Egyptian feature wins best film award at 8th Tarifa

Microphone - Official Trailer from Ahmad on Vimeo.

Egyptian Ahmad Abdalla’s “Microphone” has won the 15 000 € best feature-length movie award at the 8th African Film Festival of Tarifa (FCAT) held from June 11th to the 19th, 2011, in Tarifa, Spain.


Ahmad Abdalla

148 African movies from 23 African countries competed for 8 awards with a total 46 500 € cash prizes.

The jury said “Microphone” won “for its energy and shedding of light on the potential of the new Egypt and also because it reflects the role of art in political and social change."

"Microphone" was the winner of the coveted "Golden Tanit" Award of the official competition of feature films at the 23rd edition of Carthage Film Festival which was held in Tunis from October 23 to 31, 2010 and the movie was in the Official selection of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (Vanguard Program), Official selection of the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival and Official Competition of the Dubai International Film Festival in 2010.



Synopsis: A bold example of new north African cinema, "Microphone" mixes and remixes fiction and cinema verité as it follows an Egyptian expatriate's return to Alexandria, where he dives into a thriving underground music and arts scene. [Synopsis courtesy Toronto International Film Festival]

The details of the 8th African Film Festival of Tarifa (FCAT) are in the following press release.

The Awards of 8th African Film Festival Of Tarifa

June 19th, Tarifa, Spain – 8th African Film Festival of Tarifa (FCAT) awarded eight new African movies with awards endowed with 46 500 euros. The festival jury selected winners from more than 140 movies from 23 African countries.

1. The award for the best feature-length movie (15 000 €) goes to “MICROPHONE” (Ahmad Abdalla, Egypt)for its energy and shedding of light on the potential of the new Egypt and also because it reflects the role of art in political and social change.

2. The award for the best direction (10 000 €) goes to “A JAMA” (Daoud Aoulad-Syad, Morocco/France) for its naturalistic use of non-professional actors. Furthermore, the film found a way to speak about the taboo topic of religion with sensitivity and humour.

3. The award for the best actress (1 500 €) goes to DENISE NEWMAN for “SHIRLEY ADAMS” (Oliver Hermanus, South Africa). The actress is believable in her complex, sober and sombre portrayal of the film character. With her construction of the character she was able to access the most essential core of humanity.

4. The award for the best actor (1 500 €) goes to YOUSSOUF DJAORO for “UN HOMME QUI CRIE” (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad/France/Belgium). The actor’s portrayal is very charismatic and tender. It truly shows his mastery of the artform.

5. The award for the best documentary feature film (10 000 €) goes to “KOUNDI ET LE JEUDI NATIONAL” (Ariani Astrid Atodji, Cameroon) for his rigorous and tender look at the subject matter, which highlights the great opportunities that traditional cultures offer to Africa’s future.

6. The award for the best short movie (2 000 €) goes to “MWANSA THE GREAT” (Rungano Nyoni, Zambia/UK) for its ability to draw us into a child’s imagination and the world of magic, combining courage and talent.

7. The RTVA award for Audiovisual Creation, the best short film award (1 500 €) goes to “MWANSA THE GREAT” (Rungano Nyoni, Zambia/UK) for having been able to portray the noble nature of characters whose actions are imbued with a sense of social responsibility. The story is a metaphor of a certain social reality in a specific part of the world.

8. The audience award for the best feature length movie (5 000 €) goes to “UN HOMME QUI CRIE” (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad/France/Belgium).

9. The SIGNIS award for the best fiction feature film goes to “A JAMA” (Daoud Aoulad-Syad, Morocco/France) for its humorous look at injustice and corruption and for showing the courage and determination of a simple man who stands up to all who stand in his way in order to defend his rights and denounce the abuse of power by politicians and false prophets.

