Photo credit: Reem Gaafar October is Down Syndrome Awareness month, and around this time last year came Sally Phillip’s documentary film A World Without Down’s Syndrome that asked the question: what would the world be like if Down’s syndrome was eliminated? Some countries are well on the way to answer that question: Iceland’s rigorous screening […]
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The big news these days is the lifting of the US sanctions that were placed on Sudan 20+ years ago. Everyone is talking about – actually, have been talking about it for several months now. But there are such mixed opinions and feelings about whether they should have been lifted or kept in place, with
Twenty Years of Solitude: life after the sanctions Read More »
Originally published in Teakisi Magazine Ask any Sudanese or any African person about leading Sudanese women figures of the 20th century, and among the first mentioned names will most certainly be Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim. Born in 1933 in Khartoum to an educated family, Fatima is known for organizing the first successful strike in a girls’ elementary
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Originally featured in Andariya Magazine Once upon a time, around 1930, a boy named Abdel Aziz Dawoud was born in a smallish town north of Sudan. Orphaned as a child, he went to work at an early age while attending the local khalwa (Quranic school) where he stood out among his peers for his sweet voice; a
Sammany’s Briefcase: Bridging musical generational gaps Read More »
Originally featured in Teakisi Magazine With recent developments in technology and knowledge sharing, many once-unavailable skills and professions have now become open and accessible to everyone; one of which is filmmaking. All over the world normal people with growingly cheaper and more basic cameras, and armed with a few YouTube tutorials and a supportive network, are
Posted in ElleAfrique Magazine on 17th of June For centuries Sudanese women have been pushing the boundaries of the patriarchal society, excelling in fields almost always dominated by men despite the difficulties they face. We searched for the women making an impact today both nationally and internationally, in all different fields: health, environment, women’s rights, arts, filmmaking, political and
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This is an overview of the memoirs of Zain Alabideen Mohamed Ahmed Abdelgadir, a key player in the May Revolution of 1969. I will give a summary of the book then pose some questions for discussion about the author’s stance, the period of governance itself, and what we can learn from it for our current
The May Revolution: Years of Prosperity and Drought Read More »
Originally published in ElleAfrique Magazine The young lady delicately adjusted her multicoloured tob and dabbed at her multicoloured face, looked down at her notes, and cleared her throat. ‘These days, doctora,’ she chirped at her middle-aged scholarly guest, ‘we bear witness to a certain phenomenon, a phenomenon which is alien to our society.’ ‘Yes,’ the doctor gravely agreed. ‘This
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While on holiday in Oman, I arranged a film screening at the Sudanese Social Club in Muscat. The initial idea was to screen my own film, Light of the Sahara, with a collection of other short films from Sudan Film Factory’s workshops to give Sudanese in Oman an idea about the film making industry in
Muscat Film Screening Night: A Taste of Home Read More »
After hearing about it for months, I finally watched it this evening (in 2 installments because alkahraba gata3at halfway through). I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn’t this. I’ve seen several clips/videos/documentaries about the Nuba Mountains, but this was a whole other level of Sudanese documentary. The cinematography, editing and
Beats of the Antonov Read More »