Get Ready for a Very Special Journey.
AfroPop has delighted audiences for nine seasons. Season ten’s stories are just as beautifully and poignantly told, and remind us that not enough has changed for people of African descent globally. Black Public Media is committed to continuing to bring to the American public these stories and others that celebrate the art, culture and creativity people of African descent for another 10 years.
SEASON 11
About the host
Danielle Brooks is best known for her role as Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson in the Netflix Emmy-nominated series, Orange Is the New Black. For her performance, Brooks was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. She was the recipient of the Young Hollywood Award for Breakthrough Actress and has received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for Orange Is the New Black three years in a row.
Brooks made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival of The Color Purple. For her performance, she was nominated for a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award; she received a Grammy Award as well as a Theatre World Award for Significant Broadway Debut. Her recent work includes a leading role in the feature film Clemency, opposite Alfre Woodard, Wendell Pierce and Aldis Hodge that will premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival; a leading role in the independent feature All The Little Things We Kill; and a lead role in the feature Sadie, opposite Melanie Lynskey. She will also lend her talents to the upcoming TBS primetime animated series Close Enough and will begin work on a leading role in the film Desperados for Netflix and Good Universe that will film in the spring of 2019.
A champion of body inclusivity, Brooks has been the face of Christian Siriano and Lane Bryant, and has designed her own plus size clothing line. She is currently in the studio working on her debut EP.
Brooks is a native of South Carolina and a graduate of the Juilliard School.
Episodes
Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 21, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
The 11th season of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange opens with Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba!, director Mika Kaurismäki’s intimate look at the life and work of legendary South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. The new season of AfroPoP is hosted by Danielle Brooks, star of the hit Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. AfroPoP, the nation’s only public television series dedicated to contemporary stories of black life, culture and art from around the world, premieres on WORLD Channel at 8 p.m. ET (10 p.m. PT) on Monday, January 21 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The program is produced by Black Public Media (BPM) and co-presented to public television stations by series distributor American Public Television (APT).
Through archival performance footage, interviews with family members and former bandmates, and the words of the woman herself, Mama Africa presents viewers with an in-depth look at the musical career and political activism that helped make Miriam Makeba a global icon. The film takes audiences on a voyage through Makeba’s tumultuous and trailblazing life. It explores her early years living under apartheid in South Africa, her subsequent exile from her homeland for her anti-apartheid stance, as well as her tireless work for the arts and the homeland she loved. Mama Africa lays bare the trials, sacrifices and triumphs of the first global African musical superstar — including her marriages to musician Hugh Masekela and Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) — a woman whose songs of freedom for her countrymen made the world listen.
“I believe that having an outlet in which the many faces of the global black community can be seen is something that is vital today. AfroPoP really delivers and I am happy to be a part of telling these stories,” said actress Danielle Brooks. “Mama Africa, a film about a woman who so seamlessly bridged the worlds of art and activism, is a wonderful way to start the season.”
About the Filmmaker:
Mika Kaurismäki was born on September 21, 1955 in Orimattila, Finland as Mika Juhani Kaurismäki. He is a producer and director, known for Zombie and the Ghost Train (1991), Helsinki-Naples All Night Long (1987) and Three Wise Men (2008).
Mama Colonel
Premieres on WORLD Channel on Monday, January 28, 2019 with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
Colonel Honorine, more commonly known as "Mama Colonel", works for the Congolese police force and
heads the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. Having worked for 15
years in Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she learns she is transferred to
Kisangani. There, she finds herself faced with new challenges. Through the portrait of this extraordinarily
brave and tenacious woman, who fights for justice to be done, this film addresses the issue of violence
towards women and children in the DRC and the difficulty of overcoming the past war.
About the Filmmaker:
Dieudo Hamadi was born in 1984 in Kinsangani (Democratic Republic of Congo) and graduated from INSAS film school in Brussels. Since 2002, he has completed several documentary film workshops and video editing courses and has worked as an editor, producer, and assistant director, including for Suka!
Productions.