The special mentions of the jury go to:

● “HAWI” (fiction, Ibrahim El-Batout, Egypt/Qatar) for its serious research, its tender look at the past and its link with the current problematic political climate in Egypt.
● “ASHLAA” (document, Hakim Belabbes, Morocco) for its ability to reconcile magnificently a personal story and a topic of universal interest. A tribute to all filmmakers.
● “DREXCIYA” (document, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ghana) for the radical nature of the project, its effective use of limited economic resourcesand its poetic insight.
● “STATE OF VIOLENCE” (fiction, Khalo Matabane, South Africa/France) for showing how peace can only be achieved through forgiveness and reconciliation.
● “MICROPHONE” (fiction, Ahmad Abdalla, Egypt) for reflecting the arrival of the wind of change in Egyptian society, as well as the importance of culture as part of a democratic system which respects freedom above all else.

FCAT, one of the biggest European festival of African cinema, welcomes this year over 200 African filmmakers including legendary African director Moustapha Alassane and focuses among others on African Diaspore in Latin America, the role of cinema in recent revolutions in Tunis and Egypt or restrospective of Congolese cinematography.

Festival was accompanied among others by 3rd Africa Produce Forum, where 10 African filmmakers competed with their projects to get funding from European producers including representatives of Al-Jazeera Docuemntary Channel. The winning projects will be announced soon.

In this year 4th Photoafrica, whose topic was “Urban Space”, competed twenty five photographers from eleven African countries. The winners are:

● 1st place award (€1,500) - Jessica MacLeod (South Africa) with the photograph titled “You see a shack, I see my house”
● 2nd place award (€1,000) - James Muriuki (Kenya) with the photograph titled “44”
● 3rd place award (€500) - Mimi Cherono (Kenya) with the photograph titled “Khusi and the Giraffes”

The exhibiton of altogether 27 large format photographs will be inaugurated and installed outdoors in Tarifa before and through the festival and after its closure will be travelling the whole year through Spanish and African cities.

About FCAT
African film festival of Tarifa (FCAT – Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa) is an independent and competitive film festival and one of the biggest African film festivals in Europe. The FCAT celebrated its eighth edition from 11th to 19th June in Andalusian town Tarifa - the closest town of continental Europe to the African continent - the two continents are in fact only 14 km apart from one another in this geographical area. More on www.fcat.es


Contact:
Filip Hruby
International Press Officer
African Film Festival of Tarifa (FCAT)
Mobile: +420/775 011 550
Skype: filip.hruby2409
gabineteprensa2@fcat.es

2011 Frist Center Exhibition Schedule Features Andy Warhol, Art of India, Egyptian and Shaker Cultures, Northern Renaissance Paintings

19 Aug 2010 23:30 Africa/Lagos


2011 Frist Center Exhibition Schedule Features Andy Warhol, Art of India, Egyptian and Shaker Cultures, Northern Renaissance Paintings

Contemporary Art Exhibitions Include Works of William Eggleston, Simen Johan, Vesna Pavlovic, Magdalena Compos-Pons

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Frist Center for the Visual Arts celebrates its tenth year and continues to gain prominence as a major center for art exhibitions with the 2011 Ingram Gallery exhibition schedule that includes the Frist-organized Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work and the stunning exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum.
The Frist Center's Upper-Level Galleries will feature photographs by Tennessee native William Eggleston, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, an important collection of Shaker furniture, Northern Renaissance paintings from Bob Jones University and works of Cuban-born installation artist and photographer Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons. The Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery will showcase photographs and sculptures by the New York-based Simen Johan, Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor of Art and Serbian native Vesna Pavlovic, as well as a large-scale sculptural installation by Tracey Snelling of Oakland, California.
The Frist Center's schedule of exhibitions for 2011 in order of opening:

William Eggleston: Anointing the Overlooked
Jan. 21-May 1, 2011
Upper-Level Galleries

