National Geographic Magazine covers display – photo by flickr user greyloch

In the world of media, the line in the sand between commercial and nonprofit has long been getting washed away, but this past month’s announcements leave behind even less of a trace. First came the news that premium cable channel HBO had struck a deal with the nonprofit Sesame Workshop to bring first-run episodes of “Sesame Street” exclusively to its network and streaming outlets starting in the fall. The deal will allow Sesame Street to double the number of episodes it produces, and alleviates a number of financial pressures. Although new episodes will eventually be available on (free) PBS–the show’s home for the last 45 years–the news raised some troubling questions about mission and access. Lest you think of this as a simple story of a media empire benefiting from the public purse, though, know that Denzel Washington also plans to produce adaptations of all ten of esteemed playwright August Wilson’s works for the network, one per year for the next decade.

As if that weren’t enough, after 127 years, the National Geographic Society, “one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world,” has sold a 73% stake in its iconic magazine and other media assets to a Murdoch-headed partnership in exchange for $725 million. (The relationship is not a new one: the society first partnered with Fox in 1997 to launch the National Geographic cable channel.) Many were dismayed by the news, citing concerns about the “Foxification” of National Geographic, and the effect of the partnership on the magazine’s standards of reporting. Others are more positive: the new joint venture (and a newly bolstered endowment) will give the National Geographic Society the “scale and reach to continue to fulfill [its] mission long into the future,” and allow it to double spending on research, science and other projects.

Cultural Colonialism or Sound Business Strategy? Vivendi to Open Venues in Africa. This month, French media group Vivendi announced it will build ten performance venues in Africa to “enhance access to culture and entertainment in countries frequently lacking such facilities.” The venues will be built in Cotonou (Benin), Brazzaville (Congo), Conakry (Guinea), Dakar (Senegal) and other locations to be determined, and will operate under the name CanalOlympia. These venues, which will serve a concert halls, theaters and cinemas all-in-one, are part of Vivendi’s strategy to reinforce the Group’s presence in high-growth markets, where an emerging middle class is consuming more content. They will also include recording studios and a rehearsal rooms, in support of Vivendi’s strategy of identifying and supporting new talent (key to its growth in international markets,) and will form a network of sites for the organization of tours by Island Africa, an initiative of Universal Music Group.

LA Philharmonic Goes Virtual (Reality). Free concerts in the park. HD screenings in movie theaters . Classical music institutions have long played with innovative and accessible ways to take their performances out of the concert hall and into the community. This month, the venerable Los Angeles Philharmonic took it to the next level: with artistic director Gustavo Dudamel at the helm, the orchestra is going on a virtual reality tour. A bright yellow van, nicknamed (of course) VAN Beethoven and outfitted with Oculus virtual reality goggles, Samsung headsets and half-dozen seats from the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is hitting the road for five weeks, stopping at county fairs, street food festivals, and everywhere in between. Individuals will be invited in to experience four minutes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, complete with Fantasia-like visual effects. For those already in on the VR game, you can watch it at home.

The Islamic State vs Digital Archaeology. In March, the Islamic State’s seemingly endless destruction of Mideast antiquities made our roundup of top arts stories. The destruction has continued in recent months, and if anything, is accelerating. In May, ISIS militants occupied the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra–a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In June, they blew up a tomb. In July, they attacked a dozen ancient statues. In August, they leveled two more temples of great cultural significance (and beheaded an expert who was fighting to protect the city’s relics.) As this newsroom “goes to print,” news arrives that the 1,800 year old Arch of Triumph is the latest cultural casualty. The situation is dire, and archaeologists have been galvanized into action, racing to capture Middle East’s historical sites with digital renderings before they’re destroyed. In the coming months, the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture between Oxford and Harvard universities, plans to distribute thousands of low-cost, high-quality 3D cameras across the Middle East with the help of UNESCO and New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. These cameras will capture 3D renderings of a (for now secret) list of ancient sites and artifacts for preservation and, ultimately, recreation.

