Month: December 2017

A new book just hit the bookstores in Europe and the U.S. that tries to show life in Africa beyond the stereotypes and misconceptions infused in Western media. Africa 54’s Zoe Leoudaki has the details
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The drawings and paintings on the walls and sculptures on display are not the only art to see at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Floral arrangements are designed to complement the exhibits and time of season. VOA Russian Service reporter Elena Wolf takes us behind the scenes at the Met to meet a third generation florist whose creates masterpieces every week. VOA’s Bob Leverone narrates the report.
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The discovery in China of an underground army of nearly 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers is considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century. 

More than four decades after they were first seen in modern times, by farmers in Shaanxi province, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has 10 of the majestic figures on display in an exhibit that explores the history of ancient China and the reign of its first emperor, Ying Zheng. 

Although various assortments of the terracotta soldiers have been displayed previously in museums in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere, the exhibit in Richmond also includes 40 objects never seen in the U.S., including ancient jade ornaments, precious jewelry and ceramics. 

“Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China” is only being shown in Richmond and at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it goes after its run in Virginia ends March 11. 

The exhibit explores the life of Ying Zheng – who declared himself Qin Shihuang, the first emperor – and how he influenced China during his reign from 221 to 210 BC. Historians believe he ordered the construction of the terracotta army, which was buried in pits and discovered 2,000 years later, about a mile east of the emperor’s burial site. 

“We want visitors to learn who is the first emperor and what people’s lives looked then, what technology developed during that time and the architecture of that time,” said Li Jian, the co-curator. 

“No matter rich or poor, royal emperors or commoners, people had a quest for immortality,” she said. “These excavated objects reflect the people’s lives at the time.” 

The first two rooms of the exhibit showcase horse and chariot fittings, arms and armor, works of art in gold and silver, and other cultural relics. 

A bucket-shaped mask with an open mouth and cut-out eyes is the oldest object, dating to 3500 BC, when an exorcist would have worn it while performing rituals to ward off evil spirits and misfortune. A necklace of red agate beads and white jade pendants was a type of jewelry favored by Qin nobility. A bronze household lamp would have contained vegetable oil or animal fat, capable of burning for long periods of time in an era before candles. 

Visitors encounter an imposing sight as they enter the third room: The terracotta soldiers, 6 feet tall and weighing between 250 and 400 pounds each, are positioned in individual open cases, in various poses of war. 

There’s the armored general, with detailed carving depicting a protective leather apron overlaid with plated armor. An infantryman stands at attention with both arms at his side. A standing archer and a kneeling archer depict the Qin military strategy, requiring one group of archers to stand and provide cover fire while another group knelt and loaded bolts into their crossbows. 

Connie James, a retired kindergarten teacher from Richmond, appreciated the details as she spent a recent weekday afternoon exploring the exhibit with her husband. 

“I was expecting them to look like a terracotta flower pot, but they’re very intricate,” she said. “For those of us who couldn’t get to China, this is something very special.” 

Her husband, David James, liked seeing the ancient weapons used by the warriors. 

“I wouldn’t have imagined they would have been used in a crossbow at that time, but they were,” he said. 

Museum director Alex Nyerges said the exhibit attracted nearly 40,000 visitors during its first two weeks in Richmond, putting it on a path to become one of the museum’s most popular. 
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When you think about fine wine, what countries come to mind? France? Italy? What about China? Well, by 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States. That’s according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. VOA’s Chu Wu visited California’s wine country to hear what winemakers—and drinkers—had to say.
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On Sydney’s glittering harbor, the Chinese have been on a mission to conquer the world of sailing.  With an average age of 24, the crew onboard the yacht De Rucci includes professional athletes and former members of China’s special forces.

They have been here training and competing for weeks in preparation for the 630-nautical-mile yacht race to Hobart, the capital of the island state of Tasmania.

The 73rd running of the race kicked off December 26, and ended with a new record. An Australian crew finished the race in one day, eight hours and 48 minutes, smashing the previous record of one day, 13 hours and 31 minutes. De Rucci is expected to finish the race Thursday.

Skipper Dong Qing says that back home, sailing continues to ride a wave of popularity. 

“Chinese people are becoming richer and richer,” he said. “Now more and more people can afford to buy a boat.”

