Cultural viewing?

Now we don’t own a TV – but plenty of people (especially in urban areas) do, and so Zambia has just as many TV-addicts as elsewhere in the world. So in a spirit of cultural exchange I thought that you may be wondering what most Zambians like watching? We’ve talked about the perils of ‘exporting the empire’ a few times on this blog and TV schedules in Zambia are far from immune, but even bearing that in mind it may still be a bit of a surprise to know that some of the most popular TV programmes in Zambia are from World Wrestling Entertainment (what used to be known as WWF). We are pretty sure that the afternoon service at the church we go to was rescheduled so it wouldn’t interfere with the Sunday afternoon wrestling programme… if you have broadband and want to get a glimpse of what you may or may not be missing out on click here.

Bombs by Faithless – action trick

I came across the video for Bombs by Faithless months ago and keep forgetting to blog about it. The video and song would be a great tool for a creative look at injustice and the world – it would work well for a church service talk or reflective meditation. The images and lyrics talk of a world in pain, oppression and violence – where, ‘one man’s loss is another man’s gain’. It is pretty self-explanatory really and open to all sorts of uses.

You can watch and download the video here on the green.tv website – which incidentally has loads of ‘green minded’ videos. We’ve also added it to our vod:pod along with a few other videos we like - you can explore them all here.

So much heaven, so much hell. So much love, so much pain. So much more than I thought this world could ever contain. So much war, so much soul, one man’s loss, one man’s goal. So much more than I thought this world could ever hold… We’re just children, we’re just dust, we are small, we are lost, and we are nothing at all… nothing at all.

Lyrics to Bombs by Faithless

the slave tree – action trick 3

I have mentioned Freedom Day before. Recently, anticipating that this day to mark the end of slavery is just around the corner (25th March), we went in search for the famous slave tree in Ndola town and a local history lesson.

Swahili slave-traders used to frequent the area around the tree – meeting under the shade of the tree to sell and trade their slaves. Today it is in an almost forgotten part of town and in a decaying state, but I felt it had a story to tell. I took some photographs and walked up and down the quiet street – and decided to make a short film about it’s story.

I purposefully didn’t use images of people but rather focussed on the environment and local history to get across the complex reality of the area today. It is far from being a great video (it is my first effort at this sort of thing) but I liked the creative process more than anything. I am making it action trick 3 – to mark the importance of getting creative and using the local environment and history to get active. You are welcome to use the film if you like – use the above player or at YouTube (if you want to download it you can for free by using keepvid.com and then use VLC media player to play it).