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South African artist, Ayanda Seoka, and Zamoo at CHALE WOTE 2018. Photo by OBE Images via ACCRA [dot] ALT.

CHALE WOTE Is the African Street Art Mecca Fostering Limitless Creative Power

An in-depth look into how CHALE WOTE Street Art Festival is proof of the power of independent cultural programming.

ACCRA [dot] ALT, producers of the CHALE WOTE Street Art Festival have managed to turn Accra in August into the Mecca of street art culture, after eight successful editions of one of the biggest and most captivating art events anywhere in the world.

The week-long festival, which has been in a constant state of progressive evolution, has grown from a passion project creating accessible and impactful art and dialogue around social, political and economic issues, to an entire subculture representative of unrestrained self-expression and limitless creative power. CHALE WOTE has become accessible to everyone who may or may not understand the strength of independent culture programming.

The festival brings together different fields of expression from performance, to fashion, to video art through artists of different dispositions and cultural backgrounds hailing from all over the world. These artists create work in response to a theme that's presented in an entirely open environment with the same fervent and militant spirit of street art, which inspired the whole movement. This year's theme, PARA OTHER, presented an urgent need for "evolution beyond the dialectic of belonging and non-belonging"; requesting for the rediscovery and invention of new codes, symbols, sounds and fractal as a basis for reimagining meta-realities.

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Barthélémy Toguo 'Road to Exile.' Photo courtesy of Parrish Art Museum.

Barthélémy Toguo's Exhibition Explores the Push & Pull of the Global Migration Crisis

The Cameroonian artist specifically dives into the desire of young Africans wanting to seek a better life in 'The Beauty of Our Voice' at the Parrish Art Museum.

In the last year, stories about the global migration crisis have been at the forefront of our news feeds and especially in the work of Cameroonian artist, Barthélémy Toguo.

In his exhibition, showing at the Parrish Art Museum until October 14, Toguo addresses the migrant and refugee crisis; specifically, the desire of young Africans to escape in hopes of a better life. The centerpiece of Toguo's exhibition, Road to Exile, is a life sized boat filled to the brim with bags representing the material things people who migrate bring along with them on their journey. Toguo notes that the bed of glass bottles, which surround the boat, simultaneously show the danger and the fragility of the migrants' journey.

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Film
Image courtesy of Maori Holmes

The OkayAfrica Guide to Getting Your Movie Into Film Festivals

We spoke to industry professionals and composed an ultimate guide on how young Africans can break into the film industry.

African and diaspora filmmakers face some of the biggest obstacles to becoming successful filmmakers. Yet recently, African and black filmmakers have begun to rise in the Hollywood film and TV industry. There is an influx of great stories finally being starred, shot, directed, cast, and written by people from, and of, the continent.

If you're a first time filmmaker, and have any dreams of going further in your filmmaking career, you may be wondering where to start? Film festivals are not just a space where you can make your debut as a filmmaker. They are a place where you can establish your voice, introduce yourself to the world as a visual artist, groom your skills, make connections, and most importantly, have fun and soak in the creative atmosphere.

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