William Eggleston: Anointing the Overlooked brings together more than 70 photographs made by the Memphis, Tenn., resident who is one of the most influential artists of his generation. The exhibition includes iconic images from the early 1970s, important series and portfolios held in the Memphis Brooks collection as well as the rarely seen 21st Century Photographs. William Eggleston was a key figure in charting a new course for color photography. Prior to his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) in 1976, fine art photography was typically black and white, while color photography was used commercially. By not censoring, rarely editing and photographing the seemingly banal, Eggleston reminds us of the inherently democratic uses of and wide-spread access to photography. His images are psychologically complex, yet structurally quotidian, drawing attention to the power and beauty of the overlooked. Eggleston's work has influenced subsequent generations of fine art photographers and contemporary artists. The exhibition is organized for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts by Susan H. Edwards, Ph.D., Frist Center executive director and CEO.
Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior
Feb. 20-May 29, 2011
Ingram Gallery

Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior will be the first major museum exhibition to focus on Vishnu--one of Hinduism's three major deities. Composed of approximately 150 paintings and sculptures made in India between the second century and 1900 A.D., this exhibition will serve as a brief survey of Hindu art styles as well as an examination of the Vaishnava (Vishnu-worshipping) tradition. Known as Hinduism's gentle god, Vishnu is easily recognized in paintings because of his blue skin, which legend states is the result of ingesting a particularly powerful poison that threatened to destroy the world.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalog published by Mapin Publishing, an Indian art book publishing company.
Vishnu: Hinduism's Blue-Skinned Savior is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts with Guest Curator Joan Cummins.
Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes
Feb. 20-May 29, 2011
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

Simen Johan's works reflect uneasy connections between humans and other species. His digital photographs, which show live or taxidermied animals Photoshopped onto various natural and human-made landscape environments, blur boundaries between the real and unreal, animal and human and beauty and brutality. His sculptures of taxidermied birds are interwoven with insects and foliage, serving in his words as "miniature parasitical ecosystems."
Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World
April 15, 2011-March 27, 2012
Conte Community Arts Gallery

This exhibition is the result of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and ten diverse local community organizations working together on a project that explores the ways art may be used to tell children's stories from a number of cultural perspectives. Starting with the premise that the stories of children simultaneously reflect unique cultural values as well as perspectives that are shared across cultures, the stories presented in this exhibition present universal human experiences and concerns that connect us all.
Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection
May 20-Aug. 21, 2011
Upper-Level Galleries

Gather Up the Fragments focuses upon the collection of Faith and Edward Deming Andrews, who from the 1920s through the 1960s formed a large and important assemblage of Shaker art and pioneered Shaker studies. This comprehensive exhibition includes more than 270 objects--furniture, drawings, household objects, textiles, baskets and kitchen implements--and will provide insight into this intriguing religious group that valued many ideas that resonate today such as equality, pacifism, community, sustainability, responsible land stewardship, innovation, simplicity, and quality in work.
Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection is organized by Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA.
Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work
June 24-Sept. 11, 2011
Ingram Gallery

Over the course of his meteoric career, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) used the medium of music to transform himself from fan to record album designer, producer, celebrity night-clubber and rock impresario. Warhol Live presents a comprehensive exploration of the artist's work as experienced through the lens of music and dance. This exhibition juxtaposes major pieces (Elvis, Marilyn, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, the Self-portraits and the Campbell's Soup Cans) with lesser-known works inspired by music and the performing arts (album covers, illustrations, photos and Polaroids), along with films and sound recordings, which provide a visual and aural score to Warhol's extraordinary work and life. The exhibition includes nearly 300 works, including objects and documents from the artist's personal archives.
Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work is produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories
June 24-Sept. 11, 2011
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

This exhibition will include photographs taken in Vesna Pavlovic's native Serbia and the United States over the last two decades. Focusing on sites and events of cultural significance, Pavlovic examines the power of photography to shape the perception of history as an expression of people's dreams and aspirations by projecting and conflating self-images and national ideologies. The exhibition begins with a selection of photographs that were taken in Serbia during the 1990s and explore the failure of utopian modernism under Communism while posing questions about the veneer of normalcy maintained during the civil war and allied bombardment. It concludes with an installation of recent works that considers the values and consumerist ideologies relating to contemporary American life.
Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery
Sept. 9, 2011-Feb. 5, 2012
Upper-Level Galleries

