In which Austrian artist Ella Raidel forgot about Godard and dived into the hip hop scene of Maputo and blog writer programmer Gertjan Zuilhof was hired as a camera man for a music video.
When I visited Ella Raidel last year in her house in Taiwan I asked her if she would like to participate in the Forget Africa project. She liked the idea, but the question did not come at the right time in her life. After years of working in Taiwan as an artist and a teacher she was thinking about moving back to Austria and finish her thesis. Too bad. So I moved on and asked the other artists and filmmakers that were planned in the budget.
Ella Raidel and Camera (yes, the quickly legendary Mark II)
Something like half a year later Ella contacted me again. She got her PhD. And now how about Africa? I explained that I had moved on and the money was spent. She is not the kind of person to give up easily, one of the reasons, next to the fact she is a good artist, I asked her in the first place. She suggested to find the money herself in Austria. I just had to write a letter. She found the money indeed and decided to go to Mozambique. Why Mozambique? She had read that in the early seventies Jean-Luc Godard went to the newly liberated former Portuguese colony to set up a television system for the people. Ella was curious if this had left any traces.
Godard filming at the waterfront of the Maputo Bay, Mozambique
Ella went earlier to Mozambique than I did. She did her research seriously and discovered quite soon that whatever Godard and his companion Anne-Marie Miéville did in Maputo was no longer there. The television was commercial and broadcasted glamour shows and soap drama’s like everywhere else. But she also found a very lively media scene around the local music industry. To get behind the scenes of this she got great help from her country man Werner Puntigam. Puntigam is musician and a photographer as well, who spends most of each year in Mozambique to work with his band of local musicians.
Slam Poet Capela and Shell Musician Werner Puntigam in Maputo Radio Studio
Through Puntigam she also met the so called Slam Poet Capela. Capela’s texts and music is clearly related to hip hop and rap, but he is taking his writing more seriously. No rimes on big cars and easy girls, but about the hard life of common people in Mozambique. Capela is a real performer and an impressive improviser with a fine sense of humor. In a way close to a stand up comedian.
Capela is playing a nice role in the film Ella was making, Slam Video Maputo, and he also brought her into contact with yet other local musicians and filmmakers.
Slam Poet Capela posing at Maputo Bay
For a number of musicians and artists the making of music videos is a serious thing. I have seen this in other places in Africa as well. Maybe a bit too late - I did not really look for it or researched it - I came to realize that the video-making connected to the hip hop music (or however you call it, it is Kuduro in Angola or Kwaito in South Africa) is one of the vital sources for a new generation of filmmakers. A generation that learned themselves filmmaking, that can improvise, work with no budgets and is very aware of visual style. Ella followed them around to scary locations like huge dump sites.
Mario Macilan, young artist with Tripod on Maputo Garbage Belt, Mozambique
Not all the music video makers were serious poets. Some went for the bling bling like everywhere else in the world. Ella went to several shoots that were more in style with what we know from MTV although the music, locations and dances were also very much African flavored. In Ella’s film these images turned out to be quite ironic. I guess it was not meant to be like that by the performers.
Break during MG Music Video Shoot in Maputo, Mozambique
The nicest hip hop film experience Ella and I had in Maputo was with musician and video maker Spab. Spab showed us some of his work in his studio which made us aware of his great skill in getting old computers running and also of his great humor and incredible fast talking. He showed a video of one of his own songs with a funny shoot out and the appearance of a white holy figure. The video needed another night scene and he invited us for the shoot that night. There he showed his improvisation skills again, because when his cameraman did not show up he asked me to shoot the scenes with him in it. My first camerawork for a real hip hip video.
Gertjan Zuilhof shooting a Spab hip hop video in Maputo
After the elaborated fast cutting of Spab the result was not even that bad, if I may say so. As a thank you Spab brought us to the hottest place in town for a pizza (that is what he said). It turned out to be the case that after a certain hour at night the only place you can eat is the local red light district. Even for somebody from Amsterdam the place was something to make your eyes pop out.
Curiously the texts of Spab, and not only of him, were very religious. When he was up steam as a rapper he sounded like a preacher. An African preacher that is. Actually Spab is the son a preacher man.
And he also defeated me in playing pool (but he used African rules I have to say to my defense).
Musician and video maker Spab plays pool
I have to say that Spab was a hard working man. Quite soon after this one shoot he invited us for another one. This time in a studio and with his friend Chiquito as the main performer. Nice modest man this Chiquito. He had a day time job, but when he had the time he would drive us around in Maputo. If there were too many people to fit in his car he would drive twice. Chiquito brought the dancing girls and gave his best in the little studio. Spab was in the mean time using all the camera angles you can imagine and again we had a real good time.
Spab shooting Music Video for Chiquito
We saw many more things in Maputo. A nice city that feels and looks like Lisbon in the thirties (not that I was around then, but for this we have Pessoa). We saw the old and empty cinema that filmmaker Sol de Carvalho tried to make run again. We met the local filmmakers in the Centre Culturel Franco Mozambicain and crossed the bay by ferry to end up in a completely different world. Or not so different, because people danced on the streets on the music played by video stores.
