31 October 2008

Telling the story of Ezra, a child soldier: Newton Aduaka on TED.com

Filmmaker Newton Aduaka shows clips from his powerful, lyrical feature film Ezra, about a child soldier in Sierra Leone. (Recorded June 2007 at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania. Duration: 18:43.)

Watch Newton Aduaka's talk from TEDGlobal 2007 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about films and filmmaking.

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06 June 2007

From blogger Jennifer Brea: "Writing A New Story About Africa"

Beijing-based blogger Jennifer Brea is one of 100 Fellows attending TEDGlobal. She's the Francophonia editor for Global Voices, and a prolific and powerful blogger about Africa. I love what she wrote about rethinking media coverage of Africa. Just an excerpt below. Read the full post here.

The first day's speakers--Euvin Naidoo, Andrew Mwenda, Carol Pineau, Andrew Dosunmu, Zeray Alemseged, and Newton Aduaka--took the story of Africa, the tired story of dependence, desperation, and despair, and tore it to shreds. They took the West's gaze, and killed it, stomped on it, mocked it, burned its effigy (Joseph Conrad to be precise) so that we could start an entirely new conversation using an entirely different vocabulary. We killed famine, death, hopelessness, hunger, tragedy, poverty and started using words like potential, opportunity, wealth, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, art, imagination, creativity, success, investment, growth, choice.

These are words the media use liberally when writing about emerging nations like India, China or Brazil, but not to describe some of the fastest-growing economies in the world when they happen to be in Africa.

Now imagine spending four days where you only use the good words to talk about Africa: words of forward motion, words of change. I'm not talking about bringing Tony Robbins on stage and dreaming of a better future. I'm talking about hearing from the mouths of people who are out there living it, building it, succeeding (and quite possibly getting very rich) in Africa.

It's been thrilling.

Technorati tags: tedglobal2007, Africa

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04 June 2007

[TEDGlobal 2007] Session 2: Looking Back to Look Forward

We began session two looking back to ... session one. Bono offered an unscheduled talk, taking on the anti-aid stance of journalist Andrew Mwenda, articulated earlier that day. (A bit of background: Bono's moving 2005 TED Prize acceptance speech helped ignite within the TED Community a heightened interest in Africa, and led quite directly to the planning of this conference.)

Bono led off with a video greeting from German chancellor Angela Merkel; a reminder that, in a parallel universe, the G-8 Summit also convenes this week, focusing in part on what some have called an African Marshall Plan. "Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan," Bono began. "I was going to talk about the Marshall Plan. But instead I'll talk about the Mwenda Plan, inaugurated today." He challenged Mwenda on multiple fronts, emphasizing the still-relevant role of aid in saving and improving lives, and the imperative of debt relief for nations who suffered corrupt regimes. I have a strong sense that the aid vs. investment debate is only just getting started ...

We then returned to our regularly scheduled program, looking to Africa's past to inform the future. Paleontologist Zeresenay "Zeray" Alemseged took us deep into our history, shedding light on human evolution through the fossil of Salam, a 3-million-year-old toddler he discovered in Ethiopia. (Fascinating fact: The shape of the skull indicated a brain closer to humans than chimps. But the vocal box was distinctly monkey-like, meaning this 3-year-old hominid may well have used language, but would have sounded more like a chimp than a child.) Historian Kenneth Vickery brought us into the recent past, offering snapshots of key moments in African history, which have resonance today.

Then the program leapt unexpectedly from our heads to our hearts (as so many memorably TED sessions do). Nigerian-born, Paris-based filmmaker Newton Aduaka shared an extraordinarily moving clip from Ezra, the Sundance-nominated film about child soldiers in the Sierra Leone. Then the magnificent Rokia Traore took the stage again (visibly moved by Aduaka's film), and enchanted us with her voice, which alternately floated and soared. Mali-born and Paris-based, Traore brings traditional music (and instruments) into a modern context, creating a sound all her own. Audience reaction: Not one, but two standing ovations.

For more extensive descriptions of each speaker, see Ethan Zuckerman's real-time posts on Bono, Zeresenay "Zeray" Alemseged, Kenneth Vickery and Newton Aduaka.

Watch for these talks on TED.com beginning midsummer 2007.

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