Africa is a Country » immigration

Coming to America

Sean Jacobs — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:43:00 +0000

The Museum of Modern Art’s film series Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You this weekend includes director Lanre Olabisi’s debut feature film August the Fifth, about Nigerian immigrant life in New Jersey:

A powerful drama in which old tensions resurface—and a family is torn apart—when a son invites his estranged father in Nigeria back to the United States for his graduation party. First-time feature director Olabisi, who shot August the First almost entirely in his mother’s suburban home, is remarkably attuned to the language and behavior of middle-class American life.

For more on the film, which did well on the festival circuit (including Urbanword and the San Francisco Black Flm Festival), see the film’s website and a review here.

It is still playing on Sunday at MoMA.

Sight: Isaac Julien

Sean Jacobs — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:31:00 +0000

Martina Kudláček interviews Isaac Julien in the latest issue of BOMB magazine about his triptych of films about journing across continents and cultures – True North, Fantôme Afrique and Small Boats, a film about African immigration to Italy.

Small Boats can be viewed at Metro Pictures in New York City from 26 October through to 17 November.

Le Petit Senegal

Sean Jacobs — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:31:00 +0000

The New York Times published a short feature in its Sunday “The City” section on Little Senegal, the area on Frederick Douglas Boulevard between 116th Street and 125th in Harlem. According to the reporter Nana Kankam ‘… in the five-year period ending in 2005, the number of African-born immigrants living in central Harlem increased by two-thirds, to about 6,500, nearly a sixth of them from French-speaking Senegal.’
The photographs (above) of Beatrice De Gea illustrate the piece.