Father Geek here along with Dr. SOTHA and Rigobert Song with another of our Africa-AICN columns for the on coming weekend. It looks like our good doctor will be traveling to the South of France soon the aid in the covering of the CANNES film festival. You may remember all those great interviews he scored for us at the Rotterdam International Film Festival a while back, well prepare yourselves for more of the same as he get turned lose on the grandest fest of them all...

In an era where we have seen man walk on the moon, the advent of television,
film becoming an economic force, and George Bush Jnr becoming American
President, you'd think the South African Medical Society would be head over
heels in love with my new medical contraption: The Mati-extractor - a device
that single handedly elicits human (or any other mammal for that matter)
eyeballs at the touch of a button. You wanna know what they said, "it's
unsolicited material, and therefore we cannot accept it as an authentic
piece of equipment. Get yourself a lawyer and/or medical agency, and try
again". That's 10 years of work and thousands and thousands of dollars down
the can. I don't know whether to shelve it, and move on, or put in a high
priced court appeal.

Send your petitions in support of the Matia-extirpate to My South Africian Clinic.

Nurse, that's a strange form of appeal.

SOUTH AFRICA

* I got this great e-mail from Hallie on an exciting soundtrack in the works
by local South African band The Springbock Nude Girls: "Hey DR.SOTHA,I just
saw your article on the Ain't It Cool News. I'm a HUGE fan of the
Springbock Nude Girls and wanted to send you some info. I'm friends with the
band's manager, and the SNG have just signed contracts for their music to be
used in the US indie feature film "LOSING HOPE". I've been told the film is
a cross between "Roshamon and Raising Arizona" and is a terrific new comedy.
I was really excited to hear from you. I checked out the company's webpage
and did lots of research. Just Go Here , or

this link takes you directly to the "Losing Hope" section Just Click Here .

It's an independent film that starts shooting in May. I emailed the
director, Tony
Urban for more information and he described the film like this: "A tale
about a poor mother, desperate to get her daughter plastic surgery;her
God-fearing but not too bright husband; his food obsessed brother andtheir
ancient, horny grandfather. Losing Hope is a comedy of desperate people
doing desperate things, all of which end badly."

The actors are: LG Taylor (Celebrity, The Gypsy Years), Chip Hajel (Sex and
the City, High Point), Andy Sims (The Pizza Wars), Jaime McCoy (Children of
the Living Dead). The director, Tony Urban has written "Poor White Trash"
which stars Sean
Young, Jaime Pressly, Jason London and others. He made his directing debut
last year with "High Point", wrote and directs "Losing Hope" and will direct
"R.I.P." later this year.

* After his exhilarating first film, 'ANGELS IN A CAGE' (A tale of twin
brothers hatching a plan to outwit the local force with the reluctant help
of a femme fatale), Marc Harrison is developing 'In Whom I Trust' with
partner David at More & More Pictures. It tells the story of a man on the
run framed for a murder he didn't commit. The more he delves into the crime
the more he realizes he's become the nucleus of an intricate conspiracy
involving a volatile extremist group of powerful shady characters, who are
have deep seated motives to overturn any obstacle in their path. Marc is
hoping to lure Mickey Rourke to play the lead character (somebody needs to
revive a great career - DR.SOTHA) and Nick Nolte for the role of Van Wyk - a
cop out to solve the riddle.

* Taken from www.screenafrica.com: "KUNSKAFEE" is a magazine programme about
the arts, which aims to reflect art in such a way it will become accessible
to all viewers, but at the same time not disappoint art connoisseurs. All of
the arts are featured: film, theatre and sculpture, architecture and
landscape design, classical music and pottery, ballet and modern dance, fine
art end street painting, literature and installations, computer art and the
Internet, photography and cartoons. Anything from profiles, happenings in
the art world to up to date round-ups. "Kunskafee" is not recorded in a
studio. The backdrop is always a different location - a theatre, movie set,
an exhibition, a gallery, an interesting garden or innovative architectural
design, etc. Although the programme is presented in Afrikaans, local and
international artists are also featured in the line-up. In the book section
Hettie Scholtz discusses Eleanor Baker's new book "'n Ou begin", "The
pianist" (the story of a man's survival in Warschau between 1939 and 1945)
and "Intellectuals, Paul Johnson's discussion of the contribution by
intellectuals through the ages. In the Western-Cape the spotlight falls on
the Afrikaans Word Festival in Stellenbosch, a Jazz festival with 33
contributing artists and "Vagina monologues" currently on at the Baxter
theatre.