Crew members have been competing against some of the world’s best ocean-racing yachts in preparation for the arduous dash from Sydney to Hobart. They might be relative newcomers, but they have long-term ambitions to win major races.

“I do not think it is possible for now because we have just started,” the skipper said, “but I think all of us as Chinese we have this dream of winning in big sailing competitions one day.”

Britain, the Netherlands and Australia dominated sailing at the Rio Olympics. But China, which won a silver medal, has lofty ambitions in a sport that requires money and motivation, according to De Rucci’s Australian coach, Ben Morrison-Jack.

“You could probably draw some comparisons, maybe, with some other sports that they have taken on,” he said. “There is always a timeline and sailing is a complex sport, so it will take a while but if they are committed to it they’ll win medals eventually. That is for sure. It is crucial to the sport because it is not that big a sport, really, and to have a population of China starting to get interested in the sport is fantastic.”

Previous attempts

Fate hasn’t been kind to the sailors from Shanghai. A collision with a rival boat knocked them out at the start of the 2015 Sydney-to-Hobart race. Last year, a broken mast saw them limp to the finish line.

However, they have already made history. The crew from Noah’s Yacht Club in Shanghai was the first team from mainland China to compete in the famous Australia race. It will also take its place in the Australian Yachting Championships in Melbourne in January.

After a dogged pursuit of success, the team will then head home in time for Chinese New Year.
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With echoes of Rebecca and lavish Max Ophuls productions, writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson spins the tale of an obsessive fashion designer and his muse into a suspenseful and often funny parlor drama with all the trimmings in Phantom Thread.

Anderson is revered for his grand stage meditations on the American man (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master). But here, and perhaps to the dismay of some of his fans, he both narrows and redirects his gaze elsewhere to a single couture house in 1950s London and the very particular man behind the designs, Reynolds Woodcock.

The great Daniel Day-Lewis, in what may be his final film performance, plays Reynolds as a soft-spoken dandy whose precise rules and polished look thinly veil his volatile artist’s temperament. We’ve certainly seen this kind of thing before — a celebrated artist who literally cannot stomach anything outside of his routine from ugliness to general unpleasantries and everything in between — but it is something special and distinct in the hands of Day-Lewis, who is perhaps the only working actor perfect and exacting enough to play someone so perfect and exacting.

Reynolds’ nature is just one of the reasons why he’s sailed past middle age and has not only never married but also will proudly tell a woman on a first date that he is a “confirmed” and “incurable” bachelor. The audience sees Reynolds and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), who runs the business side of the House of Woodcock, dispose of a pretty woman early on for the crime of wanting his attention (and disrupting breakfast by offering him an unwanted pastry).

Thus we’re not expecting anything very different when he takes a shine to Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a restaurant in the country whom he teases and flirts with by ordering an excessively large breakfast spread for just himself and grinning widely at his next prey. Alma, who seems shy and awkward in her lanky body, bumping into chairs and blushing at the sight of Reynolds, smiles and plays along and gladly accepts his dinner invitation, and, soon one to come back to London to model for him. 

But this is not Funny Face or My Fair Lady or Pretty Woman or any number of “ugly” duckling turns to swan with the help of a hairbrush/expensive clothes/great man stories. It’s not even really about fashion (although Mark Bridges costumes are indeed sumptuous). It’s a story of relationships and power.

Alma, we come to discover, is not like the other girls even if she fits the mold (Cyril tells her plainly that she has the perfect shape — “he likes them with a little belly”). She has a bite and will push back on some things and concede on others. “He’s too fussy,” she says defiantly after a disastrous breakfast where Reynolds storms off because she’s buttering her toast too loudly, only later to succumb to the library silence he prefers in the morning. Ultimately, it seems, Alma is testing the waters in hopes of carving out her own unique relationship with Reynolds.

Why Alma loves this petulant genius is something the film doesn’t really make any effort to explain. It’s just a fact, and an occasionally infuriating one. This takes a somewhat surreal twist halfway through, but it’s intriguing enough to carry you to the end of the film.

Even in the unusually confined setting, Anderson gives moments and characters room to breathe in this silky smooth film that lulls you in before taking you on the unexpected ride of the third act. Giving one of the most beautifully subtle performances of the year, Krieps more than holds her own against Day-Lewis, and in some cases even goes so far as to outshine him — a fitting parallel to her character. Manville, too, is superb as Cyril — a Mrs. Danvers-type, without the sinister angle.

