By Iminza Keboge
Published November 8, 2020
As novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to disrupt lives around the world, the world is increasingly adopting the digital lifestyle. Artists and organisers of events, too, are adapting by going online.
It is on this premise that Human Rights Watch is holding a digital film festival reaching out to seven eastern African countries as Britain’s ArtHouse Gallery in Alton, Staffordshire ST10 4DF, joins 50 galleries from 15 countries on their online art fair.
While the Nairobi Human Rights Watch Film Festival runs November 9 – 13, 2020, The Affordable Online Art Fair, that was launched on November 6 , runs through November 30 and makes it possible for the 50 hand-picked galleries from 15 countries to exhibit and sell the work of their best-selling artists online.
Let’s hear more about The Affordable Online Art Fair and then conclude with the film festival, shall we?
RELATED: Kenya’s New Security Law Undermines Human Rights
The Autumn collection from the ArtHouse Artists is about journey….the spiritual and the physical, and being still; taking a breath on a hillside or listening to the creaking of the snow in the woods…it’s about things that matter: family, friends and celebrating life.
Prices for the art on media such as Graphite pencil on paper, Hand drawn screenprint, Hand drawn screenprint with 22 carat gold leaf, Oil on canvas, Hand painted gesso and gilded frame,monochrome transparent washes (Neem rung) on wasli paper, and Gouache, watercolour, liquid acrylic and soft pastel on Two Rivers handmade paper, range from £50 to £6 000.
RELATED: East African Arts Festivals Celebrate Humanity
Among the artwork on display are:
Celia De Serra
Hanging Valley
Oil on canvas
61 x 92 cm image size
£3000 framed
Celia De Serra
Silent Sound
Graphite pencil on paper
27.4 x 21 cm image size | 35 x 21 cm paper size
£1200 unframed.
RELATED: Virtual Entertainment Edges out ‘Live’ Events
Samar E Zia
Divine Climb
Gouache (Gud rung) on wasli paper
44 x 38cm image size | 48 x 43 cm paper size
£1000 framed.
Samar F Zia
Bahishti Fauj
(Celestial Army)
monochrome transparent washes (Neem rung) on wasli paper
41cms x 20cm image size | 42 x 63.5cm framed size
£1200 framed
David Hollington
In The Beginning
28 x 23.5 cm image size | 41.5 x 38 cm framed size
Gouache, watercolour, liquid acrylic and soft pastel on Two Rivers handmade paper.
£1650 framed
David Hollington
Come Away
14 x 23 cm image size | 27 x 35 cm framed size
Hand painted gesso and gilded frame
Gouache, watercolour, liquid acrylic and soft pastel on Two Rivers handmade paper.
£650 framed.
RELATED: Festival Constructs Virtual Cinema, Releases Screening Programme
Natasha Kumar
Three Sisters #floral (gold series)
Hand drawn screenprint with 22 carat gold leaf
Edition of 3
89 x 55cm image size | 102 x 72 cm framed size (float mounted)
£2200 framed | £1850 unframed
Natasha Kumar
Charika #Yarlung Tsangpo, River Series
Hand drawn screenprint
45 x 62.5 cm image size | 55.5 x 73.2 cm framed size (trimmed and float mounted)
Edition of 10
£1100 framed | £850 unframed.
RELATED: Kenya Revamps Green Spaces as Ruiru Bids for City Status
Back to the Nairobi (Kenya) edition of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) film festival that says it is holding its first digital expansion to audiences in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
The films and panel discussions, HRW says, will be accessible online to audiences in seven eastern African countries, a region in which activists are pushing back against abusive government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the use of security forces to crack down on critics.
“The festival aims to continue conversations about movements against repression and exclusion and demands to governments to be treated with dignity,” HRW says.
“As we document human rights violations in the region, we are working with activists in Africa who are building support and leading change even during this pandemic,” says Mausi Segun, Africa director at HRW. “These documentaries follow people who are inspiring communities to resist repression and stand up for their rights. We are excited to expand the festival to audiences around East Africa.”
