Mf Galaxy

Many people dream of making independent movies. I know I did. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was so inspired by Spike Lee that I read all of his "making of" books and in 1995 wrote a screenplay called The Coyote Kings for which I actually shot some test scenes with a group of friends in 1997. Of course, it didn't go anywhere.  But some people don't stop at obstacles the way I did. They go around them or climb over them. Angie Zimaro is an Edmonton-based filmmaker went to film school at NAIT, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. She wrote and produced the post-apocalyptic indie film Dr. Plague. Shot on location in Sherwood Park, Alberta and directed by her film school classmate Nathaniel Goselwitz, the film stars Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens legend Georges Laraque, and it won a Bronze Remi at WorldFest-Houston International Film & Video Festival 2018. Quite an achievement for a debut film! On June 15 I met sat with Zimaro at the Simply Done Café in Edmonton's gallery distr

While it's known by a range of names, Africentric science fiction and fantasy imagines Africans exploring and changing the universe with technology, science, and mystical means in the past, present, and future. Artists employing Africentric science fiction and fantasy, or what I call Afritopianism, work in literature, film, music, comics, fashion, video games, and more. Recently in the US, two academics, Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings, convened convention/art shows called the Black Speculative Arts Movement. Their only non-American participant at any early event was my guest today, the African-Canadian visual artist Quentin Babatunde Vercetty. The Montreal-based VerCetty is an award winning visual storyteller, art educator, and graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design University; his Afritopian work engages immigration, decolonization, and "the lack of what he calls PDAA (Public display of Appreciation for Africa(ns)." His work has thrilled viewers around the world, including in places such as M

There is an infinite number of ways not to have a successful writing career, but not that many ways to have one. You can write your own original novels and if you're in the luckiest one percent, you'll find editors who understand and love what you're doing, and who work with publicists who know how to promote your work with opinion-leaders who'll also love your work. Your publisher will work with distributors who'll get your books into the bookstores where staff hand-sell your work. If you're less lucky, you'll end up like 98 percent of writers, whose books get a sliver of shelf-space for three months and die in the discount bin or get pulped. But there's another lucky one percent. And when I say lucky, I don't mean they're not hard-working, because as you're about to hear from today's guest, hard-working in this case could mean writing six books in one year, and one book in eleven days. And by lucky, I also don't mean devoid of skill and artistry, because today's guest has won numerous awards proving he has

One of my favourite new TV series is the re-imagining of Lost in Space. It's a great family show with rich characters and relationships, exciting adventures, and amazing depictions of future science discoveries. Plus, it's got a great spaceship and a mysterious hulking robot. I'm hooked! So imagine my delight when I'm watching the show and there onscreen is a friend from my old days at CJSR FM-88.5 campus-community radio at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. It's Veenu Sandhu! I'd always thought Sandhu was from Edmonton, but it turns out she's from Dawson Creek, British Columbia. I also had no idea until recently that she's a longtime fan-girl herself who knows more about Star Trek: Voyager than anyone I've ever met. She's been on the superhero show Arrow, the science-fantasy series Fringe, the ABC dramas Somewhere Between and The Whispers, and in the movies Cop and a Half: New Recruit with Lou Diamond Phillips, and A Dog's Way Home. And now on Netflix's Lost in Space, she plays astronaut Prisha Dhar, mot

All humans face fear and sadness at times, especially when facing the stresses that are common to the human experience: potential job loss, alienation, illness, the death of loved ones, and more. But for some people, fear and sadness are present most or all of them time, and their power is overwhelming. Just five years ago, 3 million Canadians or almost twelve percent of us reported having a mood or anxiety disorder. About the same number will experience diagnosable depression at some point. And yet for many, the stigma of mental illness is so strong that they can't even use the phrase. They'll say, "mental health issues" or "mental health challenges." Among many new Canadian communities, the shame may be even greater, resulting in denial being number one coping strategy. But denial is no cure, and often makes people worse. To discuss such problems and the strategies to help them, I recently spoke with Edmonton financial adviser, speaker, and author Odion Welch. She's the author of Breakthrough: A Courageous

