by Sara Terry
- USA -

It all goes back, I think, to the day I was standing in a mass grave, hating the fact that I was there, balanced precariously on a mound of bones, camera reluctantly in hand. I’d been asked to make a photo of a partly-preserved pair of hands, the remains of a teenage boy who along with thousands of other Bosnian Muslim men and boys had been murdered by Bosnian Serb forces seven years earlier during the Srebrenica massacre.

• Forensic anthropologists Ewa Klonowski (right) and Piotr Drukier examine the partially preserved hands of a teenage boy, found in a mass grave of victims of the 1995 massacre of some 7,000 to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of Serb forces who overran the U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica. The grave, which contained more than 150 intact bodies and some 350 partial remains, was one of the largest mass graves uncovered in Bosnia since the end of the war. Photograph © Sara Terry. •

by Emily Rose Herzlin
- USA -

“Theatre is ephemeral,” proclaims Geoffrey Decas as he waxes philosophic and waters the plants on his terrace in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Cars whiz by on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway as the smell of marinated tofu wafts into the apartment from the grill on the terrace. “I’m a vegetarian so I get to decide what people eat,” Geoffrey says mischievously. “Which means the rest of us have to eat vegetarian since he’s cooking,” chimes in TJ Witham.

• CollaborationTown charts new theatrical territory with their unique philosophy on art-making. CollaborationTown's website design by Derek Rippe. •

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

American slave trading is a human rights atrocity forever associated with the Confederacy of the Southern United States. Northerners are stereotypically portrayed as benevolent abolitionists fighting the South’s slave labor plantations. But history is rarely that cut and dried.

by Cathy Oerter
- USA -

I ran through the Iowa countryside, young and carefree, unaware of the life I had been richly blessed with. It was just me and the breeze and the green methodical cornfields. The gravel roads, loose with sand and oversized rocks, could easily sprain an ankle yet were gladly accepted in lieu of a track that did not exist. Small towns in Iowa could not afford that luxury and I knew I wanted to run. The gravel became my path into another world.

• Al Oerter at the 1960 Olympic Trials in California. •

Al was tall and muscular and boyishly handsome; he was a gentle giant. No loud bravado, just a common man who had unusually large muscles and monstrous hands that made mine disappear completely in their grasp.

by Sarah Wyatt
- USA -

Years of hardship and backbreaking labor in the riot-stricken slums of Kibera in south Kenya have worn 18 year old Eshe Koome to the bone. A single mother of two, she walked out on her abusive husband and survived for two years as a daily wage laborer, loading vegetables and other goods for sale.

• Eshe is now able to earn a living wage at Kazuri. Photograph by Sarah Wyatt. •

Eshe's story captures in a nutshell how a group of formerly indigent, urban women operates a business for themselves. The Kazuri Bead Factory, located in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, is unique in that it is Kenya’s first visitors’ attraction of its kind, created for and by women. Founded by Lady Susan Wood in 1975, the company is known for its beautiful, hand-painted beads made from the authentic clay from the Mt. Kenya area. Kazuri (Swahili for “small and beautiful”), also produces a number of other goods popular with tourists including pottery, hand-beaded sandals and purses. The beads are often featured on three-dimensional art cards and can also be found in shadowboxes.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

What makes The Linguists so entertaining are the stars’ contagious love of linguistics; between them they speak over 25 languages and have devoted their professional lives to traveling around the world – on screen they venture to Siberia, India, and Bolivia – documenting obscure languages on the verge of extinction. Their work is exciting because Harrison and Anderson are up against the clock: currently there over 7,000 languages spoken around the world, but one is disappearing every two weeks.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Revealing the ending of a film is downright mean, but it’s obvious that Oscar-nominated director Morgan Spurlock does not find Osama Bin Laden in his latest documentary film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?. Spurlock’s claim to fame is having exclusively eaten McDonald's for 30 days in his hit 2004 documentary Super Size Me, so I didn’t initially want to run to the theater when I heard he had made a documentary featuring him trekking around the Middle East on a fruitless search for Osama Bin Laden – despite the clever promotional milk carton with Bin Laden’s missing person photo on it that I received at the Sundance Film Festival. (Quite frankly, at that moment I was more interested in the chocolate inside the milk carton.)

