AFROFUTURISTIC

13 Dec

Betty Davis – ‘They Say I’m Different’ Documentary

AFROFUTURISTIC, MUSIC, WOMEN

Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She “was the first…” as former husband Miles Davis said. “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the '70s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him...

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13 Dec

Wangechi Mutu and Carrie Mae Weems on the Profound Impulse to Make Art

AFROFUTURISTIC, ARTS, WOMEN

Courtesy the Artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York Brussels. Photo credit Cynthia Edorh. by Carrie Mae Weems | Interview Magazine Wangechi Mutu builds worlds. In fact, the 48-year-old multimedia artistdoesn’t stop with terrestrial concerns such as material and form—she creates whole new mythologies for her vivid, ever-expanding artistic domain, in- venting radical cosmological creatures that can be seductive, monstrous, secretive, triumphant, and all-powerful, as if mating folklore with sci-fi cyborgian fantasy. Mutu has often been linked with Afrofuturism—the cultural movement that welds the iconography...

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5 Dec

Astro-Yardies & Algoriddims: An Introduction to Jamaican Afrofuturism

Still from Grace Jones' "Slave To The Rhythm" video. (Island/Manhattan 1985) by Richard Wright, MA a day ago in HISTORY | Beat Media (Alla this. ALL OF IT!) From the Black Star Line Legacies of Marcus Garvey to Grace Jones and Beyond I have an otherworldly memory from my young boyhood in Kingston, Jamaica. This was in the late 70s, and our family had recently moved there from New York City. I was navigating so many cultural shifts. It was...

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25 Nov

The Zambian “Afronaut” Who Wanted to Join the Space Race

AFROFUTURISTIC, BRAINIAC, IT'S ALL POLITICAL

In 1964, Edward Mukuka Nkoloso wanted to join the space race. Was he for real? ILLUSTRATION BY HEIDI & GARETH CHISHOLM At the height of the Cold War, a schoolteacher launched the Zambian Space Program with a dozen aspiring teen-age astronauts. Was he unfairly mocked? by Namwali Serpell | The New Yorker My country was born on October 24, 1964. The former British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, taking its new name from the great Zambezi River, would henceforth be known as Zambia. A week...

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18 Nov

‘Black Panther’ Character Posters Released

Can. Not. Wait. #BlackPanther Royalty ...

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18 Aug

Professor Sun Ra

AFROFUTURISTIC, MUSIC

Sun Ra’s Full Lecture & Reading List From His 1971 UC Berkeley Course, “The Black Man in the Cosmos” by Josh Jones | Open Culture A pioneer of “Afrofuturism,” bandleader Sun Ra emerged from a traditional swing scene in Alabama, touring the country in his teens as a member of his high school biology teacher’s big band. While attending Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, he had an out-of-body experience during which he was transported into outer space. As biographer John Szwed records him saying,...

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9 Aug

Ava DuVernay Adapting Octavia Butler’s ‘Dawn’ for TV Series

by Shadow & Act O.M.G...

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2 Aug

F&%K ‘Confederate’, ‘Black America’ Speculates on Post-Reparations Alt-History

Will Packer & Aaron McGruder ‘Black America’: Amazon Alt-History Drama From Will Packer & Aaron McGruder Envisions Post-Reparations America by Nellie Andreeva | Deadline EXCLUSIVE: A century and a half after slavery was abolished in the U.S., the wounds left by one of the darkest periods in American history are far from healed, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding the recent announcement of HBO’s upcoming drama series Confederate, from Game Of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, which explores an alternate timeline of seceded southern...

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16 Jul

Ava DuVernay’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ is the Ultimate Adaptation

AFROFUTURISTIC, MULTIMEDIA

by Angela Watercutter | Wired Book adaptation is fraught. There are longtime fans to please, imaginations to live up to, childhood memories to compete with. It’s nearly impossible to please all the people all the time. Director Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time is out to do just that—by making a movie that reflects all of them. In casting Wrinkle, DuVernay brought together one of the most diverse casts ever to appear in a Disney movie. Its Meg Murray is played by...

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11 Jul

Aneka & Ayo: My Dora Milaje Research Continues…

AFROFUTURISTIC, ARTS

It is unsurprising that we at Black Nerd Problems are here for Wakanda. We have well developed theories about it, have imagined our favorite barbershops and corner bodegas. Even those of us who aren’t walking comic book encyclopedias have a soft spot for it, not as it has always been portrayed — which, let’s be honest, has had a heavy dose of deepest darkest exotic AFRICA — but as it could be, as an imaginary place where the past and...

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8 Jul

More Dora Milaje…

AFROFUTURISTIC, ARTS

(This article is from 2015, speculating about the second Avengers: Age of Ultron before it was released. So it doesn't refer to the HIGHLY anticipated Marvel Black Panther movie that's due out February 16, 2018.) Everything You Need to Know About Black Panther's Dora Milaje by The Geek Twins Who are the Dora Milaje? The second Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer features a black woman that looks an awful lot like the Wakandan warriors known as the Dora Milaje. It's customary for the Dora Milaje to...

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7 Jul

Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ Teaser & The Dora Milaje

I am not a comic geek. (I like them, but not a fanatic). In fact, knew nothing about the Black Panther Marvel superhero. (Sorry). I know more now, but not enough. And he's important. Any advice on the best crash course on the Black Panther back story is surely welcome. I have not seen this many Black men openly weep since Obama. Literally. The impact of a blockbuster film about a Black superhero, for real. That sick beat in...

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7 Jul

PUMZI: SciFi Short on Climate Change, Sacrifice & Dreaming

AFROFUTURISTIC, IT'S ALL POLITICAL

(I posted this film about 2 years ago on Facebook. It is breathtakingtaking.) by Woyingi Blog Pumzi is directed by young Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu who studied film at UCLA. Kahiu won Best Director at the Africa Movie Academy Awards for her film From a Whisper, about the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar el Salaam, Tanzania. I unknowingly had already seen her work as a director because she directed the behind the scenes documentary for Philip Noyce’s film Catch a...

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27 Jun

Afrofuturism & Cyberpunk

Photo, Cristina de Middel| "Jambo" 2012 | Courtesy the artist & Dillon Gallery VMartinwrites Spectrum Council for Diversity in Media Afrofuturism is a little appreciated subgenre of science fiction: stories that focus not on Eurocentric ideals of the future but African ones. Listed below are some video links discussing the topic. Award-winning filmmaker/author/journalist and choreographer Ytasha Womack discusses the empowerment of afrofuturism and details about the genre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzIwI9Hp_Ws This TedTalks features Detroit Boom City curator Ingrid LaFleur discussing the visual aspects of Afrofuturism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7bCaSzk9Zc Kenyan film director Wainuri...

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7 Mar

“So be it! See to it!”

AFROFUTURISTIC, WOMEN

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27 Dec

A New Squad of Superheroes

AFROFUTURISTIC, FASHION/STYLE

by Paola Mathe | Finding Paola *UPDATE Sadly, activist/model Mama Cax/Cacsmy Brutus passed away on December 16, 2019 at the age of 30. I once saw her on the subway and introduced myself, telling her how inspirational I found her; she was lovely. She was a real-live superhero. Here's a link to The NY Times article about her life. In the dark shadows of the night where women’s screams were unheard, and evil crept silently through back alleyways and hidden streets, four super heroes emerge to fight...

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20 Dec

African-Inspired Space Opera ‘Yohancé’

AFROFUTURISTIC, MUSIC

by Andrew Liptak i09 When it comes to space opera, most people don’t associate the genre with Africa. Not Paul Louise-Julie. He’s creating a space opera comic called Yohancéinspired by African aesthetics, culture and design. Paul noted that he’s long been inspired by Star Wars, drawing comics with his brother since childhood. With parents who collected African art and a year spend in Burkina Faso, he became fascinated with the continent’s artwork, and integrated it into his own works. The Pack 001: A Wolf in...

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27 Sep

Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination @ The Schomburg 10/1 – 12/31/2015

AFROFUTURISTIC, ARTS

Mind Blown by Manzel Bowman Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination is sure to satisfy the sci-fi/fantasy nerd in all of us. Curated by artist John Jennings and Reynaldo Anderson, this exhibition includes artifacts from the Schomburg collections that are connected to Afrofuturism, black speculative imagination and Diasporan cultural production. Offering a fresh perspective on the power of speculative imagination and the struggle for various freedoms of expression in popular culture, Unveiling Visions showcases illustrations and other graphics that highlight those popularly found...

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25 Aug

Vixen: African-American Super-Shero w/ Power to Mimic Animals

by VMartinWrites Spectrum Council for Diversity in Media The CW’s online streaming platform CW Seed is will be streaming Vixen, an animated show based around the adventures of Vixen, an African-American superheroine with the power to mimic animals. An African-American woman is getting her own show. I don’t think people are fully registering how big of a deal this is. Let me help you by asking this question: when was the last time a black character—a female black character—was the focus on their own TV show? Elisa...

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15 Feb

‘Oya: Rise of the Orishas’- Reimagining Orishas as Modern-Day Superheroes

AFROFUTURISTIC, MULTIMEDIA

I've been waiting for this film since the buzz about it years ago. by Tambay A. Obenson Shadow and Act British filmmaker Nosa Igbinedion's "Oya: Rise of the Orishas" is now available to watch in full online. Long-time readers will recall that it's a project we've been following on this blog for about 2 years, since the filmmaker took to crowdfunding to raise money to complete it. A welcomed project that digs into the pantheon of Orishas as inspiration for a superhero-style picture, here's a description...

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