Humanity needs books. I don't mean that everybody loves reading, because clearly that's not true. But it is true that many of us do love books, not only for the remarkable ideas they make us consider, but for how they lift our morale above the mundanity and the cruelty of the world, and inspire our souls and our intellects to transform our societies for the better. No genre is more devoted to such inspiration and transformation than science fiction. And that's why the refusal of the science fiction publishing industry, for generations, to offer a racial, cultural, and gender palette that reflects the true range of humanity has been so galling. It has deprived the majority of the human race the comfort and provocation we seek, and deprived our species of the ingenuity that we would have unleashed had we been so inspired. Fortunately, the last two decades in particular have seen the beginning of a change, with the rise of African writers winning major sales and the top prizes for science fiction and fantasy wri

Whether you hear this podcast the day it went live—April 30, 2018—or any other day, you'll have some mass-shooting in the United States that makes this discussion timely. According to AOL.com, in 2017 the United States endured 345 mass shootings. The Atlantic reported in 2016 that the US, with less than five percent of the world's population, holds 35 – 40 percent of the world's guns. The Gun Violence Archive reports that in 2017, Americans used guns to kill 15,000 Americans; more than 3000 of them were teens; police shot or killed more than 2000; and more than 2000 shootings were unintentional. According to stereotypes, US Republicans love guns and US Democrats hate them, and since African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democrats, according to the transitive principle, most African-Americans must hate guns, too, right? After all, a lethal triad of street criminals, police criminals, and Whitesupremacist criminals use guns to terrorise African-Americans. But it's not that simple, as history demonstrates, and

Hip hop began almost 50 years ago, and it's changed more and encompassed more than any musical or lyrical aesthetic in that time that I can think of. Careers rise and fall, styles change and grow, but one thing remains the same: a great voice, clear delivery, a range of subjects, and intelligent insight as a package will almost guarantee immortality. For years I hosted a radio show called Asiko Phantom Pyramid: Global African Musics Led by Headcharge of Hip Hop, and when it came to hip hop acts I'd play again and again, the list always include Public Enemy, KRS-One, Paris, and my guest today, the Boston-based rapper Akrobatik, and his partnership with the superb Mr. Lif in the crew called The Perceptionists. Akrobatik grabbed my imagination with 2003's Balance, his first album, and proved he was no flash-in-the-pan with the 2005 Perceptionists album Black Dialogue. His music has appeared on HBO's The Wire, in films such as Date Movie, and in video games such as Need for Speed: Most Wanted. As a result of a ru

For ages, inside and outside fan circles, the stereotype was that Africans and Indigenous people don't like science fiction. That's a bizarre myth. After all, because both science fiction and fantasy offer the spirit and the intellect the chance to remake the world. For peoples who remember the historical destruction of their own worlds and live under oppression, escape stories offer indispensable hope—the dream that deliverance is possible. And when they offer the intellect the means to plan utopia, or at least a new-topia, they're even more powerful. That yearning helps explain the extraordinary success of Black Panther, and the promise offered by award-winning science fiction filmmakers such as my guest today, Danis Goulet. She's a Cree-Metis filmmaker from LaRonge, Saskatchewan. She's an alumna of the National Screen Institute's Drama Prize Program in Canada and the TIFF Talent lab. Her social realist and science fiction films and virtual reality work have gone to the Toronto International Film Festival,

I am a pernsnicketty cat—some would say difficult—and I have been known to argue at length that no one should ever use the expression "laughed out loud" because all laughter is out loud, by definition. So that means if I can overcome my boundless rage enough to invite the host of a national radio programme called Laugh Out Loud, I must really be impressed. And I am. But Ali Hassan actually grabbed my attention not by MCing that showcase for Canadian comedians, but rather for his excellent work as an interviewer and guest host on CBC Radio's q. I liked his voice, I liked his rapport with guests, and I liked his questions—but what totally floored me was that he easily and accurately dropped a reference to KRS-One during an interview without explaining it. I thought, I have got to contact this dude. So I did, and that's what led to today's conversation about the art, craft, and business of stand-up comedy and interviewing. Hassan is a Pakistani-Canadian comedian, actor, and chef from Montreal. He's toured Canada