But after seeing the documentary, I have to admit that I enjoyed it, simplistic though it may be. The appeal of the film, which is an inevitable hit now that it’s screening at theaters everywhere, is Spurlock’s style: he’s more of a goofy explorer on a madcap adventure than an award-winning foreign correspondent. Within the first few minutes, the film has a musical number with Osama Bin Laden and his followers dancing to MC Hammer’s early 1990’s hit “U Can’t Touch This.”

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

The experiences and emotions of young American girls are much more complicated, and even tragic, than most people, particularly men, would assume. Girls as young as eight are regularly confronting low self-esteem, eating disorders, broken families, peer rejection, drug addiction, and the eternal search of finding their place in an unforgiving world. But every summer girls from 8 to 18 find a reprieve from their daily struggles for one week at a truly original venue: Rock 'n’ Roll Camp for Girls!

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the war: his father’s name had never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in combat. The truth, discovered years later, was that Captain Wajda had been shot cold-bloodedly by the Soviet secret police in a prison in the western Soviet Union. Andrzej and around 22,000 other people had waited for their loved ones in vain.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

“Rape has always been used as a weapon of war” is the opening line of the new documentary film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. For 76 minutes the film exposes the incredibly brutal civil war that has raged for over ten years in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Not only have over four million people been killed, but over 250,000 women and girls have been raped, kidnapped, and tortured.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

In a heap on the studio floor as though they had collapsed under some disaster, fallen birds present a scene of despair. I am drawn toward them. They are a very powerful artistic reinterpretation of the Japanese tradition of the thousand cranes that people traditionally make from beautiful origami paper as signs of hope (most recently that would be hope for peace).

A closer look reveals that the defeated origami cranes are made from newspaper accounts of war, violence, cruelty; indeed these birds have succumbed under the weight of the torment and anguish of needless human suffering all over the world. I found them when I visited another studio at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska, where I was briefly in residence.

by Molly Nance
- USA -

I'm not usually one to arrive to a press event 30 minutes early, but recently I woke up in time to drive two hours north from Monterey to San Francisco, to arrive promptly at the Legion of Honor, for the first time. The view from this hilltop setting - a bright blue San Francisco Bay framed by the Golden Gate Bridge - took my breath away at that early morning hour.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

- March 8th - Today we celebrate International Women's Day with our sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers, cousins and daughters, and most of all, with our writers, who have become family. On this important day, we find it appropriate that Jessica's review is of a film about a group of remarkable women in Argentina who found their voices and by doing so transformed themselves from victims into successful entrepreneurs. The women of Brukman are yet further proof that women who empower themselves cannot be stopped. - Ed.


Christmas should be a happy time for families to congregate over lengthy meals while watching little kids open presents, but in 2001 Argentina’s economy collapsed a week before the holiday. Almost immediately factories shut down, business owners fled the country, and low-paid workers were out of their jobs just when everyone needed a little extra money. Yuletide joy was harder to find than a job. However the amazing women featured in the documentary film The Women of Brukman didn’t let the crumbling economy destroy their livelihoods, their spirit, or their Christmas.

• Delicia works the presses, perfectly ironing every piece of clothing that leaves the Brukman factory. Photograph by Gunes-Helene Isitan. •

One day in late 2001, the workers of the Brukman garment factory arrived for their shifts, only to find that the factory’s owners had fled the country – neglecting to pay anyone! The predominately female workforce decided to go about their jobs just like it was any other day; no one had any extra money and, with the recent economic collapse, few employment opportunities elsewhere. Everyone assumed that the Brukman family would eventually return to Buenos Aires and want the factory back.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

This year’s 58th International Film Festival in Berlin is offering a heterogeneous mix of topics and genres with many documentaries, a lot of pathos, a few lost souls, war and violence, politics as usual, and last but not least, some comedy.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Forty years of unending gang violence between rival gangs, the Bloods and Crips, has killed over 15,000 people in South Central Los Angeles. It seems counterintuitive that one of the most dangerous places in the United States is so close to one of the most famous places on earth; the sunny palm tree lined streets of Hollywood seem worlds away from the dangerous and economically depressed streets of South Central LA. But the sad reality is that children are regularly gunned-down while walking to school at 10 a.m. a mere twenty-five miles from Disneyland.

