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My short story collection, In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata and Other Stories, is now available in print thanks to Hands-on Books. It contains a collection of my stories all set in Botswana.
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The name SimonSays Entertainment may not immediately register with you, but I'm sure film titles like Night Catches Us, Gun Hill Road, Blue Caprice, and Mother Of George, most certainly will - at least one of them, especially if you've been a reader of this blog over the last 2 years, as we've celebrated every single one of those titles. It's quite an impressive resume, and one that I think most independent production houses would envy - well-directed dramas, telling well-written stories about a diverse body of interesting characters, brought to life by a selection of strong actors. A critically-acclaimed library of positively challenging projects, with the icing on the...
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Juan Andrés Arango's La Playa D.C. is a familiar tale wrapped in different packaging, we could say, which speaks to the commonly-held belief that, once you strip away what lies at the surface of any work of film art, and get to its core, you'll find themes that are universal. Of course I knew that already; I preach that on this site regularly; However, at times, as a writer who thinks and writes critically about cinema, I often fall into the habit of intellectualizing what I see, instead of just responding viscerally. The film centers on Tomas, an Afro-Colombian teenager struggling with the difficulties of growing up in a city (Bogota) of...
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Nigeria take third Nations Cup BBC Sport Sunday Mba scored a magnificent winner as Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations for the third time. The dominant Super Eagles made the breakthrough just before half-time when Mba clipped the ball over Moham...
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Being Human always features brilliant guest characters who manage to steal the show. Last year there was Craig Roberts as Adam the eternally youthful teen vampire and Ellie Kendrick as Allison the geeky werewolf. This week viewers were treated to a great performance from Ben Greaves-Neil as Oliver the lordly Victorian ghost.
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You've no doubt heard of tonight's Grammy nominees for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist. But, have you heard of the African artists up for an award? Two of our favorites, Hugh Masekela of South Africa and Amadou & Mariam of Mali, are each making headlines as nominees for [...]
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If you missed my January 9 post on upcoming slave-themed films that are scheduled to be released in the next 12 to 18 months, click HERE to catch up. This was one of the films I mentioned on that list. Recapping... Former NFL linebacker Jeremiah Trotter stars as escaped slave Big Ben Jones, alongside Keith David as Frederick Douglass, in writer/director Thomas K. Phillips' upcoming indie feature film, The North Star, which we first alerted you to last summer, and have been following since then. The film is based on true events, and tells the story of the aforementioned Big Ben Jones, a slave who makes a daring escape...
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It was near midnight. We were driving in the desert with no headlights, and Syria was 20 feet to my left. To the right was a mass of shapes -- it took me a minute to realize I was looking at 850 Syrians who had just crossed safely into Jordan. One man was carrying designer luggage normally seen in airplane cabins; one girl had no shoes. I walked amongst these scared, war-numbed people, and it hit me that this was only a tiny portion of those leaving Syria.
Roughly 763,000 people have fled Syria -- 240,000 to Jordan -- and an estimated 2.5 million are displaced internally. Before that night, those numbers seemed horrific, but had little real meaning to me. They are round statistics, indicators of an escalating war. But after hearing a woman recall her husband's death and a family describe ...
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Nineteen years ago, a Super Eagles team captained by one Stephen Okechukwu Keshi won the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunis. Will it be Keshi's time again in Soweto today? We leave the serious predictions to the professionals. Check out the latest from BBC reporter Peter Okwoche (we love him) who staged a pre-final prediction [...]
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Joe Penney writing in Think Africa Press:
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