* I found this great article on the state of cinema exhibition in South
Africa, and it's a sorry tale, but here it is in all it's shameful glory:
"If the SA cinema exhibition business were dramatised in a movie, it would
have to be 'Dazed and Confused'. Attendences have regressed to 1993 levels -
18% below the 27m peak of 2 years ago. The industry's top 30 cinemas rake in
80% of attendances. A 2-year price war has fizzled without putting more
arses on seats. Ster Kinekor's plans to cut prices to R18 (about $2.50)
hasn't worked. Content and access far outweighs price. Nu Metro allowed
cinema goers to pay R60 (about $9) and watch as many movies as they liked in
November. It doubled attendance that month, but Ster-Kinekor complains it
cut the Industry's December numbers and average prices to R7. Fortunately,
sanity has returned to expansion plans. Bulging with over-capacity,
Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro will open no more new theaters (Fortunately and
sanity are not the words I would use - DR.SOTHA). In fact, Ster-Kinekor are
looking at an extensive closure program. The emerging black market remains
an enigma. Ster-Kinekor is researching triggers to boost black attendance.,
like making some cinemas more affordable, but will it work. Only time will
tell. (If anybody on the outside is reading this please pump in billions of
dollars to fix this crisis, somebody needs to - DR.SOTHA)

NORTH AFRICA

* Ghanaian writer, Ambar Suluku is collaborating with animation artist
Zolmon Buku on a live action/animated film called 'Jupiter Umbrella' about a
team of astronauts (two of them being African) that explore the surface of
Jupiter in the year 2078. After picking up a scent, the team track an alien
lifeforce responsible for destroying Saturn and Mercury from the
stratosphere. They must battle the assailants before they take their
vengeance out on Earth. If the film comes to fruition it will be one of the
biggest budgets in history for African film, valued at a pricey $20m. The
script should be done by early next year, and hopefully with that a
production date.

* Lay back for another knockout review from Rigobert Song:

Hello readers. Well I'm back to reviewing films after my brief rundown on
African television. I've got a great social comedy for you today called
Taafe Fanga. But before I get started remember to e-mail me with your
African musings at rigobertsong@hotmail.com

Taafe Fanga (Skirt Power) Producer/Director: Adama Drabo, Mali, 95 minutes
In Kaado and Bambara with English subtitles

Director Adama Drabo has devised a gender-bending farce set among the 18th
Century Dogon to make some serious points about the status of women in
Africa today. This prophetic tale about a comic revolution in which women's
and men's roles are reversed was, in part, inspired by the actual role women
played in Mali's 1991 revolution. Drabo surprisingly found the germ for his
domestic comedy from a program on Dogon mythology he heard over Malian
radio. He then wrote a script which provides a stunning illustration of
Marcel Griaule's observation that, "In the Dogon system of myth, social life
must reflect the working of the universe, and conversely, the world order
depends on the proper ordering of society." (Griaule, Marcel and Germaine
Dieterlen 1954 "The Dogon", in African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological
Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples, edited by Daryll Forde, P. 83.)

Therefore Taafe Fanga's story of sexual politics in a Dogon village
necessarily involves the inter-penetration of cosmogeny, history and the
still unfolding present. The Dogon believe that all difference in the
universe began with the splitting of the primal seed into an ever-expanding
spiral of space-time which can only be held together by a careful balancing
or "twinning" of opposing energies. In Taafe Fanga, this tension reappears
in the parallel stories of four women who challenge male supremacy among the
Dogon's legendary elf-like andumbulu spirit ancestors; their semi-historical
human descendants, the indigenous, cave-dwelling Tellem; the Dogon who
invaded and massacred the Tellem in the 17th century (leaving them a place
only in folklore;) and finally their present-day listeners to this tale.