• Playboy Gangstas Crip, Nikko De. Photo courtesy of the filmmakers. •

The film’s director Stacy Peralta is no stranger to the rough side of Southern California; his rise to fame as skateboarder who revolutionized the sport on the seedy sidewalks of Venice Beach in the 1970s is chronicled in the documentary film Dogtown and Z-Boys (which he also directed) and in the feature film The Lords of Dogtown. Besides Peralta, this film has an extraordinary amount of star power behind it, especially for a documentary: actor Forest Whitaker narrates and NBA star Baron Davis, who was raised by his grandmother in South Central LA, financed and produced the film.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

If you want to see interesting independent films and the movie stars in them, the Sundance film festival, held in the picturesque ski town of Park City, Utah, is the place to go. The annual festival attracts movie stars, independent filmmakers, studio executives, journalists, and people who love movies. Sundance has gained a reputation as the premier American film festival for independent feature films and documentaries. Although the festival itself has an air of exclusivity, to me and most people who care about film, the independent films shown represent film at its best: a medium that transcends boundaries and moves people to a greater understanding of humanity, even if the world they’re watching is completely foreign to them.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

When thinking of Afghanistan, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by despair. Violence claimed over 6,000 lives in 2007 alone. The quality of life for women continues to decline as a result of continuing violence and the country’s shattered infrastructure. Good news about Afghanistan rarely makes the nightly news. However, after watching the documentary The Beauty Academy of Kabul, which is widely available on DVD, I felt more hopeful about the future of Afghan women, because the film depicts a possible alternative to the oppression and poverty that characterize most women’s lives there.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Including the word “orgasm” in the title of your documentary film is a bold move. After seeing the film Passion and Power: Technology of Orgasm at the Mill Valley Film Festival, I wanted to talk to the equally bold women behind the film: Bay area filmmakers Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori. During our interview, Slick provided greater insight into the creative process of an independent documentary filmmaker who chooses to focus on women’s social and political freedoms as viewed through sexuality.

• Co-producer and co-director Wendy Slick •

by Anna Clark
- USA -

There comes a time when a reader is starved for something new.

A lot of tremendous fiction is being published these days, but most people don’t ever hear about it. In a time when big publishers pay to place their titles on the front tables of bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, when book reviews are slashed in most periodicals, when smaller publishers simply don’t have the cash to send their brightest talents out on book tours—then the avid reader tends to hear about the same authors over and over again, while work they might fall in love with slips through the cracks.

I love Cynthia Reeves’ new book, Badlands, winner of the 2006 Miami University Press Novella Contest. Being the work of a debut author and published by a small publisher, I might not have heard of it if I hadn’t attended graduate school with Reeves. The two of us entered the fiction program at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina in 2004. Reeves worked on this book as a student, which meant that I was lucky enough to see the beginnings of Badlands. I was drawn to her creative sensibility; her story tells itself not in the traditional “first this, then that” chronology of mainstream fiction. Rather, her characters are developed through the juxtaposition of their dreams and memories with their present lives.

by Nalini Jones
- USA -

Tomorrow evening, I fly to India. My bag is mostly packed and is a source of consternation to my dog, a sensitive soul who fears imminent departure. For me it is a sort of icon, a reminder of dozens of other trips to see my family in India. I remember the care with which my mother packed, the strong sense that every available space must be used. We were trafficking in whatever was rare or difficult for our family to find, from our own school pictures to electronics, from the sort of nightgown my grandmother favored to the peanut butter we American kids liked to eat, even on our chapatis.

by Hayward Hawks Marcus
- USA -

For years, many people have painted Yoko Ono as the cold and controlling monster who broke up the Beatles, ran John Lennon’s life, and probably made the pop legend unhappy, even if he himself wasn’t aware of it. Allen Tannenbaum’s new book, a collection of photographs he took of the iconic couple, defies this persistent myth. Springing from many of Tannenbaum’s photos is undeniable visual evidence of John and Yoko truly relating to one another, in a deeply heartfelt and human way not often seen in photos of the famous. One cannot dispute the affection for each other lighting John and Yoko’s eyes when caught by Tannenbaum’s lens. In a starstruck world, where pretty celebs are often seen hanging on each other’s arms like sparkly but soulless Tiffany baubles, images such as these are both rare and refreshing.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

“Free Tibet” has become part of our lexicon due to countless bumper stickers adorning Volvos and fundraisers featuring Richard Gere. Despite the feminist persuasion of many Tibetan supporters, women in Tibet, particularly nuns, are rarely the focus of the movement. After seeing the film Daughters of Wisdom, which is currently on the film festival circuit, I was so inspired by Tibetan nuns and their spunk that I wondered why the “Free Tibet” movement doesn’t focus more on these incredible women.