The Faces We Lost
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 4, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda claimed almost a million lives in just 100 days. The world stood by as men, women and children were being hacked to death by machetes. When the international community finally decided it was time to pay attention, it did so through memorable photographs of mutilated bodies and seas of nameless refugees. But many Rwandans remember their loved ones through images of life, not death: a passport or I.D. card photo, an unguarded snap taken in the garden or a group portrait from a wedding or a baptism. The surviving images are precious objects, with so many destroyed and lost forever. A lot of people have only a solitary image of their loved ones. Many have none at all.
The Faces We Lost follows nine Rwandans (survivors, relatives of victims and professional memory-makers), who guide us through their stories and share their experiences, remembrance and images. It is the first documentary to explore the many functions of these priceless photographs, and one of the few films to engage with Rwandans as users of images, rather than simply their subjects. These deeply personal stories are all marked by the terrible experience the genocide and its legacy have left on their owners. Each is unique to the person who tells it. But The Faces We Lost also explores the professional aspect of memory-making in Rwanda: The Genocide Archive (which holds thousands of original images donated by the victims’ relatives) and the Kigali Genocide Memorial (where many of the photographs are on public display). As the private and the public meet and as each person recounts their relationship with the photographs they have or they wish they had, The Faces We Lost moves to paint a complex memorial landscape of contemporary Rwanda.
About the Filmmaker:
Piotr Cieplak is a director and writer, Piotr has worked on projects in Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. He is the director of Memory Places (UK, 2009) – screened at Cambridge Film Festival, Thinking Futures Festival (Bristol, UK) and Cambridge African Film Festival – and Memory Cards (UK, 2015) – screened at Rwanda Film Festival, Africa-in-Motion (Edinburgh), Montecatini International Short Film Festival (Italy) and Afrykamera (Warsaw). Memory Cards won the Best Polish Lens Award at Afrykamera 2016. Piotr has also written a book on Rwanda entitled: Death, Image, Memory: the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath in photography and documentary film (Palgrave, 2017). Piotr has taught film at the University of Cambridge, SOAS and Brunel University London. He is currently a lecturer in filmmaking at the University of Sussex. He has written extensively about Rwanda, Africa, film and photography and served as a festival jury member. The Faces We Lost is part of a bigger research project entitled: ‘Personal archives of trauma and violence. Image and memory in the digital age – Argentina and Rwanda.’ The project is funded by The British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and a BRIEF Award.
While I Breathe, I Hope
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 11, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
What does it mean to be young, Black, and Democrat in the South? "While I Breathe, I Hope" unravels this question through the experiences of South Carolina politician Bakari Sellers. The film follows Sellers on his 2014 bid for Lt. Governor, through the Charleston Shootings in 2015, and to the present as he takes on a national role on CNN and considers his future in Trump's America.
About the Filmmaker:
Emily Harrold is a documentary filmmaker from Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her films have screened at festivals including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Telluride Film Festival. Harrold produced the documentary feature, Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators, which premiered at the LA Film Festival in 2017 and won the Documentary Audience Award at the 2017 Nantucket Film Festival. The film is distributed by the Orchard. Harrold collaborated with Tribeca Digital Studios to produce and direct a short documentary film, La Cocinera, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. The film has over 100,000 views online. Harrold’s film Reporting on The Times: The New York Times and The Holocaust received a Student Directors Guild of America Award, was a Documentary Finalist in the 2012 Student Academy Awards, and received a Special Jury Mention from the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The film opened theatrically in San Francisco, California and is distributed by Filmakers Library. Harrold has worked for Zero Point Zero, Radical Media, Partisan Pictures, BBC2, Gigantic Pictures, The Futuro Media Group, and Insignia Films. Her recent credits include CNN’s The End: The Last Days of the Obama White House, PBS’s The White House: Inside Story, and PBS’s America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa. Harrold is a graduate of New York University, where she earned honors majoring in Film Production and US History.
AfroPop Shorts Program: black enuf*
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 18, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
A queer oddball seeks approval from Black peers despite a serious lack of Hip-Hop credentials. This short animated documentary takes you on a quest for belonging. black enuf* explores the expanding
black identity. This animated documentary takes a playful approach to heavier questions of race, difference, and self-acceptance. My animated documentary, black enuf*, examines the expanding black identity through a personal journey. The film interweaves stories from my great grandmother’s autobiography, interviews of family & friends, and my hand-drawn memories. Starting off as a queer oddball in a white world, I navigate my path to self-confidence. My tongue-and-cheek humor makes such a heavy topic easier to digest. The visuals mix Monty Python style cut outs, infographics, watercolor, and a variety of illustrative styles.