Like all of Anderson’s efforts, Phantom Thread is beautiful and intriguing, but it’s also a film that is not unlike its central character: easy to respect and admire, and nearly impossible to fully love.

Phantom Thread, a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language.” Running time: 130 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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Russian ballet and its dancers are famous the world over and inspire many Russians to pursue a career in the classical dance.  But to break into ballet, dancers have to struggle through a brutal training regime and gender stereotypes.  VOA Moscow videographer Ricardo Marquina Montanana talked to an aspiring ballerina and a successful ballet dancer whose father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and be a boxer.
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Kenneth Branagh is teasing the return of “old friends” in his planned sequel to “Murder on the Orient Express.” 

Branagh is expected to both direct and reprise his role as the fancifully mustachioed lead character Detective Hercule Poirot in “Death on the Nile,” another mystery based on an Agatha Christie novel, which screenwriter Michael Green will return to adapt. 

Branagh says he’s excited to gather an ensemble cast that could possibly include bringing back some “old friends” to explore “primal human emotions” like “obsessive love and jealousy and sex” that make for a “very dangerous atmosphere.”

The tense whodunit “Murder on the Orient Express” featured an all-star cast including Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was a global hit after its release in early November. Branagh says he was glad to see audiences responding to his quirky portrayal of Poirot and looks forward to seeing how that will evolve in the sequel. 

“One of the things that I liked – really loved doing here that the audience responded to was that Hercule Poirot, for all his intellectual power, got dragged into it, got dragged into feeling it. And I think it’s a hell of a trip, that trip down the Nile. So I think it would be great to see how he, how his heart, responds to that kind of intensity,” he said. 

Christie’s 1937 novel, “Death on the Nile,” was previously adapted into a 1978 film starring Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Maggie Smith.

With a wealth of source material to draw from, Branagh also endorses the idea of a Poirot-slash-Christie “cinematic universe” – the popular term for a series of interlocking films that bring various characters together. 

“I think there are possibilities, aren’t there? With 66 books and short stories and plays, she – and she often brings people together in her own books actually, so innately – she enjoyed that,” he says. “You feel as though there is a world – just like with Dickens, there’s a complete world that she’s created – certain kinds of characters who live in her world – that I think has real possibilities.”

However, Branagh says he hasn’t exactly floated that idea with any of the brass at 20th Century Fox. 

“I bet they’ve been thinking about it though,” he says. 

“Murder on the Orient Express” will be released on home video in the coming months. “Death on the Nile” is in the early stages of pre-production.
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At the age of 5, Maame Biney immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana to live with her father. She was an energetic child, and her father wanted to channel that energy into a sport. One day, they drove by a local ice rink in Reston, Virginia, where a sign in front read “Learn to Skate.”

Biney’s father asked if she wanted to give it a try.

“I brought her here, in this particular rink, and she just tried it,” her father, Kweku Biney, said. “And the first day she got on the ice I was scared, you know. I thought she was going to break her head open, so I said, ‘What did I get myself into? This is risky.’”

But Biney was a natural. “She took that thing in stride, and I was just surprised, you know, the way she was skating,” he said. “And she just looked like somebody who’s been doing it for probably a few months prior to that day.”

Biney was hooked. Every morning she would bounce out of bed to wake up her father for the early morning practices. She tried figure skating first, but a coach noticed how fast she was and encouraged her to take up speedskating. She competed in local events before moving up to the U.S. Junior Championships, where she won a bronze medal.

This month, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team after finishing first in the women’s 500-meter trial in Kearns, Utah. At age 17, she is the youngest speedskater on the U.S. team and the first African American woman to represent the country as a speedskater.

“First time I met Maame, she was 9,” said Sooan Yoo, Biney’s coach in Reston. “Now she’s almost my height as she’s gaining age, and she’s representing the USA team.”

Despite her accomplishments, the high schooler doesn’t take herself too seriously.

“I just hope that everyone sees how fun the sport is when you can just go fast and just be awesome. Not that I am awesome or anything, but just — you feel good about yourself, so yeah. Be proud of yourself. That’s it,” she said.

Biney’s achievements have earned her fans around the world, particularly in West Africa, where skating isn’t common. She hopes girls watch her and become inspired to pursue their own dreams.

