Category Archives: Ginger Tea Sessions
… makes me dream tall and feel in on things.
… speaking of great people with exciting mind: two notes.
1. Professor Guno Jones
Last Friday professor Guno Jones spoke of hope, protests, refusal and what he often refers to as citizenship violence. He did so for a most historic moment: his inaugural lecture as professor holding the Anton de Kom Chair of Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU). The first professor to do so. Equally important: As someone who continuously gives proper credits to the activists and other radical thinkers whose work is fundamental for the critical knowledge production within Dutch academia. And, as someone who smashes these structural practices of erasing or under-crediting the work of Afro-Surinamese scholars of his generation and over.
As we speak, I’m trying to find the right words to properly describe the absolute amazingness of last week’s event. While searching, I’d like to share some of his articles and essays that can be read online. For free:
– Citizenship Violence and the Afterlives of Dutch Colonialism: Re-reading Anton de Kom, published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
– Plantation Logics, Citizenship Violence and the Necessity of Slowing Down.
And, if you were also at the VU last week… be sure to speak on it. Share some of your notes. Really, we are our own best thing.
2. Upcoming event: lynnée denise’s Sound System Ecologies with Anesu Chigariro (Zimbabwe), Torkwase Dyson (US) at Bijlmer Parktheater.
On Wednesday July 10, DJ lynnée denise is bringing Sound System Ecologies to the Bijlmer, a place where many of Amsterdam’s sharpest listeners have tuned their ears. In collaboration with Bijlmer Parktheater’s GembertheeSessies, denise is curating a program focused on intimate conversations and reflections on creative processes and practices.Sound System Ecologies is concerned with questions pertaining the intersections of music, enslavement, and Black spatiality.
The evening will feature frameworks and perspectives from visual artist Torkwase Dyson, with Anesu Chigariro as the moderator. Torkwase Dyson (Beacon, US) describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Anesu Chigariro (Harare, Zimbabwe) is an editor in sexual and reproductive health education and a community and health psychology practitioner. She is an aspirant narrative medicine scholar with a focus on social and behaviour change communication, contemporary critical theory and visual culture.
Check the program page on Bijlmer Parktheater’s website for the full bio’s and the ticket link. The theatre’s productional team would very much appreciate it if people who’ll attend the program buy their tickets in advance.
The title of this note is from Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz: “I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is a shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things.”
Banel & Adama, HipHopHuis, Gember & Rooibos
Banel & Adama
“A new generation of film makers, strong-willed and with a superb mastery of technics is born. A relief troop.”
– Sembène Ousmane in ‘Cinema as evening school’, his preface in L’Afrique et le Centenaire du Cinema/Africa and the Centenary of Cinema.
Banel & Adama is a stereotype-free, stroll-paced unfolding of a love story disrupted by expectations. Its scenery centres around the steadiness of traditions and the rush of tragedies accelerated by capitalism. Or, more specifically: gender norms and the climate crisis. As an heir to Djibril Diop Mambèty’s infamous remixing of cinema’s grammar, director Ramata-Toulaye Sy masterfully takes us from a honey-sweet lovin’ to a magic-realist sobering.
Khady Mane, who plays Banel, is captivating in her portrayal of a new bride who’s trying her best to preserve a dream that’s close to being reality-checked to a halt. Mamadou Diallo is ever so gracious in his portrayal of Adama, a young husband figuring out how to not just carry but properly balance the inherited into its future.
Since attending its première at this year’s edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s masterpiece has been on my mind. With its gorgeous cinematography plus its perfectly scored moments of quiet and consideration, Banel & Adama gives us the Tonimorrison-esque narration that matches our imagination. Truly, a relief.
HipHopHuis + Gember &… Rooibos – episode 1 of 7.
On Saturday March 9 (15.00h-17.00h), Adrian Van Wyk and I will join the Rotterdam fam for a conversation about the short documentary What the Soil Remembers. We’ll do so as part of the first HipHopHuis-based edition of the GembertheeSessies (Ginger tea sessions), co-hosted by HipHopHuis and Bijlmer Parktheater. HipHopHuis has been a home for a good 20 years. Their interest in co-hosting a GembertheeSessies is an absolute honour. Tickets for this gathering can be bought via this link.