RELATED: Government Orders Residents to Harvest Rain Water or Go to Jail
Saying the online panel discussions following each film will feature Human Rights Watch experts, filmmakers, and activists, who will be live-captioned in English, HRW invites prior registration as the free tickets are limited..
Opening Night:
Live Q&A November 9, 8:30 p.m. EAT
ON THE PRESIDENT’S ORDERS by James Jones and Olivier Sarbil, 2019, 72m
In 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte announced a “war on drugs” in the Philippines, setting off a wave of violence and murder targeting thousands of suspected drug dealers and users. With unprecedented, intimate access both to police officials implicated in the killings and the families destroyed as the result of Duterte’s deadly campaign, On the President’s Orders is a shocking and revelatory investigation into the extrajudicial murders that continue to this day.
Fully subtitled in English.
African digital festival premiere.
Live Q&A November 10, 8:30 p.m. EAT
NO BOX FOR ME: AN INTERSEX STORY by Floriane Devigne, 2018, 58m
Deborah, 25, and M, 27, are living in bodies that Western medicine – and often society – deems taboo to discuss publicly. Like an estimated 1.7 percent of people, they were born with variations in their sex characteristics that were different from classical understandings of male or female. This beautifully crafted, poetic documentary joins brave young people as they seek to reappropriate their bodies and explore their identities, revealing both the limits of binary visions of sex and gender, and the irreversible physical and psychological impact of non-consensual surgery on intersex infants.
Fully subtitled in English.
African digital festival premiere.
RELATED: Censorship Threatens Artistic Freedom of Expression Across East Africa
Live Q&A November 11, 8:30 p.m. EAT
MAXIMA by Claudia Sparrow, 2019, 88m
Maxima tells the story of the 2016 environmental Goldman Prize winner Máxima Acuña and her family, who own a small, remote plot in the Peruvian Highlands and rely solely on the environment for their livelihood. But their land sits directly in the path of a multi-billion-dollar project run by one of the world’s largest gold-mining corporations. Faced with intimidation, violence, and criminal prosecution, Máxima wages a tireless fight for justice. Máxima sings of her love of the land in the face of widespread oppression of Indigenous people, and relentless attempts to destroy environmental resources that the world relies on.
Partially subtitled in English.
African digital festival premiere
Live Q&A November 12, 8:30 p.m. EAT
IMPORTED FOR MY BODY by Nyasha Kadandara and Peter Murimi, 2019, 52m
IMPORTED FOR MY BODY is an investigation featuring Grace, a Kenyan woman who is one of many women trafficked to India from East and West Africa as part of a large sex-trafficking network. After responding to an advert for dancers abroad, Grace arrives in New Delhi, where her passport is confiscated, and she must pay a grossly inflated fee for her travel. She is then forced to earn her freedom by doing sex work. Grace goes undercover, wearing secret cameras to capture unprecedented footage exposing an underground ring entrapping women.
Partially subtitled in English.
Digital festival premiere.
RELATED: New Compilation Retraces Kikuyu Popular Music
Closing Night:
Live Q&A November 13, 8.30 pm EAT
GATHER by Sanjay Rawal, 2020, 74m
Gather celebrates the fruits of the indigenous food sovereignty movement, profiling innovative changemakers in Native American communities across North America reclaiming their identities after centuries of physical and cultural genocide. On the Apache reservation, a chef embarks on an ambitious project to reclaim his community’s ancient ingredients. In South Dakota, a gifted Lakota high school student, raised on a buffalo ranch, is using science to prove her community’s native wisdom about environmental sustainability. Gather beautifully shows how reclaiming and recovering ancient foodways provides a form of resistance and survival, collectively bringing back health and self-determination to their people.
African digital festival premiere
Co-presented with FILMAID.