“Since speedskating or any ice sport isn’t really an option back in Africa, I would just tell all the little kids back there just to find something that you love, and be happy,” she said. “And just have fun with it. Because why are you going to do something if you don’t have fun?”

Biney hopes to do more than just have fun when she competes at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. Her event, the 500 meter, is the shortest and requires intense sprinting ability. She said her strategy is simple: “Go fast and don’t fall.”

Her teammates say her easygoing attitude belies her hard work and competitive spirit. Her team, Dominion Speedskating, practices six to seven days a week.

“She is really kind and everything. She’s really caring,” said 15-year-old Dominion teammate Joonsuh Oh. “Everyone loves her when you first see her. She seems kind of intimidating because you just never know her. But if you actually meet her, she’s really friendly, and when she skates, she’s amazing.”

Despite intense pressure, Biney’s father hopes she can just soak up the moment and have fun. He said seeing her walk with Team USA during the opening ceremony will be enough of a reward. Anything more will be a bonus, he said.

“Once you stay focused, everything will fall in place” he said. “That’s it. That’s all I got for her. She doesn’t need to be afraid of anything, and I don’t think she is.”
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When schoolchildren in Washington, D.C. are asked to say the first thing that comes to mind about Africa, they use words like hot, desert, sand, poverty, hunger, war and Ebola.

 

These are all accurate things to say about that part or the world — but they reflect an “incomplete” picture, says writer Austin Merrill, who together with photojournalist Peter DiCampo has set out to document African reality beyond common stereotypes.

 

They are the founders of Every Day Africa, an Instagram community of photographers who strive to capture ordinary moments of life, such as children picking flowers in a field, or girlfriends chatting at a coffee shop. Their Instagram following has topped 370,000.

In addition to the Instagram feed, the book “Every Day Africa, 30 Photographers Re-Picturing the Continent,” recently hit bookstores in Europe, the United States and certain countries on the African continent. The book is filled with images documenting life in Africa that aim to shatter misconceptions often found in Western media.

 

Readers see a teenager rollerblading in the streets of Dakar, a DJ playing music in Lagos, a couple looking at the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town. The book displays the full diversity and visual richness of African life.

 

Both DiCampo and Merrill invited a diverse “community of photographers” from all over the continent to contribute to the Instagram project and the book. Some are professionals, while others are skilled amateurs.

Ethiopian-American writer Maaza Mengiste prologues the book in an essay focusing on the power of the ordinary. “We sometimes forget that no matter what is happening in our lives, ordinary moments find a way to move forward,” Mengiste writes.

 

Normality

 

Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, both Americans, met while serving with the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast. In 2012, they received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington to cover the aftermath of Ivory Coast’s civil war.

While they were interviewing refugees and soldiers, Merrill remembers that around them “the vast majority of life was pretty normal, but that wasn’t coming through in the story that we were trying to put together.”

 

“We were seeing all these other moments, that were much sort of truer to our daily life experience in that part of the world,” says DiCampo.

 

So, they took their cellphones and started to photograph what was around them. They felt, says Merrill, that the normal, everyday scenes of life “might be the most important thing we had to tell about that place, about that moment, instead of the crisis story.”

 

Media organizations tend to focus on breaking news, often triggered by an evolving crisis. Africa has many of those; but, as Di Campo puts it, “It’s quite difficult to have a global understanding when all you see of other parts of the world are really extreme stories.”

This is the gap that the “Everyday Africa” book is trying to fill; to look at the continent from the inside and from different perspectives.

 

DiCampo and Merrill, with the support of the Pulitzer Center, have also created media workshops that train elementary school students in the United States on how to document their lives and recognize stereotypes.

 

“We use the story of how we we created Every Day Africa,” said DiCampo, “to engage the students in a discussion of how media representation affects them, their lives and their communities and we use our photography to teach basic photography lessons, so that by the end of the workshop, they have an everyday project for their own school or community.”

 

This social media model has hit a nerve. “The Every Africa platform on Instagram may very well be the biggest visual library of the continent,” writes Ghanaian photographer Nana Kofi Acquah.

 

“To task African photographers with the burden of changing how the continent is perceived, might be overwhelming,” writes Acquah; but, he adds, “a picture of the real Africa” is slowly emerging.
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