• Ochi Drolma has been a nun since the age of 14 and is one of Kala Rongo’s founders who helped build its first temple structure. Photograph courtesy of BTG Productions. •

In Tibet, a man who devotes his life to religion is considered a source of pride for his family, but women are not encouraged to join a monastery, even if this is their only access to an education; rather, nuns are considered a burden to their families since they cannot help farm, will not have children who will help farm, nor can they be married off in exchange for livestock. The Kala Rongo Monastery is the only place in Tibet exclusively for nuns, many of whom join the monastery when they are children, to live freely amongst other women.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

I cross 42nd Street and walk up Times Square. It is a cold, windy, rainy day but I had promised to come. I continue past the army recruiting center and the police headquarters; police are out in force. I notice the New York Times building on the east side of the Square at 43rd. The huge Clear Channel signs, some of the most prominent of those that are bright day and night cast a glow that makes the square seem like daytime 24 hours a day while flashing images. Across the way are the Disney buildings and Reuters. I walk over to the Broadway side of the Square, go up to 44th and then to Shubert Alley and over to 45th, giving high fives and thumbs up to striking stage hands as they parade up and down between police barriers in front of the theaters.

• In the city that never sleeps, Time Square glows brightly just steps away from Broadway's theaters and striking stagehands. Photograph by
Nancy Van Ness. •

I head to a theater where, ironically, the show is about RCA’s theft of the rights to the invention of television from its inventor. It is never comfortable or convenient to man the picket lines and today is really nasty, but I had told the stage hands there I would be back today, so here I am.

I have come to see if I can get a true picture of what is going on. The endless media reports about the family from Seattle or somewhere else who had come to see The Grinch and how disappointed the children were because the stage hands had shut the show down had become intolerable to me.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

The story of a young and adrift guy finding his way in a confusing world has been done – too many times. Though I usually would not go see a film about this sort of fellow, I found myself intently watching a film about just that at the Mill Valley Film Festival. In part it was the name that intrigued me, Four Sheets to the Wind, but what really inspired me to attend the screening was when I read that it was a film about Seminole-Creek Indians by a Seminole-Creek Indian. A niche market if there ever was one.

• Cufe (Cody Lightning) and Cora Smallhill (Jeri Arredondo). Photograph by Chuck Foxen. •

by Jessica Mosby
USA

• Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis become the kings of corn in their new documentary by exploring the factors that have led to America's obesity epidemic. Photograph by Sam Cullman, courtesy of Mosaic Films Incorporated. •

After watching the documentary King Corn, which is currently playing in select cities, I was shocked to learn that corn is indeed wreaking havoc on America’s health. Gone are the days of idyllic Midwestern family farms growing tasty organic vegetables. Today large corporate farms grow genetically-modified corn that is later used to create the real criminal: high-fructose corn syrup.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

When you think of Afghanistan, smiling women in shift dresses attending college is not the first image that comes to mind. Decades of violence has devastated the country, leaving little more than bomb craters, crumbling buildings, families struggling to rebuild shattered lives and oppressed women who suffered at the hands of the Taliban. After watching years of newsreels depicting the country in such extreme peril, I cannot envision any other Afghanistan.

• Image courtesy of
Tora Bora Pictures •

In the summer of 2004, Wazhmah went to Afghanistan with her friend and camerawoman Kelly Dolak to make a documentary film about the modern-day situation in Afghanistan. It was Kelly’s first international trip. After filming for three months in a country Wazhmah hardly recognized, the filmmakers had more than enough footage for the serious, issue-focused documentary they planned to make. But in the editing room something happened: they realized that the real story their documentary needed to tell was Wazhmah’s - specifically the physical and emotional process of returning to and connecting with her homeland after more than 20 years of living in the United States.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa will have been infected with HIV/AIDS by the year 2010. Another 26 million children will be orphaned by the virus. The idea that two ordinary people could affect, much less save, the lives of hundreds of children dying of HIV/AIDS in Africa seems naively idealistic. For many of us, myself included, our main contribution to the epidemic in Africa is buying a Red iPod.

• Image courtesy of
Dream Out Loud Films •

What really resonates is the ability of the children, even those that are HIV-positive, to still have hope while living in a country that isn’t exactly blazing any trails in its response to the virus. There are countless scenes of kids dancing, singing, chasing chickens, and having fun. The Cloetes have not only built a safe haven for children to live, they have created a future for hundreds of children that would otherwise be dead or living in extreme poverty.

by Nancy Van Ness
USA

Forty Years Ago - I was flying. The other dancers and I, in lines, executed jumps across the studio, immediately turning and coming back - jumping over and over again - propelled by music from a pianist skilled at marking the rhythm for dancers. Though one of my feet touched the floor briefly at regular intervals, my consciousness was only of my soaring body. The physical work was very vigorous, but in that moment, it seemed effortless.