About the Filmmaker:
Carrie Hawks harnesses the magic of animation to tell stories. The artist works in a variety of medium including drawing, doll-making, and performance. Their work addresses gender, sexuality, and race. They have shown in New York, Atlanta, Cape Town, Toronto, and Tokyo. They hold a BA in Art History & Visual Arts from Barnard College and a BFA in Graphic Design from Georgia State University. Their first documentary, Delilah, won the Best Experimental Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival (2012). Their films have screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia, PA), CinemAfrica (Stockholm). The Jerome Foundation gave generous funding to black enuf* They have performed with Black Women Artist for Black Lives Matter, and participated in the Set on Freedom Artist Residency at the Queens Museum.
AfroPop Shorts Program: Swimmin' Lesson
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 18, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT withsame-day streaming on multiple platforms
Poetry and powerful acting are the foundations of this heartbreaking film in which a young father recalls the fate of his son during Hurricane Katrina.
About the Directors:
Born in Los Angeles and raised on the South side of Chicago, Shahari Moore brings a unique perspective to storytelling. She is the editor of ESSENCE BESTSELLER, Violets. Her short story titled, Liberation appears in Spaces Between Us, published by Third World Press. She is a recent graduate of Chicago State University, where she earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Shahari is a recipient of the Kanye’ West scholarship for emerging writers , and an alumna of the Nickelodeon Writers Lab at the American Black Film Festival. Her research and essays led to land-marking the last standing home of renowned author Richard Wright in Chicago. In 2010 she was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study slavery and culture on the islands of Ossabaw and Sapelo off the coast of Georgia. As a finalist for the Page International Screenwriting Award for her script, The Smokey Robinson Story, Shahari was recruited by producer, Trudy Hardin to write, The Law of Love. Shahari received the Echoes of Excellence Award for Women in the Arts in 2010. She currently teaches African American History and Culture with the Cosby Screenwriting Fellowship at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Christine List is a Chicago-based screenwriter and director. Her awards include Best Video at the Chicago Latino International Film Festival, Best Screenplay from the San Diego International Children’s Film Festival and the Audience Choice Award from the Black Harvest Film Festival. List’s films have been screened at US and international venues including the American Film Institute International Video Festival, the Cannes International Short Film Corner, and the Havana International Film Festival. List is currently directing a feature-length documentary on the African heritage of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and developing a television pilot with her writing partner Christine Houston, creator of the NBC sitcom “227.” List heads the program in Communications, Media Arts & Theatre at Chicago State University.
AfroPop Shorts Program: Dressed Like Kings
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 18, 2019 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT with same-day streaming on multiple platforms
An exciting examination of the male oswenka pageant in South Africa on the ten-year anniversary of
the abolishment of apartheid.
About the Filmmaker:
Stacey L. Holman is a Harlem based independent producer/director. She’s a graduate of Dillard University in the Big Easy and Tisch School of the Arts in the Big Apple. Currently she’s completing her documentary, Dressed Like Kings, shot in South Africa, on a group of fashionable Zulu men. Her portfolio includes working as Line Producer for the Peabody Award-winning Freedom Summer, Associate Producer for the Emmy Award-winning Freedom Riders and Jesse Owens, and Co-Producer for Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band. In addition, Stacey was a Consultant with the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms. She currently teaches new generation of filmmakers as an Adjunct Professor at The City College of New York.
Season 10
Episodes
Black Panther Woman
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 15, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Black Panther Woman details the journey of Marlene Cummins, a member of the Australian Black Panther Party. Through Marlene’s tale, audiences become privy to the fascinating yet little-known story of the indigenous Australian struggle for equality and how young people in that nation formed a Black Panther Party chapter in the 1970s. Interwoven with her memories of the Party and activism, Marlene also details her own struggle with addiction, the refuge she found in the arts and her own quest to fight for women’s rights within the Black Panther Party.