Myth, storytelling and now film, link past and future, as symbolized in the
opening scene by the arrival of a traditionally robed griot at a
contemporary urban compound. He flips off a television program (some fatuous
Hollywood musical) and decides to tell a Dogon tale about the "battle
between the sexes," when a proud woman pushes aside an arrogant young man to
sit in the "men's section" of the courtyard.

Ambara, a village elder, impulsively decides to marry a younger woman
because his wife, Timbe, hasn't gathered firewood to heat his bath. Her
younger friend, Yayémé, is beaten by her husband, Agro, when the other men
accuse him of being "a woman's slave" for bringing home the firewood. An
infuriated Yayémé defies his warning about the evil Andumbulus and sets off
in the dark to forage for brush. There she encounters and overwhelms what
she takes to be one of these bush spirits and makes off with its powerful
mask.

Yayémé has unwittingly stumbled onto the rare Sigi ritual, and has stolen
the mask from a young Tellem woman, Yandju, who in turn has stolen the mask
to protest women's exclusion from the ritual. The Dogon believed the Tellem
held the Sigi ritual every 60 years to expiate the transgressions of their
andumbulu forebearers. This woman who stole the earth's powerful raffia
skirt, stained red with its menstrual blood or mud, thus brings death on her
husband and all her descendants. In the Sigi ritual, (which women are still
strictly forbidden to view) men dressed as women in these red fiber
fertility skirts bind the dangerous spiritual energy unleashed by death
which threatens to rip apart the normal spiral of life. The ceremony is
presided over by the powerful Albarga mask which symbolizes social harmony
and the proper balance between the sexes.

Timbe convinces Yayémé that the mask has been sent by Anma, god of justice,
in answer to her prayer for revenge against Ambara and all male arrogance.
The next day Yayémé, disguised in the mask, demands that the terrorized
Dogon men from now on exchange roles with the women. Drabo exploits the full
comedic possibilities of this "triumph of the skirts over the shorts" as the
men prove predictably clumsy homemakers and are so exhausted by the end of
the day they feign sleep to stave off their wives sexual advances. These
scenes are met with uproarious responses from African audiences, because
traditional gender roles remain largely unchanged.

The women soon recognize that their purpose was not simply to perpetuate
gender stereotypes and injustice in reverse or to imbalance the world in the
opposite direction. Timbe says: "Men and women are here to complement each
other. Let's use our power now to bring equality among us. Let's share
everything: work, happiness and misfortune." Later in a pointed reference to
contemporary African development, Timbe points out that both sexes will be
needed for an irrigation project which can again make the earth fertile:
"The purpose of taking power is to make a
better world...No nation is built without hard work - but it can't be done
by excluding men" - or women.

In Taafe Fanga, Drabo has revised the Sigi myth (which seems originally to
have expressed male anxiety over female control of fertility) into a myth
about women's right to resist patriarchy, in the griot's words, "to fight
for the right to be different and equal. This film, along with Drabo's 1991
feature Ta Dona provide important examples of how contemporary African
artists are freely reinterpretting traditional belief systems to illuminate
pressing social issues. As well as being an important deconstruction of the
sexes in a male dominated society it is, also a genuinely funny take on
gender politics. Seek this one out, you will not be disappointed. Here's a
quote from Variety to wet your appetite: "This blend of folklore and social
realism, bolstered by spirited acting, doesn't skirt the issues or bang
viewers over the head with them...Solidly entertaining."

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* Director Spike Lee is turning his attention from movies to newspapers -
after agreeing to write a sports column. The Atlanta-born man responsible
for Summer Of Sam and He Got Game has accepted an invitation to write a
monthly column for Gotham magazine. Spike is set to spark controversy (No
Really? - DR.SOTHA) in his first column, where, according to New York's
Daily News website, he cites the late Baseball legend Babe Ruth as being a
black man. (Next thing he'll be telling us that Wayne Gretsky is
African-Canadian - DR.SOTHA)

* Newly launched indie distributor Urbanworld Films has acquired worldwide
distribution rights to writer-helmer Patrik-Ian Polk's "Punks," a production
of Edmonds Entertainment Group's independent production arm e2 Filmworks.
Urbanworld is eyeing a fall theatrical release for the project, a
music-driven romantic comedy set in West Hollywood that follows a quartet of
homosexual black men searching for love and happiness. The project was
budgeted at less than $1 million, and Urbanworld snapped up the rights for
mid-six figures, sources said. The film stars Seth Gilliam, Rockmond Dunbar,
Vanessa Williams, Loretta Devine, Renoly Santiago and Dwight Ewell and was
produced by Polk with Tracey Edmonds and Michael McQuarn. Executive
producers were Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Stacy Spikes, the latter of
whom founded the New York-based Urbanworld Film Festival.