No we did not find anything of the Marxist times anymore. The time Godard may have hoped people could be changed for the better by peoples television. We saw a lot of peoples art, but the changing part you have to imagine.
Ella Raidel and handpainted Che Guevara
When I visited Ella Raidel last year in her house in Taiwan I asked her if she would like to participate in the Forget Africa project. She liked the idea, but the question did not come at the right time in her life. After years of working in Taiwan as an artist and a teacher she was thinking about moving back to Austria and finish her thesis. Too bad. So I moved on and asked the other artists and filmmakers that were planned in the budget.
Something like half a year later Ella contacted me again. She got her PhD. And now how about Africa? I explained that I had moved on and the money was spent. She is not the kind of person to give up easily, one of the reasons, next to the fact she is a good artist, I asked her in the first place. She suggested to find the money herself in Austria. I just had to write a letter. She found the money indeed and decided to go to Mozambique. Why Mozambique? She had read that in the early seventies Jean-Luc Godard went to the newly liberated former Portuguese colony to set up a television system for the people. Ella was curious if this had left any traces.
Ella went earlier to Mozambique than I did. She did her research seriously and discovered quite soon that whatever Godard and his companion Anne-Marie Miéville did in Maputo was no longer there. The television was commercial and broadcasted glamour shows and soap drama’s like everywhere else. But she also found a very lively media scene around the local music industry. To get behind the scenes of this she got great help from her country man Werner Puntigam. Puntigam is musician and a photographer as well, who spends most of each year in Mozambique to work with his band of local musicians.
Through Puntigam she also met the so called Slam Poet Capela. Capela’s texts and music is clearly related to hip hop and rap, but he is taking his writing more seriously. No rimes on big cars and easy girls, but about the hard life of common people in Mozambique. Capela is a real performer and an impressive improviser with a fine sense of humor. In a way close to a stand up comedian.
Capela is playing a nice role in the film Ella was making, Slam Video Maputo, and he also brought her into contact with yet other local musicians and filmmakers.
For a number of musicians and artists the making of music videos is a serious thing. I have seen this in other places in Africa as well. Maybe a bit too late - I did not really look for it or researched it - I came to realize that the video-making connected to the hip hop music (or however you call it, it is Kuduro in Angola or Kwaito in South Africa) is one of the vital sources for a new generation of filmmakers. A generation that learned themselves filmmaking, that can improvise, work with no budgets and is very aware of visual style. Ella followed them around to scary locations like huge dump sites.
Not all the music video makers were serious poets. Some went for the bling bling like everywhere else in the world. Ella went to several shoots that were more in style with what we know from MTV although the music, locations and dances were also very much African flavored. In Ella’s film these images turned out to be quite ironic. I guess it was not meant to be like that by the performers.
The nicest hip hop film experience Ella and I had in Maputo was with musician and video maker Spab. Spab showed us some of his work in his studio which made us aware of his great skill in getting old computers running and also of his great humor and incredible fast talking. He showed a video of one of his own songs with a funny shoot out and the appearance of a white holy figure. The video needed another night scene and he invited us for the shoot that night. There he showed his improvisation skills again, because when his cameraman did not show up he asked me to shoot the scenes with him in it. My first camerawork for a real hip hip video.
After the elaborated fast cutting of Spab the result was not even that bad, if I may say so. As a thank you Spab brought us to the hottest place in town for a pizza (that is what he said). It turned out to be the case that after a certain hour at night the only place you can eat is the local red light district. Even for somebody from Amsterdam the place was something to make your eyes pop out.
Curiously the texts of Spab, and not only of him, were very religious. When he was up steam as a rapper he sounded like a preacher. An African preacher that is. Actually Spab is the son a preacher man.
And he also defeated me in playing pool (but he used African rules I have to say to my defense).
I have to say that Spab was a hard working man. Quite soon after this one shoot he invited us for another one. This time in a studio and with his friend Chiquito as the main performer. Nice modest man this Chiquito. He had a day time job, but when he had the time he would drive us around in Maputo. If there were too many people to fit in his car he would drive twice. Chiquito brought the dancing girls and gave his best in the little studio. Spab was in the mean time using all the camera angles you can imagine and again we had a real good time.
We saw many more things in Maputo. A nice city that feels and looks like Lisbon in the thirties (not that I was around then, but for this we have Pessoa). We saw the old and empty cinema that filmmaker Sol de Carvalho tried to make run again. We met the local filmmakers in the Centre Culturel Franco Mozambicain and crossed the bay by ferry to end up in a completely different world. Or not so different, because people danced on the streets on the music played by video stores.
No we did not find anything of the Marxist times anymore. The time Godard may have hoped people could be changed for the better by peoples television. We saw a lot of peoples art, but the changing part you have to imagine.
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