Awards:
Jury Special Prize Festival du Film Océanien (FIFO) 2015 International Indigenous Award Wairoa Maori Film Festival, 2015
About the Filmmaker:
Rachel Perkins’ Australian Aboriginal heritage has informed her entire filmmaking career. She founded Australia’s premier Indigenous production company, Blackfella Films, in 1992. She has directed four feature films: Jasper Jones, Radiance, One Night the Moon (which received five Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards), and the musical Bran Nue Dae, which screened at the Sundance, Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals. She received the 2015 Australian Directors Guild (ADG) Award for Best Direction in a TV Drama Series for Redfern Now: Promise Me. Perkins also wrote, directed and co-produced the multiple awardwinning documentary series First Australians (2009).
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
AfroPop Shorts: Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 22, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt is an intimate portrait of a self-taught African-American visual artist and musical performer from Birmingham, Alabama. After a childhood beating by schoolmasters left him immobilized, Lonnie began creating when his mother gave him “art materials” to keep him busy. Influenced by his grandfather who created things out of found objects, Lonnie saw that he could use any type of material as a source for making beauty in a cruel world. An observed portrait, complimented by an intimate interview with the artist, Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt documents a man who sees beauty in what others step on, step over, and leave behind.
About the Filmmaker:
Marco Williams is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and professor of film production. He has been nominated three times for the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize. For over thirty years, Williams has made films that look at injustice and America, usually through the lens of race. Williams received a B.A. from Harvard University, a Master of Arts degree from UCLA in Afro-American Studies and a Master of Fine Arts also from UCLA in their Producer’s Program. His films include Tell Them We are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (co-directed with Stanley Nelson), MLK BLVD: The Concrete Dream, Freedom Summer, The Black Fives, Inside the New Black Panthers and From Harlem to Harvard.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
AfroPop Shorts: Kojo
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 22, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Kojo tells the incredible story of Kojo Odu Roney, a twelve-year-old drumming prodigy. In Michael Fequiere’s short documentary, Kojo speaks candidly on his talent, his tireless work ethic, the current state of jazz music, learning from his father and mentor, jazz saxophonist Antoine Roney, and much more.
About the Filmmaker:
Michael Fequiere is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who received his BFA from City College of New York in Video Production. His thesis film, Faux Pas (2009), won best directing and best editing at the CCNY student film festival and also screened at the Short Film Corner in Cannes and at the Big Apple Film Festival. Fequiere’s filmography also includes his 2011 sci-fi short and the short documentary Replace Clothes with Paint, a provocative film on Austrian body painter Neil Curtis which screened at the L.E.S. Film Festival.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
AfroPop Shorts: He Who Dances on Wood
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 22, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Every day Fred Nelson carries a weathered board into Prospect Park. He places it on the ground in a tunnel beneath a pedestrian bridge, laces up his tap shoes and begins to dance. The rhythm of his steps reverberates across the curved walls of the tunnel and radiates out into the world. This is Fred’s daily prayer. In He Who Dances on Wood, we come to see that Fred dances to forge a divine connection with the natural world, to absorb the rhythm in all things and to have “a conversation with God.” And in watching him dance, we join him on his daily journey to find the secret joy and beauty of life in an old piece of wood.
Awards:
Best International Documentary Award, Edmonton International Film Festival 2017
About the Filmmaker:
Jessica Beshir is a Mexican-Ethiopian writer and director. She made her directorial debut with her short film Hairat, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film and has won several awards. Her second short film He Who Dances on Wood premiered at the 2017 Hot Docs Film festival and recently directed Heroin, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film festival. She is currently developing her first feature film.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
Between Two Shores
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, January 29, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Between 2 Shores presents the stories of two women, two lives tormented, between two shores. Johanna and Cristina, both natives of the Dominican Republic, left their homeland in search of better lives in Guadeloupe. Though they found greater opportunities in the French island, they were forced to leave their children behind. Though they have lived in Guadeloupe for years, both women are caught between the two nations: struggling to raise their younger Guadeloupe-born children in their new homeland while also fighting to bring the children they left behind in the Dominican Republic over to Guadeloupe through the process of family reunification. Through the stories of Johanna and Cristina, Between 2 Shores offers viewers a poignant look at the lengths families will go to stay together and at the daily battles faced by many immigrants.
