Oscar Nominees announced and I get excited for the wrong reasons

It has become the norm that the beginning of every year is abuzz with Hollywood Award Season talk.  From Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills to Vilakazi Street in Soweto millions of people are in deep conversation and or debate about who is deserving of Hollywood’s top accolades.  Last week, I was one such person. My colleagues and I were so thrilled  about the announcement of the Academy Award nominations that we decided to have a competition to see who would predict the nominees in the various acting, directing and best picture categories.

Being the humble cinephile (A person with a passionate interest in cinema) that I am - I will not waste time telling you that I won that competition.  Though the victory made my week, my elation was cut short after realising that while celebrating knowledge of American cinema I had been oblivious to African talent making headway at those very awards.

So while I was busy predicting whether or not Quinton Tarantino or Steven Spielberg were going to get Oscar nods I had neglected to find out what African filmmakers were vying for the golden statuettes. I was mortified to discover a couple days later that – ‘Asad’, a short film shot in South Africa, had received an Oscar nod. What makes my ignorance even worse is the fact that the film had scooped Best Short Film awards at 13 festivals around the world during the past year. How had this film managed to fly under my movie radar?

The answer is simple, I - like many other Africans, am always preoccupied by what the likes of Hollywood and Bollywood are doing that we become unaware of the gems in our backyard. ‘Asad’ is one such gem - a coming of age fable of a Somali boy, named Asad, as he struggles to survive in his war-torn land. The movie takes us into the lives of ordinary people in a seaside village in Somalia, providing the audience with a glimpse into the daily struggles of ordinary Somalis living in a dysfunctional and failed state.

Now that the wool has been removed from my eyes, I am definitely rooting for ‘Asad’ to win the best Short Film Oscar – but the irony is no one seems to care. Everyone around me is too upset that Leonardo DiCaprio was snubbed at the 85^th Academy Awards.

African Cinemas on wheels

The problem with Africa is that bad politics affects every bit of our lives- movie watching included. There are many countries in the motherland that have closed down movie theatres for political reasons. For these unfortunate countries, however, there is ‘MobiCINE’ a new initiative that is changing the way cinema is viewed.

MobiCINE is basically cinema on motor cycles. It operates in a safe and easy manner. Each MobiCINE carried on a motor cycle in a ‘black box’ (a flight-case lodging a 1.300 lumens beamer plus a laptop). Also included in the Mobile cinema set are self-amplified loudspeakers, a 2,40m screen and a power generator plus 50 buckets used as theatre seats.

The film files that are loaded on the laptop are encrypted, and can be unlocked only by a digital ‘token’, which is prepaid by the exhibitor. Allcables and plugs of the PC and beamer are sealed, so as to prevent any unauthorized show.

Since Monday, May 9, 2011 seven mobiCINE units have cruised on the roads in Dakar with seven more to go in Bamako in June. This new development is a path breaking screening system in Africa. It is certainly offering a new way of watching films in places where all legal movie theatres have shut down.

The project has received funding from ACP Films, the Jan Vrijman Fund, and the French embassies in Dakar and Bamako.Organizers say the initiative is giving African filmmakers a chance to reach local audiences and develop a legitimate B.O. model they now lack.