Despite Changes at the Helm, Future of Australia Arts Council Remains in Question. Australia made Createquity headlines in May with the news that Arts Minister George Brandis had diverted a whopping $104.8 million from the arts council budget to a newly established policy, the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, managed by his own ministry. The move made many enemies of the Arts Minister among Australia’s cultural sector. This month, the sector celebrated the news that Brandis had been removed from his post. Unfortunately, the celebrations may be premature: although the $104.8 million has not yet been spent, incoming Arts Minister Mitch Fifield has indicated for now that he is planning to move ahead with Brandis’s agenda.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Sharon Alpert, currently the Vice President of and Strategic Initiatives at the Surdna Foundation, has been appointed president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She will be the foundation’s fourth president and first female leader.
• Music coverage at metropolitan dailies took a hit in September: Jim Farber was let go from the Daily News (New York) where he’d been writing since 1990s; longtime music writer Brian Mansfield left USA Today; and the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune dissolved its music department in its entirety.
• H.E. Shaikha Haya bint Mohammad Al-Khalifa has joined the Culture & Archaeology Authority of Bahrain as its new director of Culture & Arts, Dawa Gyeltshen was formally appointed the Cultural Affairs Minister of Bhutan, and Trinidad and Tobago has named Dr. Nyan Gadsby Dolly its new Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts.
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services is hiring a Program Analyst. Posted September 14; closing date October 9.
• Grantmakers in the Arts invites consulting firms/individuals through an RFP process to submit a proposal to conduct an audit of GIA with respect to the organization’s goal of racial equity in arts philanthropy. Posted September 22; closing date October 26.
• The Walton Family Foundation seeks an Arts and Culture Program Officer for its Region Program. Closing date October 31.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A new survey conducted by the CECP and Conference Board finds that corporate giving is, and is expected to remain, stable. On the other hand, a report from the consulting group Camber Collective suggests that better meeting donors’ needs and preferences could open up access to quite a bit of additional giving.
• A couple of studies from this past month look into the question of gender gaps. One study suggests that disparity stems from a reflexive tendency to link masculinity & creativity, implying that similar work by women will be deemed less creative simply by being executed by women. The second suggests that the gender imbalance among the highest level positions in some cases may in part be the result of differences in lifestyle preference.
• Recently released research suggests that television has the potential to be used in teaching tolerance, increasing political tolerance, and eliminating racism, sexism, and heterosexism.
• Several studies out of the UK this month bear mention. One suggests that arts participation is strongly correlated not with class, but with education, which paints a slightly different picture from Createquity’s previous research on the topic. A second, from the UK Office for National Statistics has crunched the numbers and found that net financial wealth does correlate with happiness quite well, thank you. The third, a survey of theater goers in the UK reveals that recognizable cast members is the biggest driver of ticket sales. And on the topic of theater, a report published by the Creative Industries Federation suggests that theaters and performing arts organizations are markedly less ethnically diverse than other creative industries.
• Two new studies released this month suggest that music does in fact have the power to influence us, though not always in a good way.
• A survey of social media use in USA published this month shows that Facebook and Twitter usage has plateaued, while Instagram and Pinterest users have doubled.

An image from the 2009 FESPACO Opening Ceremony. Photo by Suzy Robins.

This year my mother made her triumphant return to FESPACO, Africa’s premier film festival held bi-annually and always in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou. She was back, this time with my father and I in tow, both of us galvanized by six long years of my mother recounting anecdotes from her last trip.  There was the Ouaga restaurant run by nuns who sang Ave Maria in an infamously off-kilter warble while carving your chicken. The late nights eating sticky fried plantain rolled in dried pepper at roadside jazz bars where one inevitably ran into several of the young bohemian American artists who had sunk all of their savings into a plane ticket to Ouaga and a pass to FESPACO and had no place to stay, knew not even enough to never order a drink with ice in West Africa, let alone the bribes, flattery and subtle threats inherent to any major third-world event. Beyond anything, there were the films, that, while, in the not-quite-familiar-enough-to-any-in-our-family language of French, were staggering.

I, for one, was excited. I was still secondhand high off the daily missives we’d received from my sister earlier that winter when she was a volunteer at the Sundance Film Festival. She had gotten close enough to Alexander Skarsgard to tell him she loved him and he’d giggled in response. She had ushered Will Smith and his son to their seats at a screening, wearing the special occasion calf-length faux-fur coat we’d bought her at a Burlington Coat Factory in Houston a month before.

Though I immersed myself in thoughts of a similar experience during the 15-hour car ride from my home in Accra to Ouagadougou, I don’t know who I thought I’d run into. After four years of schooling in the U.S. and one year of aimless wandering on a leave of absence from my small, private, liberal arts college, I am more ugly American than Ghanaian. And though I used to be an expert on the African movie channel offered on our satellite service and its tawdry Nigerian titles all inexplicably named after American celebrities, (Sharon Stone, Beyonce 2: The President’s Daughter), I could no longer remember any of the stars’ names, and doubted this was the caliber of movie to be screened at the festival anyway.

Ouagadougou was a feast for the eyes, endless aesthetic pleasure with its wide roads and modern geometric buildings somehow conveying Arab, somehow conveying, we hold history very close to ourselves here. More beautiful was FESPACO’s opening ceremony, which included a cultural display so wonderfully bonkers that it almost defies description. My most lasting memory is of 15-foot tall puppets of women in traditional Burkinabe clothing salsa dancing with their partners. These puppets were the women of the festival writ large.

There was a huge emphasis on women at FESPACO, something we were reminded of by the organizers repeatedly. That, this year, the guest of honor was the First Lady of Gabon and the film that was to officially open the festival was written, directed by and starring the same Algerian woman. The constant mention seemed—by turns—defensive, like an apology for an offense that would go otherwise unrecognized and aggressive, when it was regularly mentioned that, at this edition of FESPACO, every jury was chaired by a woman, unlike at Sundance, where not a single jury was.