* The eighth installment of "Sistas Are Doin' It for Themselves" - a
showcase of short films made by emerging black women filmmakers -- will be
presented March 31 at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles. The showcase, which is
sponsored by the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, will feature
short films by several filmmakers, including Yvette Freeman ("The Blessing
Way"), Desha Dauchan ("Episodes") and Layla Mashavu Sewell ("Through Thick
and Thin"). Filmmaker Carol Mayes will moderate the discussion after the
screenings. Mayes wrote and directed "Rituals," a lighthearted look at love
and voodoo, and "Commitments," her first feature, a romantic drama that was
produced by BET Pictures and will air May 4 on BET. For tickets, call (323)
957-4747.

* Karen Kaufman has been tapped to head development at George Tillman Jr.
and Robert Teitel's Fox 2000-based State Street Pictures. Kaufman will be
responsible for bringing in new material to the company as well as
overseeing all projects in development, including the feature adaptation of
the nonfiction book "Final Confession: The Unsolved Crimes of Phil Cresta,"
with Tillman attached to direct, and the big-screen version of the novel
"Dark," described as a black "Catcher in the Rye," in development at Fox
Searchlight. The company also has in development at MGM the comedy
"Barbershop."

* Paul Giamatti (Man on the Moon) and Amanda Detmer are set to join Frankie
Muniz in Universal Pictures' "Pay or Play" (aka "Lost and Found") for
television-turned-feature helmer Shawn Levy, who is making his feature debut
on the project. Shooting is scheduled to start March 28. "Play" is about a
young boy (Muniz) whose school essay erroneously finds its way into the
hands of a Hollywood producer (Giamatti) who takes the idea and turns it
into a hit film. The boy then travels to Los Angeles to claim his credit.
Detmer would take the role of Monty, the producer's assistant. Isaiah
Washington (True Crime) is also in negotiations to join the cast.

* Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman has been honored by officials in his home
town - delighting the three-time Oscar-nominee. Freeman left his home state
of Mississippi in the 1950s to pursue his acting career. But when lawmakers
in Jackson, Mississippi, paid tribute to his acting achievements on Monday,
Morgan admitted to being overjoyed to have returned home. He says, "One of
the smartest moves I've made in life is to come back home. I'll remember
this always. I think maybe the best thing would've been if my parents had
been able to see where their encouragement got me." Freeman graduated from
Greenwood's Broad Street high school in 1955, when schools were segregated.
He settled back in the state a decade ago. Senator David Jordan, who
graduated alongside Freeman, says, "Morgan was the type of person who was in
every play. Each time we had a parade for homecoming, Morgan would be riding
a bicycle backward along the lines of the parade until the principal would
finally pull him over. We knew from the beginning that Morgan Freeman was
destined to be an actor." (Spoken like a true friend - DR.SOTHA)

* BET, the black entertainment cable channel, fired 65-70 employees at its
New York and Washington DC offices on Friday, the online Electronic Urban
Report said Monday. A source at the television company told EUR: "It was
absolutely crazy. The normally chill atmosphere at BET was replaced with
shock and dismay and people standing in hallways crying. You would think
that it was a bombing that happened. I guess it was. Viacom dropped a major
bomb." Viacom acquired the company last November for about $3 billion.
According to EUR, BET COO Debra Lee assured fired executives and staffers in
a memo: "Our plan calls for severance packages, benefits extensions,
outplacement service and other assistance, including opportunities to pursue
positions elsewhere among Viacom companies."

The column did me a world of good, taking my mind off the hypocrisy and
downright bad faith of my fellow professionals. May you all shrivel up and
deteriorate in a musty flea pit. So then, come back next week for more
tantric tales of the African film industry.

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT