season 2
ABOUT THE HOST
Tony-award-winning actor Anika Noni Rose recently made history by being cast as the first ever African-American princess in a Disney animated musical feature The Princess and The Frog. Ms. Rose also recently portrayed Botswanan detective “Mma Makutsi” in Anthony Minghella’s production of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency produced by The Weinstein Company for the BBC and HBO, where she co-stars with Jill Scott. Classically trained at the San Francisco American Conservatory Theater, Anika started her rise in theeatre with titles like Eli’s Comin’ for which she received an Obie Award, Purlie, Threepenny Opera, and Tartuffe, which played at A.C.T’s Geary Theater. She also work-shopped Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Caroline, or Change, which was directed by George C. Wolfe. In 2003, the musical opened at New York’s Public Theater, with Rose playing the role of “Emmie Thibodeaux.” Caroline, or Change moved to Broadway, taking Rose with it. In 2007, Anika starred again on Broadway as “Maggie,” in the revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite James Earl Jones, Terrence Howard, and Phylicia Rashad, directed by Deborah Allen. After pursuing her drama career in New York City, Rose quickly realized her potential when she was cast in the critically acclaimed screen adaptation of the musical, Dream Girls. Anika portrayed “Lorrell Robinson,” the third member of the legendary trio, and mistress to Eddie Murphy’s James “Thunder” Early.
Ms. Rose won her Tony Award in 2004 for her role in the Broadway staging of Caroline or Change. To date she has received a Drama-Logue Ensemble Award for her role in Insurrection: Holding History, a Garland/Drama-Logue Award for Valley Song at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Lucille Lortell Award, a Theatre World Award, and the Clarence Derwent Award. When she reprised her role in the west coast productions of Caroline, or Change, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Rose won both the Los Angeles Critics Circle Award and an Ovation Award. She was also nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and shared a Grammy nomination with Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Hudson for the soundtrack of Dreamgirls.
AfroPop: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange Program, an innovative documentary series on contemporary life, art and pop culture in the African Diaspora, is returning to public television this fall. The second season of the groundbreaking series, produced by the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), will premiere in October 2009. The series is co-presented by American Public Television (APT).
This year, AfroPop’s four, one-hour shows focus on the movement, migration and displacement of African people in search of opportunities for a better life. Four years after Hurricane Katrina, stories of its impact on the lives of displaced New Orleanians still resonant today as Director Alex LeMay’s Desert Bayou focuses his lens on one group airlifted to Utah for humanitarian assistance only to be strip searched and treated as refugees in their own country. The Fighting Spirit, by George Amponsah, follows boxers from a tiny African town that produces some of the toughest, most skilled fighters in the world as they go for the gold in global contests that could change their lives forever. Tre Whitlow’s Black to Our Roots explores Africa through the eyes of a 17-year-old high school student journeying to Ghana in an attempt to escape the violence and despair of her Atlanta housing project. Moving to the Beat, by Caleb Heymann and Abdul Fofanah, tracks a Sierre Leonian ex-patriate and his fellow American hip hop group members as they return to his homeland to use hip hop to dispel prevailing myths about the two Continents. Throughout the series, the subjects draw on their culture to help them navigate life’s challenges.
“Quite apart from the rampant tales of death, destruction and suffering, the African Diaspora offers fascinating stories of rich characters who are full of vibrant life,” said NBPC’s Executive Director Jacquie Jones. “AfroPop captures their accounts and presents a fresh way of looking at modern Africa and people of African descent in the US.”
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
An award-winning filmmaker, Phil Bertelsen works in both fiction and non-fiction. Most recently he produced and directed EveryOther, a social satire about racial identity that was featured in the PBS series Matters of Race. His last film, The Sunshine, won numerous awards and is included as part of the Full Frame Documentary DVD Collection. Bertelsen also wrote and directed Outside Looking In, examining transracial adoption in America and airing on public television. Additionally, he was a Writer/Director fellow at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab and has an M.F.A. from New York University where he won a Student Academy Award for his dramatic short Around the Time.
Producer/Director Duana C. Butler is an independent filmmaker based in Harlem, U.S.A. Ms. Butler has gained production experience working with directors Leslie Harris (”Another Girl on the I.R.T.”), Kathe Sandler (”A Question of Color”) and Cheryl Dunye (”The Watermelon Woman”). She is currently in production for her documentary feature “Harlem Stories”, an exploration of the effects of gentrification in the communities of Harlem, USA.
In “Harlem Stories,” Butler seeks to reconcile her conflicted feelings about the gentrification of her neighborhood of Harlem, NYC. The film documents her journey through a divided Harlem as she weighs the pros and cons of a process that is revitalizing this historically underserved community while at the same time displacing longtime residents and threatening the survival of its culture. The gentrification of Harlem is rendering vulnerable the very community that it was meant to uplift and strengthen as this process pits the well-to-do against working class, black against white, native against foreigner, and neighbor against neighbor — in the battle for the area’s future.
ABOUT THE FILMS
Boxing is show business with blood—a tough sport, which has always found its top competitors from the poorest neighborhoods. Bukom, a tiny district in Ghana’s capital city of Accra, is one such locale. Grounded in a long cultural tradition of wrestling that over the years developed into boxing, the tiny fishing village trains young people to fight—and win. Bukom has produced up to five percent of the world’s champion and Olympic medal boxers. The Fighting Spirit tells the story of three fighters from Bukom—two men and a woman—as they battle their way to the glittering rings of Europe and America to compete for the biggest prizes in the business. Viewers watch the athletes fight for respect and reward for their tribe and their home, and witness their triumphs and defeats in and out of the ring.
ABOUT GEORGE AMPONSAH
George Amponsah is an award-winning, critically acclaimed director who has been making films since the late 80’s when he became a super-8 movie addict.
His 2004 feature-length, The Importance of Being Elegant, aired to widespread critical acclaim on BBC2 as a flagship installment of the channel’s Storyville strand. The film was short listed for 2005’s Grierson Award and won Best Documentary at The Zanzibar Film Festival.
Amponsah, who is of Ghanaian descent and lives in London is a graduate of The UK’s prestigious National Film and Television School where he won a Post-Office scholarship to attend the documentary directing course. He also has a Kodak award winning commercials show reel and has directed a number of corporate videos over the years.
Living in a housing project in Atlanta, Georgia, 17-year-old Sylvia Dorsey is frustrated by the drug abuse and violence that surrounds her. Black To Our Roots is the inspirational story of the journey Sylvia takes to explore her ancestral home in Ghana in an attempt to escape the cycle of violence and poverty of her Atlanta neighborhood. In Africa, Sylvia confronts several challenges that test her patience and change her life forever. When she returns to the United States, will she be able to adjust to her old world as a new woman? This film is a testament to the power of change.
ABOUT TRE WHITLOW
Tre Whitlow, a native of Chicago, began his journey into documentary filmmaking in high school when he turned his basement into a darkroom and began producing black and white photographs of his neighborhood. When he later moved to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College, the soul of the South sparked a spiritual awakening in him that eventually led him to Africa.
An important theme in Whitlow’s films is the exploration of identity issues within African Diasporan communities with a strong emphasis on the culture and the arts. The director also does a lot of community outreach with his films in conjunction with cultural enrichment programs for youth in both the United States and Africa. He holds masters degrees in Communications & International Development as well as in Documentary Film.
In the wake of one of the worst natural and humanitarian disasters ever to visit American shores, nearly 600 African Americans were airlifted to the almost entirely white state of Utah…without their knowledge. Desert Bayou seeks to examine whether two cultures can come together in a time of utter chaos, or whether their differences prove too great a challenge to overcome. In their own words evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, tell how they survived the storm of the century and out of the rubble ended up at a military installation in the deserts of Utah. With interviews from evacuees, political, military and religious leaders, community and social figures, the questions of race, politics and religion hurtle towards each other in this truly American story: a story of loss and reunion, of sorrow and rebirth, of anger and rejoicing, but most of all…a story of hope.
ABOUT ALEX LEMAY
Alex LeMay is an award-winning feature film and broadcast director. Over his 14-year career he has directed a number of acclaimed feature films as well as provided commercial media for some of the world’s top-tier companies, including Johnson and Johnson, Starbucks Coffee Company, CVS Pharmacies, Abbott Laboratories and Office Max. His award-winning feature documentary, The Bulls of Suburbia, caught the eye of Universal Studios, for whom he produced and directed the bullfighting sequence for the Academy Award®-nominated film Seabiscuit. LeMay is currently in production on his third feature documentary, Conversations With the Enemy: a Dark Comedy of Opinion, which examines the relationship between Europe, the US and Islam. Mr. LeMay has run and operated the Chicago-based motion picture company, Taproot Productions, since 1993.
Moving to the Beat explores how youth in Africa and America are using hip hop music to communicate with one another and as a language for social change. The documentary follows Rebel Soulz, a hip hop group from Portland, Oregon, as they journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone to bring the radical roots of American hip hop to the motherland of Africa. In the process of collaborating and interacting with the local artists, the visitors confront their own stereotypes and fantasies of Africa while shattering the Sierra Leoneans perception of America as a “second heaven.” The result is a deeply forged connection that transcends centuries of misunderstanding and separation, and becomes an inspiring call for people worldwide to transcend boundaries.
ABOUT CALEB HEYMAN
Caleb Heymann co-produced and co-directed the directory Diamonds,Guns and Rice, screened at the Cascade Festival of African Films 2002 and distributed with Speaking Out: Women, War, and the Global Economy (2005). Heymann was cinematographer, assistant director, and co-editor of Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag (documentary video, 48 minutes), screened at the Northwest Film and Video Festival 2006, LA Femme Film Festival 2007, Port Townsend Film Festival 2008 and the Astoria International Film Festival 2008, where it was awarded the Best Documentary prize. Heymann has shot and edited numerous short films, music videos and live events both on HD and SD video and on super 16mm. He graduated from the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA) with a BFA in Motion Picture Production.
ABOUT ABDUL FOFANAH
Abdul Fofanah is a Sierra Leonean-American who loves music and regularly DJs at clubs where he promotes social connections between Africa and America through music and video. He is a refugee youth coordinator in Portland, OR and currently works professionally in crisis management with the homeless. Fofanah also gives presentations at public schools and universities on cross-cultural understanding. He served in 2008 on the Mayor’s Task Force on issues related to immigrants and refugees.
ABOUT NBPC
The National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), a national, nonprofit media arts organization, is the leading provider of black programming on public television and the greatest resource for the training of black media professionals within the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). NBPC develops, produces and funds television and online programming about the black experience and, since its founding in 1979, has provided hundreds of broadcast hours documenting African American history, culture and experience to public television. For more on NBPC and its initiatives, visit http://www.nbpc.tv.
ABOUT APT
With more than 10,000 hours of programming in its library, American Public Television (APT) has been a prime source of programming for the nation’s public television stations for 47 years, distributing more than 300 new program titles per year. APT milestones include distribution of the first HD series on public television and the 2006 launch of Create™ – the TV channel featuring the best of public television’s lifestyle programming. Known for its leadership in identifying innovative, worthwhile and viewer-friendly programming, APT has established a tradition of providing public television stations with program choices that strengthen and customize their schedules, such as: Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert, Winged Migration, Battlefield Britain, Globe Trekker, Rick Steves’ Europe, Great Museums, Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way, America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Broadway: The Golden Age, Lidia’s Family Table, California Dreamin’ – The Songs of The Mamas & the Papas, Rosemary and Thyme, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, The Big Comfy Couch, Monarchy With David Starkey, and other prominent documentaries including AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange Program, dramatic series, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies. For more information about APT’s programs and services, visit APTonline.org.