After this event, Van Wyk and I will move our conversation back to my sofa and dinner table. From there, we’ll edit chunks of it into episode one of a 7-part podcast series: Gember &… . Episode 1 -Gember & Rooibos- will centre around the following:
– The Kitchen (film)
– Banel & Adama (film)
– The Mother of All Lies (film)
– Rye Lane (film)
– Cécile McLorin Salvant’s concert in Brussel
– The concert of the Asher Gamedze Quartet in Rotterdam
IFFR
Being part of the IFFR press crew this year was great. I was honoured and overjoyed to be part of a festival that’s so dear to me. Special mention to Lyse Ishimwe. (blows dancehall airhorn)
Picture 1: Still from Banel & Adama.
Picture 2: Still from the videoclip for Asher Gamedze‘s Wynter Time
GembertheeSessies and BPTUnpacks: The Color Purple – upcoming events
For February and March I’m organizing and hosting three events at Bijlmer Parktheater:
1. BPTUnpacks The Color Purple (Fri. February 23), a gathering centering Alice Walker’s legendary novel and its two film adaptations. Panelists: Romana Vrede (pictured here), Shirley Ahura, Ayra Kip and Simone Lagrand.
2. GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk (Thu. February 29), which will be a ginger spices conversation about film and the tracks of these imagined subway lines between Cape Town and Bijlmer.
3. GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor (Sat. March 30), a sisterly reunion in celebration of Okafor’s debut collection of short stories ‘Edge of Here’.
Both GembertheeSessies are in collaboration with my favourite spot to drink ginger tea: poetry and cocktailbar Labyrinth. For all three events the lovely Bijlmer Bookstore will be present with a pop-up store. Below, you’ll find more info about each programs:
Friday February 23: BPTUnpacks The Color Purple
It’s been a while since our former Bijlmer Parktheater-colleague Saundra Williams organized one of our legendary programs: Black Magic Woman. It is in the spirit of that memory and with a longing for that vibe that program maker Simone Zeefuik would like to discuss a classic: The Color Purple. On Friday February 23 our downstairs studio will transformed into a cozy living room where we’ll discuss Alice Walker’s novels and its two film adaptations.
For a proper unpacking of this film -its main themes, the cinematography, the soundtrack and the ways in which both films are in conversation with each other- Zeefuik will be joined by four panelists:
– Shirley Ahura (London),
– Romana Vrede (Rotterdam),
– Simone Lagrand (Paris) and
– Ayra Kip (Amsterdam, Bijlmer-raised). It will be an evening full of Shug & Celie, quotes, memes and quiz questions. The winner of our ‘Blues women in film’ quiz will stroll out the door with a prize package put together by our panel.
Tickets for BPTUnpacks: The Color Purple can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Thursday February 29: GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk (Kaapstad/Cape Town)
For this year’s first edition of the GembertheeSessies (GingerteSessions) we’re connecting Bijlmer to Cape Town. We’ll do this through the works and research of writer, director, producer, curator and cultural worker Adrian Van Wyk. Simone Zeefuik interviews Adrian about his creative processes and his current research projects through which he links decolonial activism in the Netherlands and South Africa. The session opens with the screening of the short documentary What The Soil Remembers. Van Wyk is the producer and researcher of this short film directed by José Cardoso.
Adrian Van Wyk is a filmmaker/creative producer and cultural historian from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed a MA in History at Stellenbosch University. His dissertation, titled “From Jamaica to the Cape Flats: Reflecting on the manifestations of a Cape Town Hip Hop Culture”, unpacked the diasporic movements of Hip Hop culture onto the Cape Flats. In 2023, a documentary short film that Adrian produced and researched titled What the Soil Remembers enjoyed its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) where it was also awarded the Ammodo Tiger Short Award.
Tickets for the GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Saturday March 30: GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor
The awe-mazing, London based Kelechi Okafor will talk about her stunning debut collection of short stories: Edge of Here. With her book Okafor combines the ancient and the ultramodern to explore tales of contemporary Black womanhood, asking questions about the way we live now and offering a glimpse into our near future.
For her bio this Marvel from London writes: “Ke-leh-chee. That is how my name is pronounced. Now that is out of the way, hello! I am Kelechi Okafor and I’m a lover of words. I act, I direct and I write. I tweet and I dissect bits about society one podcast episode at a time. When I am not doing all of the above, I teach pole dance and twerk at my studio Kelechnekoff Fitness in Peckham. Society teaches us that we must fall into categories somehow. All I know is that I’m just a Baby Girl.”
Tickets for the GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Both GembertheeSessies are in collaboration with our beloved, much needed Bijlmer Bookstore and my favourite spot to drink ginger tea: poetry and cocktailbar Labyrinth. For all three events the Bijlmer Bookstore will be present with a pop-up store.
laZeefuik 
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