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Showing posts from November, 2017

Keteke - shaping Ghanaian film excellence

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Combine love, a bit of humour, 80s nostalgia and a pertinent social message about infrastructure underdevelopment and you get  Keteke.  Keteke , which means train in Akan, charts the escapades of heavily pregnant Atswei (played by Lydia Forson) and her husband Boi (Adjetey Anang) who are hell bent on getting to Atswei's village to give birth. But they miss the weekly train which forces them on an adventure filled with comic and nail-biting moments.  Debut This Ghanaian film was first screened in March 2017 in Accra and had its European debut at the London  Film Africa  festival in October to rave reviews. image sourced from zionflex.com Written, produced AND directed by relative newbie Peter Sedufia,  Keteke  takes a serious look at Ghana's failing train system and gives a human face to the plight of ordinary Ghanaians who have no choice but to use it. The idea behind the film came from Sedufia's contrasting experiences of accessing transport as an adult v

Why separating sexual harassment and rape is dangerous

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As the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal continues to expose more public figures in and outside the film industry, and gives a lifeline to survivors courageous enough to speak out - I thought it telling how some sections of the public have been tripping over themselves to denounce any sort of link between inappropriate sexual behaviour and rape. I say this because I know people who have been victims of both, and in most cases it was these ‘innocuous’ acts of knee-touching that eventually escalated into something more serious. Mix that together with perpetrators being in positions of power, a culture where vocalising victims’ concerns are ridiculed/ ignored or vilified, then it stands to reason that some will doubt their intuition and risk exposure to further abuse. Harassment and rape I keep hearing that the conflation of inappropriate behaviour with rape devalues the latter – as if both acts were somehow separate.  This mindset speaks to tho