About the Filmmaker:
Mariette Monpierre began her career as a producer for BBDO New York, producing commercials for companies including Pepsi- Cola, Frito-Lay, Visa and Fed Ex. Her artistic portfolio also includes features films, documentaries, short films, music videos and podcasts. As a filmmaker, her filmography includes Knowledge is Power, a 1998 documentary commissioned by the New York City Health Department to raise HIV/AIDS awareness; the 2002 documentary Sweet Mickey for President, which won Best Documentary at the Reel Sisters Film Festival in New York; and her short film Rendez-Vous, which was nominated for the Djibril Diop Mambety Award in partnership with the Directors Fortnight in Cannes. Monpierre’s first feature length film Elza (Le Bonheur d’Elza) was a New York Times’ Critics Pick and won several awards including the 2012 BAFTA Choice Award and the Paul Robeson Award for Best Film of the Diaspora at FESPACO 2013.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
Ten Days in Africa
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 5, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Ten Days in Africa is an insightful and humorous look at the filmmaker’s journey to West Africa. Allen, an African-American, travels to three countries—Ghana, Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire—with a group of other African-Americans seeking to learn more about Africa and go beyond the stereotypes about the continent, exploring the differences and similarities between Africans and African-Americans along the way.
About the Director:
Regi Allen is an Emmy® award-winning editor, producer and media design artist, who is currently a senior editor at Discovery Communications. His prior works include Planet Brooklyn, An Acid Jazz Film for PBS’s Reel New York Film Series; he won Best Show Award, from Washington D.C.’s Rosebud Foundation for his work on the video art-poetry documentary Voices Against Violence (1994). His collaboration on Sandy Wilson’s So Many Things To Consider and Jane Wagner’s Girls Like Us, were both selections of the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Series. Girls Like Us won Best Short in 1996. His “art documentary,” tendaysinafrica (2002), has won many awards. Regi has edited and produced various works and specials for MTV, Nickelodeon, ABC, HBO, USA Networks, SyFy, Showtime, TV Land, American Movie Classics (AMC) and Black Entertainment Television (BET). He received an EMMY Award for editing and multi-camera editing for Children’s Television Workshop’s Sesame Street and was nominated for another while at ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings/The Century with Peter Jennings.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film
Fatal Assistance
Premieres on WORLD Channel Monday, February 12, 2018 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT
Fatal Assistance is a riveting and insightful documentary by award-winning filmmaker Raoul Peck (Oscar nominee for I Am Not Your Negro) which takes viewers on a two-year journey exploring the challenging, contradictory, and colossal rebuilding efforts in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Probing the roles of residents, local and international politicians, international aid organizations, NGOs, and more, Fatal Assistance dives headlong into the complexity of the reconstruction process and the impact of worldwide humanitarian and development aid, which while well-meaning, all too often results in little progress for those most in need. Offering a close examination of the missteps made in Haiti after the earthquake, Fatal Assistanceprovides audiences with a scathing indictment and sobering reality on the global aid policies that failed Haiti in the earthquake’s aftermath.
About the Filmmaker:
Born in Haiti, Raoul Peck grew up in Congo, France, Germany and the United States. His complex body of work includes films The Man by the Shore (Competition Cannes 1993); Lumumba (Director’s Fortnight, Cannes 2000, also bought and aired by HBO). He directed and produced Sometimes in April for HBO (Berlinale 2005); Moloch Tropical (Toronto 2009, Berlin 2010); and Murder in Pacot (Toronto 2014, Berlin 2015). His documentary on American author James Baldwin I Am Not Your Negrowas nominated for the Best Documentary Academy Award in 2017. He served as jury member at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, is presently chairman of the National French film school La Femis and is the subject of numerous retrospectives worldwide. In 2001, the Human Rights Watch Organization awarded him with the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award. His latest feature The Young Karl Marx was released in France in September 2017, and will open in the United States in February 2018.
Filmmaker Chat
Watch the film