"Africa in 60 seconds" Artist Penda Mo. Arusha, Tanzania.

  • 11 years ago
Music: Satya - A Night In Serengeti. Creative Commons.

This film is about artist Pendael Naftal Mollel (Penda Mo), born 1984 in Arusha Region, Tanzania.
E-mail: pendamol@yahoo.com
Mobile phone: +255786079202

I moved to Africa -- to Arusha, Tanzania -- three weeks ago. Searching the internet before the move, I found a good selection of safari photos and a few videos, but virtually nothing about the people of Tanzania. In fact, there was nothing about how people who live here live -- how they work, raise families, go to school, start businesses, send their kids to school, hope for and build a better life.
Once here, I noticed that people in Arusha are extremely friendly, and if you engage them in conversation, are open and positive -- even if they often lack the comforts that other cultures have come to consider necessary for our happiness.
So I decided to work on short films that show the everyday life of ordinary people in Tanzania and other African countries. Because many of us live in a fast-moving world where our attention span is measured in seconds, I decided to do shorts videos -- "Africa in 60 seconds". The short time span is disciplining. But the idea is to offer short personal stories, where the subjects of the videos can use their own words, whether in English or Swahili (with subtitles).
I don't have any special agenda, political or economic. The goal is simple: to give people here the opportunity to tell the rest of the world stories about their life, their feelings, their thoughts. It is a modest goal that will not change the world, but will hopefully offer a window on a fascinating place and its resilient people. BKS

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