - DR. SOTHA)

* More of the same, Vanessa Williams is set to star as an "out of control diva" (in a bid to play against type - DR. SOTHA) in a VH1 adaptation of Charles Dicken's holiday classic "A Christmas Carol". Williams will play a character by the name of Ebony, who VH1 says is a combination of some real singing divas. She will sing Christmas favorites and a couple of original tracks for the production that is slated to air in September.

* And finally congratulations to Denzel Washington for his turn in Remember the Titans which raked in 21 Million$ over the weekend making it the number one movie in North America, knocking off such esteemed company as the horror classic "Urban Legends 2" (Perhaps a certain Jerry Bruckheimer has something to do with the opening weekend? - DR. SOTHA)

AFRICAN COAXIAL

* MIPCOM is under way in Cannes, the premier global television market which takes place this week in Cannes, France. Some South African participants at MIPCOM include: Mfundi Vundla (Morula Pictures); David Wicht (Film Afrika); Tokkie Wehmeyer (Safrisync International); Leon Mare; Karen Vundla (Nala Productions); Luke Chisholm (Platypus Productions); and Martin Cuff (Sithengi, the Southern African Film & Television Market). Other South Africans attending MIPCOM include John and Lynn Child from Briteside Television; CEO of free-to-air broadcaster e.tv, Marcel Golding; a delegation of buyers from the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation); CEO of pay-TV station M-Net, Glen Marques; producer Philo Pieterse; Barry Lambert from TV Africa; and two delegates from Vision Africa.(Good luck selling product...syndication is a forgotten word in South Africa - DR.SOTHA)

* Guido Deangelis, president and CEO of the Deangelis Group which has just finished shooting Diamond Hunters in South Africa in collaboration with Germany.s Victory Media Group, was quoted in the MIPCOM Daily News as saying: .Although shooting in South Africa helped us cut costs, the production values will be at least comparable to, if not better than, many projects with far larger budgets initiated by US companies. And, because the storyline is universal, we expect to license this English-language property to territories throughout the world.. This telefilm based on the Wilbur Smith novel of the same name, was facilitated by Film Afrika.s David Wicht.

It's time for "Nurses for Answers". Unfortunately, no nurses were handed out, because nobody got the answer right to last weeks question. The answer was "YES" Big Surgeon can go on to international acclaim, and make me a star(in that field anyway). This weeks question is, "who directed Sydney Poitier in the classic Oscar nominated film IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT"?

End of the line folkerinos. No respiration. Pupils dilated. No perceptible brain waves. Prepare to evacuate web, but before you do e-mail me your factory line EEG machines to Dr. Sotha's Free Clinic down in Benoni.