The feminist slant went down a treat for most of the audience, especially with the white European families who called Ouaga home and the middle-aged black American women who collectively made up about 20% of the FESPACO attendees. The rest of the audience was mostly local Burkinabes as well as African filmmakers and filmgoers from all over the continent. There was also a contingent of the new phenomenon of predominantly white American exchange students sweating through their batik skirts and tank-tops who I recognized from their do-gooder ilk in Accra. They all looked vaguely pleased or indifferent; perhaps their French did not quite stretch to a discussion of gender politics.

My reaction had the two sides of myself, African and American, warring; I didn’t know whether to be proud that so many women were given a position of power at such a uniquely African event or shocked that so few women were at its American equivalent. It appeared miraculous to me that there would be such a vigorous debate on the empowerment of women in this city that seemed to exist nowhere, that rose out of the sand. But from the very beginning I had been impressed by the progressiveness of FESPACO and of Ouaga in general.

Ouagadougou had instantly seemed to me to be a land of women. There were thousands of them, mostly on motorbikes, their purses dangling from their wrists as they revved the puttering machines, their headscarves trailing in the wind, the kitten heels of their shoes stained red by the persistent desert dust. There was something feminine about this city. To my dreamy and romantic mind, it seemed, like an enigmatic woman, to hold some secret loosely in its grasp. I thought of the women on motorbikes, a sight I had never seen in Accra and then I thought of my sister, sharing a 3 bedroom condo with seven strangers in order to afford her volunteer position at Sundance; who’s empowered now?

I knew enough about Sundance to know that its leaders were not ignorant of the shocking gender gap between men and women in the film world; at the 2013 festival they released a study written in conjunction with Women in Film LA that examined the role of women in Sundance’s own history. This effort is admirable, but, in the face of what FESPACO accomplished, seven juries with seven female chairpersons, it seemed overly academic, especially considering that there were fewer female jurors at Sundance 2013 than in years past. It also seemed more thoughtful than FESPACO’s approach to throw as many women as possible into the mix after a 44-year history of no female chairpersons. I couldn’t help but wonder: how much of this celebration of the feminine was posturing?

This question was answered at the festival’s first screening, a film named Yema. Written, directed and starring Djamila Sahraoui, the movie opens with a woman, Ouardia, preparing the body of her son for burial and then digging his grave, placing him to rest despite her advanced age. This son is hinted to have been killed by his brother Ali who is the leader of an armed Islamic group. Ouardia is torn between her inherent love for Ali and her intuition that he is responsible for the death of his own brother. She lives completely isolated at the top of a rocky outcropping in rural Algeria, with only a one-armed shepherd who tends his flocks on her land for company. Ouardia spends most of her time tending to her garden, which becomes a metaphor for her strength, losing herself in heavy manual labor.

Yema is nothing if not a celebration of women, firstly because Djamila Sahraoui performed every major role possible in the creation of the film. But beyond that there is Ouardia, a woman put in position of choosing between the love of her two children, one already gone, the other being taken away by his own extremism, lost for all essential purposes. It is an excellent film, mostly silent, and mainly portrays Ouardia engaged in intensely physical acts-digging through the hard ground to create a grave for her son, pulling heavy buckets of water up from the simple well on her grounds to water her garden. The landscape becomes a character of its own. Harsh and unforgiving, it is still strikingly beautiful, much like Ouardia.

After seeing Yema, I understood that FESPACO’s obsession was not necessarily just with the feminine but with women like Djamila Sahroui, who is endemic of the kind of artist that makes it in Africa. At FESPACO there was a whole slate of ambitious female filmmakers, Africans, many of whom have lived abroad at some point, but realize the value of coming in on the ground floor of a cultural evolution that is sweeping developing African nations. For the first time, Africa has reached a level of sustainability that breeds homegrown artists, and not in a Beyonce & Rihanna 2 type of way.

Where it once was that every African filmmaker had to take the beauty of their lush heritage abroad to get their story told, now the continent is attracting its artistic talent back-African artisans are producing work in Africa for a global audience. That the selection of these artists at FESPACO was overwhelmingly female is fitting. Women have long been the gatekeepers of African history. For all the flexing and posturing, the tangible swag of the African male, African society is matriarchal. This new crop of female African artists are inheriting their traditional role as historian but giving it a modern twist, giving voice to the role of women in a continent that is rapidly developing, caught somewhere between third world depression and bourgeois ambition.

I saw then what FESPACO had that Sundance could not-an intersection between tradition and opportune timing. Africa and, to some extent, FESPACO are still deciding who they want to be. There’s a whole legion of female African artists who are not willing to step back and see themselves written out of those plans.

As the lights came up on Yema, I thought back to the drive to Ouaga and a teenaged boy I’d seen standing by the side of the road wearing a 3x ‘Say Neigh to Ketamine’ t-shirt and red snapback hat stitched with the initials T.I.N.A., This Is New Africa. Though he may not have known it, the boy in the red cap on the side of the road between Accra and Ouaga now seemed to be a seer of some kind. He was right: FESPACO was new Africa.