Berkeley historically has a great film series; this year has been no different. Beginning on January 27, they've been currently running an African Film Series that went until last night, February 24, showing a different film each week (this is only one aspect to their film series; they've got plenty more going on). The two films I recently saw there were astoundingly rich and moving and, of course, visually stunning. The first was Movement (R)evolution and the second one Nora; both were focused on the contemporary dance movement borne out of the young generation of Africans hailing from all different parts of the continent, wrestling with how to move modern African Dance forward. It was so wonderful to hear them speak not just about dance as an art form and a means of storytelling but of the unavoidable way these dances are tied into their countries, their continent, their politics, their traditions,their entire formulation of identity, and most importantly their future.
The second film, Nora (winner of all sorts of awards), features one of the main dancers from the first film in a 35 minute dance-poem quatrain infused with brightness and energy that focuses on her youth, her life, and the events that eventually brought her to New York City. 
The cinematography and the imagery and the colors in this - not to mention the choreography - were quite literally amazing. Nora's a magnificent artist and a dancer; she plays herself, her mother, and her father, and the performance is consummate. Both of these films are incredibly necessary to watch. It was haunting and touching to watch and listen to these dancers discuss the history (national and continental) they were trying to tackle with some of these films -- genocide, slavery, wars of liberation, violence and injustice, all things the US knows all too well -- and to hear them wrestle with these notions of identity formed through country or nation or by rejecting these ideas; it's what gives this film such verve -- the raw emotion and the brave way these young artists are going about their passions. The central question at the heart of these film is: who is going to speak for Africa? It seems that so often when we hear about Africa we're hearing about it from an outsider, a face in the news. The answer that these films are shouting is "Africa must speak" and these silent, fluid, soft, punishing, excited, loving, angry, brutal, and delicate movements are their words.
The cinematography and the imagery and the colors in this - not to mention the choreography - were quite literally amazing. Nora's a magnificent artist and a dancer; she plays herself, her mother, and her father, and the performance is consummate. Both of these films are incredibly necessary to watch. It was haunting and touching to watch and listen to these dancers discuss the history (national and continental) they were trying to tackle with some of these films -- genocide, slavery, wars of liberation, violence and injustice, all things the US knows all too well -- and to hear them wrestle with these notions of identity formed through country or nation or by rejecting these ideas; it's what gives this film such verve -- the raw emotion and the brave way these young artists are going about their passions. The central question at the heart of these film is: who is going to speak for Africa? It seems that so often when we hear about Africa we're hearing about it from an outsider, a face in the news. The answer that these films are shouting is "Africa must speak" and these silent, fluid, soft, punishing, excited, loving, angry, brutal, and delicate movements are their words. One of the dancers from the first film had such a brilliant quote I just had to put it down here. They were talking about dance as art and the body as a tool for expression, how the body is a direct source of identity and how it speaks for you even if you never utter a word, and how ultimately to be tied to a country or a national identity is a potentially flimsy, corrosive, insubstantial, and dangerous way of being:
"Perhaps my only true country is my body."
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