• Van Ness (right) performing. Photograph courtesy of American Creative Dance. •

•

That was exactly four decades ago, but that exhilarating experience and moment of encouragement from my teacher have sustained me many times in my life as an artist. When the money runs out, when I don't know where the next opportunity or the next gig is coming from, when I am looking for support for the company I founded and don't know what will happen, when life seems tenuous and precarious, I will suddenly find myself back in that light filled studio with the piano pounding - defying gravity - easily, joyously flying. Remembering that time, I know that no matter what, I must keep going. I also know that the art I make is good and that it is the most important thing in my life.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

In an admirable effort to contribute to the dialogue on what to do to save the planet, Leonardo DiCaprio has recently released a documentary film, The 11th Hour, which he produced and narrates. However, if you are already feeling overwhelmed by the world’s problems and suffering, you probably shouldn’t see it. It might push you over the proverbial edge as surely as if you were a polar bear slipping unexpectedly off a melting glacier!

• Image courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures •

One problem is The 11th Hour’s narrative structure, or lack thereof: it is painfully short on the pizzazz needed to take environmentalism from the grassroots of individual action to an international movement. Instead, one expert pops up briefly on the screen (name, title, and credentials are dutifully noted) to lecture for a few minutes while seated in front of a black wall, then the film cuts to the next expert, and then the next. Occasionally the monotony of “expert” footage is broken up by cutting to montages of very basic news reels set to a musical score; at other times, digitally drawn diagrams appear, imposed next to an expert’s head to illustrate their points.

by Michelle Chen
USA

• Detail of mural co-painted by the author. Photograph by Michelle Chen. •

A smile blooms on the round face of a middle-aged man as his home begins to glow. For the past three days, he has watched volunteers, including me, spread paint over the front wall, washing the drab cement slab in a torrent of rainbow stripes and geometric shapes.

We work and sweat contentedly, surrounded by children who color in purple bubbles alongside us and never tire of crying, ‘What’s your name?’ in English. The wall fills up: a lone crude window is subsumed in a human-sized purple triangle, and paralleled on the right by a pink triangle containing an imaginary window, which looks out on a landscape that one of the inhabitants instructively scribbled for us on paper. As I put the last dots of color on a scene of a pink sailboat drifting before a forest with snow-capped mountains, the man offers a gentle suggestion.

by Jessica Mosby
USA

• Image courtesy of IFC •

The documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback, which is currently playing across the United States, spends 85 minutes answering that very question. The film is pure humanitarian propaganda: a call-to-action to stop the killing and displacement of innocent people.

by Sarah McGowan
Content/Photo Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Recently relocated to Los Angeles, artists Kim Strouse and Joseph Michael Lopez are no strangers to the often aggressive nature of both “big city” life and life itself.

• Artists Kim Strouse
and Joseph Michael Lopez •

Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

• Emigrants preparing to depart from Hamburg. Photograph courtesy of Bildarchiv Denkmalschutzamt Hamburg •

The vast majority of them embarked from BallinStadt, a development conceived as a unique full-service departure point for emigrants. Encompassing 30 buildings, BallinStadt was so big that it was almost a small self-contained city itself, tucked within the bigger port of Hamburg. This innovative idea, perfectly suited to the times, originated with Alfred Ballin, general manager of the German shipping company HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft). What is left of BallinStadt is now located in the Veddel neighborhood of the Hamburg suburbs.

by Nancy Van Ness
USA

As director of a performing ensemble, one of the joys of my life is to support other artists and witness their work. There is nothing more satisfying than watching my young colleague Lena Gilbert unravel the knots of a creative problem.