This exhibition, which has received support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, presents twenty-eight Renaissance paintings from one of the most renowned Old Master collections in the United States. The collection was formed during the mid-twentieth century by the evangelical preacher Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., for display at the university bearing his name in Greenville, S.C. The large number of Baroque paintings that Jones acquired tends to overshadow other parts of the collection, and A Divine Light marks the first time that the museum's equally beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings have been the sole focus of an exhibition and catalogue. These works of art, which consist of altarpieces and private devotional paintings, will be considered in regard to the latest scholarship and theories about the visual culture of the Renaissance. Several paintings will undergo conservation treatment in preparation for their presentation at the Frist Center.
A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons: Journeys
Sept. 9, 2011-Feb. 5, 2012
Upper-Level Galleries

The Cuban-born artist Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons creates photographs, video and multi-media installations that tell the story of the survival of African cultures by evoking rites, myths and narratives that have evolved through generations. Her work symbolically follows the history of the slave trade from her family's origin in Nigeria to Cuba, where they worked in the sugar industry, to present-day Boston, where Campos-Pons now works and teaches.
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Journeys is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum
Oct. 7, 2011-Jan. 8, 2012
Ingram Gallery

Following the incredibly successful Quest for Immortality exhibition, which came to the Frist Center in 2006, To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum includes 109 important works from the superb collection of the Brooklyn Museum that illustrate Egyptian beliefs regarding the defeat of death and promise of the eternal afterlife. To Live Forever explores the ancient Egyptian belief that proper preparation could enable a person to overcome the finality of death. The objects on display, including coffins, jewels and statuary from the Brooklyn Museum's extensive, world-renowned collection, introduce visitors to the mysteries of mummification, the funeral procession and rituals that prepared the entombed deceased for passage to the underworld, the final judgment of the gods in determining the disposition of the soul and the idealized afterlife. The objects in the exhibition were created over a period of more than 4,000 years.
To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
Tracey Snelling: Woman on the Run
Oct. 7, 2011-Jan. 8, 2012
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery

Tracey Snelling's sculptures of vernacular buildings, streets and rundown neighborhoods show a keen sensitivity to the psychological tensions and hidden narratives of small town America. A large tableau of wooden structures, videos, projections and other mediums, Woman on the Run provides a film-noir-like setting for a crime story in which a mysterious woman is sought for questioning in a murder.
Tracey Snelling: Woman on the Run is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
About the Frist Center
Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, located at 919 Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., is an art exhibition center dedicated to presenting the finest visual art from local, regional, U.S. and international sources in a program of changing exhibitions. The Frist Center's Martin ArtQuest Gallery features interactive stations relating to Frist Center exhibitions. Gallery admission to the Frist Center is free for visitors 18 and younger and to Frist Center members. With possible exception for some specially-ticketed exhibitions, Frist Center admission is $10.00 for adults and $7.00 for seniors, military and college students with ID. College students are admitted free Thursday and Friday evenings, 5-9 p.m. Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation by calling (615) 744-3247. The Frist Center is open seven days a week: Mondays through Wednesdays, and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sundays, 1-5:30 p.m., with the Frist Center Cafe opening at noon. Additional information is available by calling (615) 244-3340 or by visiting our Web site at www.fristcenter.org.
Source: Frist Center for the Visual Arts

CONTACT: Ellen Jones Pryor, +1-615-243-1311, epryor@fristcenter.org,
ejpryor@aol.com, or Emily Harper Beard, +1-615-744-3331,
ebeard@fristcenter.org
Web Site: http://www.fristcenter.org/

Releases displayed in Africa/Lagos time
19 Aug 2010
23:30	2011 Frist Center Exhibition Schedule Features Andy Warhol, Art of India, Egyptian and Shaker Cultures, Northern Renaissance Paintings
16:45	'Manna From Heaven' for U.S. Wheat Exporters
14:00	Delta Launches Special Introductory Fares to Monrovia, Liberia
18 Aug 2010