It's been well over two thousand, three hundred years since an actual Egyptian sat on the throne of the Nile Valley's greatest civilisation. Since then, only foreigners have controlled Kemet, the true name for Egypt. And yet control over Kemet remains a fierce battle to this day. On the one side are Eurocentrists who, to build their racial self-esteem, and to justify the massive crime of imperialism against Africa, have spent the last three hundred years Whitewashing the civilisation into something that their own Greek and Roman ancestors never claimed. On the other side is everyone who embraces the historical record, physical anthropology, comparative linguistics and culture, and, of course, DNA. They recognise what most of Hollywood, Arabs in Egypt, and the Western academic establishment refuse to: that Kemet was an African civilisation from its farmers to its pharaohs. Previously on MF Galaxy I've had a range of guests discussing African Egypt, including Molefi Kete Asante, Martin Bernal, Richard Poe, and

Many Canadians, Indigenous and settler alike, were furious to learn the back-to-back verdicts in two murder cases. Juries declared Gerald Stanley not guilty of killing 22-year-old Colten Boushie, and Raymond Courmier not guilty of killing 14-year-old Tina Fontaine. The cases exposed how our colonial justice system makes it easy to exclude Indigenous citizens from juries and how rarely families can expect those who kill their loved ones to go to prison. Some people protested in the streets. Some people protested with their art. Some people wept for the dead and for the future of their children. And some people did all three. One such man is Rex Smallboy, the former leader of War Party, one of the country's most successful hip hop bands ever. The motivational speaker and award-winning artist from Alberta's Maskwacis Cree reserve released the song "Hey They Killing Us" immediately after the jury freed Tina Fontaine's killer. You'll hear it later in this show in which Smallboy discusses: The level of anxiety he

Marvel's Black Panther is a global sensation. As of Saturday, March 3, 2018, only two weeks and two days into its release, the Ryan Coogler/Joe Robert Cole film has grossed $US898 million worldwide. Within its first week it had outgrossed what DC's Justice League took three months to earn, and the entire US runs of Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, The Incredible Hulk, the first Captain America, and the first two Thor films. It had the fifth-highest opening of all time and the third-highest four-day opening ever. Of course, money isn't everything, but the astonishing success of a film that is 100% obviously Africentric, starring African characters played by African actors, written by two African writers and directed by an African director, is game-changing. It negates in sky-writing every Hollywood executive who ever claimed that US-made movies about and by Africans could not make money outside the US. And this is within the same 12-month period in which the African-made, Africentric film Get Out, shot on a budget o

Maybe you've been chained at the centre of the earth and the mole-people have been jamming your wifi since you got there, and that's why you don't know about the breathtaking Marvel blockbuster Black Panther. If so, I don't know how you're hearing this podcast, but my sympathies to you and I'll try to lower a pitcher of lemonade on a long rope. But for everyone else, as of February 21, not even a week after opening day, the $200M-budget movie has earned $441 million worldwide. The idea that a completely Africentric science fiction film with a pan-African cast, set in a fictional African country, with no major European stars, and written and directed by Africans, could achieve one of the biggest opening weeks ever was, even a few years ago, unthinkable. You could even say the idea of that success itself was Africentric science fiction. And now, it's reality. Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole wrote it, Coogler directed it, and Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright

Continuing our programming for Black Panther Month ahead of the local and international review panels for the Marvel blockbuster, we're delving deeper into historical African martial arts, or HAMA. If you loved the exciting, aspirational vision of a fictional African technostate with its own fighting arts, MF Galaxy is your show to learn about actual combat systems from the continent. Yes, you know about East Asian martial arts such as Chinese kung fu, Korean tae kwon do, and Japanese judo, but what about Sudanese Nuba wrestling? Or stickfighting from Ancient Egypt called Tahtib or from Zululand called Nguni? Or Madagascari boxing called moraingy? To discuss those forms and more, I spoke with Mansa Myrie. Originally from Red Deer, Alberta, Myrie is the Chief Operations Officer of the Historical African Martial Arts Association, a new and international organisation whose aim is to promote verifiable information about and practice of historical African fighting arts and warfare. Myrie spoke with me from his hom