• Anne Folke Wells and Lena Gilbert. Photograph courtesy of American Creative Dance. •

In sharp contrast, it breaks my heart to see talented people who could be artists fail to do their work because they aren’t confident enough of their own ability to create. Perhaps they have been taught to be too self-critical, as can happen, especially in academic circles. An emphasis on critical thinking can kill the drive to create freely. Sometimes I think the prevalence of university degrees in the arts hinders rather than helps in this matter! (However, I certainly don’t discount that aspiring artists without degrees also suffer inhibitions that hold them back.)

by Jessica Mosby
USA

• Image courtesy of Little Dust Productions •

Viewed as a music documentary, Gypsy Caravan is an invigorating film that shines a spotlight on the rich musical heritage of the Roma people. Organized by the World Music Institute, the film follows the six-week tour of the five Romani bands: Antonio el Pipa and his Flamenco Ensemble (Spain); Esma Redzepova and Ensemble Teodosievski (Macedonia); Maharaja (India); Fanfare Ciocarlia (Romania); and Taraf de Haïdouks (Romania). The most inspiring part of the film is seeing the performers interact on and off stage during the 18-show tour. Over the course of six weeks, people who don't all speak the same language; who live in different countries and socioeconomic classes; and who do not play music that would seemingly complement each other jam on stage and lovingly impersonate one another off stage! For musicians who have never played together before, the five bands have incredible synergy. In almost every group scene, someone is singing or playing an instrument. The bands literally jam their way through hotel rooms, airports, bus rides, cigarette breaks, and even a photo-op at Niagara Falls. One regret that most viewers of Gypsy Caravan will have is that they didn't get to see the tour live; while the documentary attempts to capture the energy, being there in person must have been an unparalleled experience!

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

Hopefully, readers may remember the piece I wrote for The WIP in May 2007 about prominent Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga, and the premiere of his most recent and controversial play yet, “The Good President.” The play had opened in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital and largest city, on April 12, to good crowds. While theatre buffs praised it as a highly entertaining play which was admirable for calling for the society to take the moral high ground, its plot certainly provoked serious debate.

To quote myself from the May article, the play kicks off with a scene in a police station where two police officers are assaulting the leader of an opposition party, acted by a look-alike of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s strongest opposition, Movement for Democratic Change.

In addition to beating him up, they search his pockets and steal all his money and leave him for dead. And it goes on from there.

by Nancy Van Ness
USA

• Van Ness in the film Tango Passion. Photo by Dick Brooks. •

Some people have said I don’t have the “perfect” body for a dancer. But others like the way I look. Either way, I don’t worry what people think of my body. In fact, I take issue with directors of dance companies and dance critics who discuss dancers’ bodies instead of their art. Even the highly respected Arlene Croce wrote unkindly about Gelsey Kirkland’s body. To me, that is not only a travesty, but it is what contributes to the eating disorders and self loathing so many dancers live with.

by D-L Nelson
France

France is a mecca for the large number of small-scale raw milk cheese producers that live and work in the region.

• Photograph by Jacob Rushing •

However, many cheeses from France never cross the Atlantic because they are made from raw milk and are then sold anywhere from the day of their fabrication to six weeks of age. This is the case with the majority of goat cheeses in Provence.
And yet, this great tradition of raw milk cheeses has come under attack as France seeks to comply with the new food regulations coming from Brussels and the European Union (EU).

by Rosemary Okello
Kenya

Walking through Mefa Creations, a local organization specializing in African designs and located along Ngong Road in Nairobi, you are greeted with bold African colors, local jewelry and clothing made from African fabrics.

• Evelyn Odongo with one of her designs. Photograph by Judy Waguma. •

Unlike before, when young people used to shun traditional African dress in favor of the latest western fashions, Kenyan youth are now embracing African design and culture with a renewed passion.

As she talks about her work and why she chose to focus on the African designs, Evelyn Odongo, who is the designer and the proprietor, says; “My designs appeal to the younger generation because they are blended with the latest trendy designs from the west. This makes the youth feel like they are still current with fashion and I find my designs also have an impact on their lifestyles too.”

From music to food and even fashion, young Kenyans are now concerned with looking like “real” Africans. Odongo says the younger generations now prefer natural hair, and at times in dreadlocks, with their African attire. They also accent their appearances with African beads, locally made slippers and bags. These young people seem to be experiencing a cultural renaissance sparked by fashion. They have even created their own langauge, called “sheng” – a combination of English, a bit of slang and Kiswahili.

by Daisy Tormé
USA/UK

Sunday the Concert for Diana was aired live on VH1 and yes, I found myself huddled in front of the TV watching the entire thing along with millions of other viewers. The concert was organized from the ground up by "the heir and the spare", Princes William and Harry, as a tribute to the life - rather than the death - of their late mother, Princess Diana, on what would have been her 46th birthday. (Thank you, VH1, for showing this live, un-edited and not chock full of commercials.)