The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

Earlier this week, I received an email from Akosua Adoma Owusu. She is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker based in Alexandria, VA. Not Ghanaian, or American, but a Ghanaian-American. Makes me think of Kobina Aidoo's Neo African-Americans documentary . She told me about her short film, Me Broni Ba (My White Baby) - a lyrical portrait of hair salons in Kumasi has shown at various film festivals around the world. Find out more information about her brilliant work at www.mebroniba.com or mebroniba.tumblr.com . In her own words, Me Broni Ba is definitely not your typical Ghanaian/nigerian film. It doesn't look typical. It's a short film, the trailers hardly have any dialogue. It talks about a subject I haven't seen any Ghanaian film touch - hair, hair salons. It's not the Ghanaian version of Chris Rock's Good Hair either. The synpsis reads - "Me Broni Ba is a lyrical portrait of hair salons in Kumasi, Ghana. The tangled legacy of European colonialism in Africa is e...

I met Kobina Aidoo at some point during my MIT days. At the time, he was a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Kobina is a man of many interests and as a hobby, he took up making a documentary a few years ago. The result's been ' Neo-African-Americans ', a documentary about how rapid immigration from Africa and the Caribbean is transforming the "African American" narrative. I finally got the chance to watch this documentary sometime last week after missing three separate screenings organized at Stanford University. In the documentary, Kobina interviews different people about their identity. He takes a particular interest in children of African and Carribean immigrants in America as well as immigrants themselves. Most of them seem to have different views on whether they are "African-American" and seem to identify themselves in different ways. Afro-Latino-American. Ghanaian-American. African. True African-American. Haitian-Ameri...