First episode of a new series of blogs by festival programmer Gertjan Zuilhof who is working on a follow-up of last year's Forget Africa project, which will lead all the way to China.
Zimpeta Stadium construction site of big Chinese project in Mozambique (Photo: Ella Raidel)
Ella Raidel wrote me again. She had just come back from another trip to Mozambique. She sent some nice pictures as well. I will show some below. Last year we went to Maputo, the colonial style capitol of Mozambique, together. She was one of the twelve filmmakers involved in the Forget Africa project that was presented during the last edition of the festival. Her very visual and carefully made short film Slam Video Maputo was the result of an exciting research into the underground bars, theaters and studio’s of the city. She tracked down the daring musicians and poets that were crossing artistic and political boundaries and I was so lucky to follow in her trail. Something similar had happened to me with the American filmmakers Kimi Takesue in Kampala and Deborah Stratman in Malawi and it opened my eyes and even more my ears to a very lively, very African, very urban development in music and youth culture in general. Also video culture yes, so this could be the seed of another project, but that is one step too fast. The experience with Ella in Maputo sparked off another idea first. For both of us it was our first time in Africa although when we met she was my 11th filmmaker in the project and Mozambique my 10th African country.
Ella Raidel in the former People's Republic of Mozambique
Ella is an Austrian artist, but she had lived in Taiwan many years and speaks Chinese. She was sensitive to my interest in the presence of the Chinese in Africa. To begin with, I had not seen many Chinese apart from in the airports. I did my share of traveling in Asia so the situation to be the only western (read white) person on a flight with Asians was not strange to me, but to have the same situation flight after flight in Africa felt more and more strange. The more because once out of the airport I hardly met any Chinese or Asians in the African cities. Apparently they lived in gated communities or compounds outside of the city. Or even worse. One day Ella observed the transport of a large group of Chinese prisoners to a building site. I imagined that the construction workers would live like prisoners (like the workers from Myanmar live on the construction sites of Kuala Lumpur or the construction workers from Bangladesh live on the construction sites of Singapore etc.), but actual prisoners I felt hard to believe. For sure hard to believe in a continent like Africa where human labor is so available and so cheap. Anyway, when you google the words Africa/ Chinese /Prisoners/ you will have to believe.
In the meantime Ella found the small Chinese businesses I had overlooked. They did run small shops like the Indians did and do in East Africa en the Lebanese do in West Africa for a long time.
Shop of Casa Holin Banana Estate in Maputo. The old Chinese Holin was born in Mozambique... (Photo: Ella Raidel)
So the Chinese are taking over Africa on a small as well as on a large scale. They come to sell their cheap shoes and underwear and to win the crude oil and mine the diamonds.
Ella went back to film the Chinese in her by now beloved Maputo and I proposed a project in which the African filmmakers I met during my traveling and research could give their vision on the invasion of the Chinese. I suggested the African filmmakers could go to China to find out about the people who live behind gates in their continent. To turn the Forget Africa project around a bit and also because this maybe slightly crazy project would give the filmmakers involved the chance to get some experience in international low budget digital filmmaking. So pretty soon the filmmakers Omelga Mthiyane (South-Africa), Ancestor Emile-Aime Chah Yibain (Cameroon), Ssenkaaba Samson 'Xenson' and Carol Kamya (Uganda), Yves Montand Niyongabo (Rwanda), Amour Saveur (Congo) and Henrique Narciso 'Dito' (Angola) will board a plane to Beijing.
In this blog their adventures will be followed.
Portrait of President of Mozambique Armando Guebuza as a young man in Maputo Chinese restaurant (Photo: Ella Raidel)