This is Black Panther Month on MF GALAXY and with all the excitement surging about the Marvel movie about the Wakanda super-genius, superhero, super-fighter, the time is right to go beyond fictional African martials arts and discover authentic, deadly African martial arts from across the continent and across history. Most people in the West think of the phrase "martial arts" as referring to East Asian fighting systems such as kung fu, karate, and tae kwon do, without realising that "martial arts" means any combat system. And certainly every culture in the world produced its own combat systems or its people would have been assimilated or annihilated. So it really should not be a surprise that the African continent, home to humanity and birthplace of civilisation, should have scores of martials arts, ranging from the wrestling, sword systems, and stick fighting of Ancient Egypt, to the range of West African fighting arts, and that's where we begin today. Balogun Ojetade is a fascinating man with a remarkable hi

What were the weapons in the arsenal of a man who survived a vicious racial dictatorship to emerge as an international ambassador for his people and his craft? In the case of Hugh Masekela, who returned to the ancestors on January 23, 2018, the answer is two-part: a gramophone, and a Louis Armstrong trumpet. Born outside Johannesburg in 1939, Masekela began playing music at age three--by way of winding his grandmother's gramophone and singing along. In his career, his own music would fuse South African mbaqanga, bebop, funk, and Nigerian Afrobeat. His prolific six decades of making music took him around the world and granted him the personal victories of playing with such titans Abdullah Ibrahim, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Zensi Miriam Makeba, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His single "Grazing in the Grass" in the early 1970s topped the Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash" on the US charts. Humble and down-to-earth, yet deeply intelligent with a sweeping international perspective on art, politic

Ron Pederson. I never worked with him but we crossed paths a bunch of times in Edmonton's sketch comedy, improv, and theatre community, and then one day I up and turn on my TV and boom! There he is on MadTV, which for me was the funniest US sketch show ever made. I shouldn't've been so surprised he'd hit the big time. Other Edmontonians had made it big, including Michael J. Fox, Jill Hennessy from Law & Order, Bruce McCulloch from Kids in the Hall, and Nathan Fillion from Firefly. And Edmonton was and is English-speaking Canada's leading theatre and sketch-improv city. Still, to see a kid I knew on MadTV was exciting, and Ron was great. Plus I'd seen him kill in the gonzo science fiction musical comedy Road to Uranus by Dana Anderson and Cathleen Rootsaert. And he'd been a mainstay in the longform improv community with shows such as Die-Nasty!, and worked all across Canada with major outfits such as the Citadel in Edmonton, the Stratford Festival, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Tarragon, and more. So

Hey, MF GALAXY crew! Minister Faust here. Why not add your voice to the MF GALAXY podcast and the MF GALAXY blog? That's what listener and patron Jeff Quest did when I asked for opinions on the women of Star Wars, the Last Jedi. Jeff Quest is the blogger at SpyWrite.com and spybrary.com. In the following, he talks about how Rey is not only the new Luke Skywalker—she's actually the better one.

Star Wars, The Last Jedi has got people talking about its exciting characters and battles and how iconic characters achieve their glory or meet their end. And for the first time there are plenty of female speaking roles in a Star Wars film: Rey, Rose and Paige Tico, Vice Admiral Holdo, Maz Kanata, Captain Phasma, and of course Princess Leia. Some people claim, though, that reactions to the film are split along gender lines—that men hate it and women love it, because it's the first Star Wars film to ask and answer the question, "What happens when men don't listen to women?" Well, obviously there are women who hate the film and men who love it (me included), but rather than argue about love-hate gender percentages that no one has actually measured, why not just ask some remarkable women what they thought about the female characters, their personalities and deeds, and whether the film does them justice? So I did. On today's MF GALAXY you'll hear from Lisa Yaszek, science fiction scholar at Georgia Tech; Sylvia D