Adwa holiday

March 1st marks the 113th year since Ethiopia defeated the Italian army in the Battle of Adwa in 1896. To remember the day, it is a designated holiday in Ethiopia. You can read more about the battle in a Wiki article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Adwa

Also, in 1999, Haile Gerima made the documentary Adwa-An African Victory. He is also the writer and director of the movie Teza I saw recently, however I made a mistake the other day by writing that Mr. Gerima was no longer living. He is indeed alive and well and teaching film at Howard University in Washington D.C. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Gerima).

For those who are interested, a short review of Teza and comments by Haile Gerima after it won best screenplay and the jury prize at the Venice Filmfest last year.

VENICE, Italy (AFP) — Mengistu’s blood-drenched Ethiopia was the backdrop in Venice on Tuesday for filmmaker Haile Gerima’s “Teza,” his attempt to reconcile an idyllic childhood with modern realities.

“I dream my past, but the present is so powerful that it continues to hijack my sentimental journey to my childhood,” Gerima told a news conference.

In the film, Aron Arefe plays Anberber, an idealistic Ethiopian intellectual who studies medicine in Germany, then returns to his home village under Haile Mariam Mengistu’s brutal 1970s-80s regime.

Unable to put his expertise to good use, Anberber also faces an identity crisis arising from his “displacement between the village and the modern world,” said Gerima, who won a lifetime achievement award at the Washington Independent Film Festival in 2003.

“Contemporary reality continues to interfere, with silent violence as well as obvious violence,” he added.

A central challenge was harnessing the wealth inherited from generations of oral tradition, Gerima said, calling handed-down stories “our monuments.”

“My grandmother told stories around the fire. My father was a playwright. How do you reconcile that tradition with filmmaking? How is the form culminating my personal identity?” he asked.

“Teza” is one of two African films in the selection of 21 vying for the coveted Golden Lion here, along with “Gabbla” by Algeria’s Tariq Teguia, set in the north African country as it emerged from its civil war of the 1990s.