This weekend get involved in the Boda Boda
Lounge Durban leg on November 17 at 19h00 at the Sthenjwa Luthuli Studio. The
evening will showcase (screenings) of a series of video art pieces from the
continent responding to the set theme. The selected site was chosen due to a
number of challenges and opportunities that video art presents to viewers from
a curation and engagement point of view.
Boda Boda Lounge Project is a
cross-continental video art festival that will take place at over 15 spaces
across the African continent from November 16 to 18, 2018.
Boda Boda Lounge is currently accepting
video art submissions from artists based in Africa and of African descent.
Selected submissions will be put forward for intercontinental screening and
exhibition programming.
The Boda Boda Lounge festival is based on
the conviction that video art can create exchanges between different contexts
in Africa that allow both the transcending of physical boundaries and the
creation of an intimate atmosphere for introspection and contemplation.
This year’s edition titled Soft Pow(ers) is conceptualised by
artist Euridice Zaituna Kala. Artists are invited to respond to Édouard
Glissant’s notion of Tout Monde (all the world): to deepen and complicate the
links amongst the complex African worlds that go beyond the inherited Anglo,
Luso and Franco worlds, to creolise rather than hybridise, and to compose a new
language within these parameters – that Tout Monde identity, that soft pow(er),
that is at times operating covertly. This is a call to reflect on identity not
as a single strand or a single truth but one that has been shaped and reshaped
by different encounters, resulting in a dynamic identity that is not bound by
place especially in this moment where technology temporarily flattens space.
One is therefore confronted by a possible
loss of perfect diction – an inability to articulate in one language, when
accepting the Tout Monde as each individual finds new ways for the practice of
the everyday that is informed by a multitude of contexts. Artists are invited
to respond with works that refer to multiple perspectives of the self, their
practice and their complex contexts.
On the Friday (November 16) Durban film
enthusiasts and artists alike are welcome to a special evening of screenings
hosted by GiF: Girls in Film from 18h30 at Sthenjwa Luthuli Studio (144 Mahatma
Ghandi Rd)
GiF: Girls in Film (GiF) is a network and
platform for new generation of female filmmakers. Founded in London, it
operates internationally with events organised in cities around the world and
platform that aims to represent young women filmmakers from different
backgrounds.
GiF has organised a sold-out event in
Johannesburg in 2017 and this year, the founder Nikola Vasakova and cultural
producer Julie Machin are visiting three main South African cities to reconnect
and forge deeper relationships between creative communities in UK and SA.
For this occasion, GiF is curating a
screening of films from young female filmmakers from African diaspora around
the world, reflecting on experiences both personal and communal.
The screening will be followed by a discussion
between Girls in Film and Russel Hlongwane.
The Boda Boda Lounge festival takes place on
November 16 at 18h30 and November 17 at 19h00. Free entry. The Sthenjwa Luthuli
Studio is situated at 144 Mahatma Gandhi Road.
For more information visit www.girlsinfilm.net, Facebook: www.facebook.com/girlsinfilm; IG:
@girlsinfilm_gif or Twitter: @girlsinfilm_gif