------- Original Message -------- Subject: film on African alphabets Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:01:02 -0500 From: Jeremy Rich, Middle Tennessee State University <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: H-NET List for African History and Culture <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Friday, 19 October 2007 From: Don Osborn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- FYI, just saw this in a brochure for First Run / Icarus Films (distributed in materials for participants at the ASA conf.) - it is also on the web at <http://www.frif.com/new2005/brul.html>http://www.frif.com/new2005/brul.html. Hadn't heard of this before, but it is another example of Africa as a continent of many alphabets: "Bruly Boubaré's Alphabet" A film by Nurith Aviv In n the 1950's, Ivory Coast artist Frederic Bruly Bouabré created several hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly. Although some 600,000 Bétés live in the Ivory Coast, their language is not taught in schools, and all education is conducted in French. Bouabré's 400 pictograms, in various combinations, provide a playful yet tangible method of instruction, as demonstrated in BRULY BOUABRE'S ALPHABET. As the now elderly Bouabré explains, his aim was to "form a specific African writing from scenes of human life." Today a small number of people continue to use Bruly's alphabet, and museums around the world have exhibited his drawings. "[Bouabré] deciphers the world as a visual text, creating a comprehensive guide to everything and everyone. Over decades Bouabre created a visual manuscript, an art manifesto, of life, death and everything; a metaphysically sympathetic curation of the entire modern world as it relates to our needs [and manipulated our superstitions and our prejudices, re-categorizing our world to defy them." - BBC "[Bouabré's work] reveals the universal need to make some kind of sense of the confusions of contemporary politics and culture. But while... the symbols are bursting with data, interpretations are left entirely to the viewer. In the end, these herculean efforts to create order only confirm the elusiveness of genuine knowledge or certainty." - Art in America ** 2006 Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival ** 2005 African Studies Association Film Festival ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ 17 minutes / color Release Date: 2005 Copyright Date: 2005 Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
