By Alemayehu Seife Selassie
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – The Ethiopian cowboy genre copycat film, “Kekurbaw Bestejerba” (“Behind the Curve”), produced and directed by Nebyou Engdawork, started premiering in Addis Ababa Tuesday at the Sebastopol Cinema.
Nebyou Engdawork has acted in the film as Abraham, a character who lost his father – a long distance truck driver – who was killed during a robbery in the countryside. In the film, Abraham grows up without his father and later be becomes a driver for the Ministry of Health.
Driving cross-country, the young man comes across another mugged driver who just lost his brother. The incident reminds Abraham of his dad, leading him to form a partnership with his new friend. The two become vigilantes on the hunt of the killers.
“I wanted to make an adventure film portraying Ethiopian natural elements, such as the forest and horse. This has made our film unique,” the director explains.
“We should not always try to use modern elements in film, such as the fancy cars and beautiful houses. Those are not the things that most of the people in our country have. Ethiopia has the largest number of cattle in Africa, and the tenth largest in the world. That is our true identity,” the director explains.
Despite having no experience, Nebyou took up the art of filmmaking, with which he fell in love when he was a child. The film “Kekurbaw Bestejerba” consumed over 450,000 birr to produce, but the cost would have been much more if it was not for the assistance the director found from close friends. But shooting in the countryside, some 200-300 kilometers away from Addis Ababa, raised the cost. “We bought some six horses, and transporting them was difficult,” the director said. “I grew up watching those Texan films, and horses are really beautiful. Such horses cost in the millions of birr around the world, but here they cost just 3,000 birr each. But the beauty they add to the film is a lot more than that,” he added.
According to Nebiyou the film is based on true events. “There are still people that rob long-distance drivers and passengers, using various curves to stop cars.”
Kekurbaw Bestejerba in a way also shows the harmony of religions in Ethiopia. In the film, the two vigilantes are a Christian and a Muslim. “My character is brought up in the film with a Muslim uncle, though the rest of the family is Christian. So that shows you not only that we can coexist – tolerating each other – but also that we are family,” Nebiyou said.
The production company that released the film is Tatek – the name of the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros’ horse. In the near future, the filmmaker hopes to collect the opinions of viewers and make another Ethiopian film that shows battles fought by horsemen.
After screening at Sebastopol Cinema this week, Kekurbaw Bestejerba will premier at City Hall and Ambassador Cinema. Kekurbaw Bestejerba finished its final editing two months ago and had its official release two months ago, but had to wait for a venue.
25 main actors and over 150 extras took part in the film. With the exception of one actress, the actors are all new to film.
Source: Sub-Saharan Informer
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Ethiopian artists in Maryland connect to homeland
By Naomi Brookner, The Gazette
The aromas of incense and freshly ground coffee filled the Takoma Park Community Center on Saturday during a reception for the city’s first art exhibit to exclusively showcase local Ethiopian artists.
The exhibit, which will be on display throughout March, features the photography and paintings of four professionals, all originally from Ethiopia, as well as about a dozen Ethiopian students from Piney Branch Elementary School.
Setegn Atenaw plays the mesinko, a violin-like instrument widely played in Ethiopia, for a crowd gathered Saturday. (Photo: Naomi Brookner)
Alice Sims, who organized the exhibit through her Takoma Park-based nonprofit group, Art for the People, said the show was meant to provide an opportunity for cultural exchange between the area’s large Ethiopian population and the community.
Several dozen people attended the reception Saturday, which included an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, Ethiopian food donated by local restaurants, and the music of Setegn Atenaw, who plays the mesinko, a one-string Ethiopian instrument.
Artist Matewos Legesse came dressed in a traditional white shirt, pants and shoes that he said would be worn to formal events in Ethiopia. Legesse contributed several paintings to the exhibit, many depicting women and apples painted in vivid colors.
‘‘The colors of Africa are so bright, very colorful,” said artist Debebe Tesfaye, whose paintings of Ethiopian market scenes also featured vibrant colors, which he said is a reflection of the dress and culture of the east African nation.
Photographer Andarge Asfaw, who came to the United States in 1972 and lives and works in Silver Spring, said he has traveled to five continents, but nothing compares to being able to capture images of his homeland.
Asfaw’s photos at the exhibit were from a trip back to Ethiopia he took in the 1990s and illustrated scenes that included wheat fields, mountains, churches and marketplaces.
‘‘When you travel to a new place, you have no idea what it’s like; you have no understanding of the culture,” he said. ‘‘But when you travel back to a country after 27 years, you can see if it moved backward or forward.”
To Asfaw, Ethiopia has moved backward in one major way. Three decades ago, he said, the country was 80 percent forest, but as nomads cut down trees for cooking and fires, that number is down to 3 percent.
One of Asfaw’s photographs showed an Ethiopian market built around a large tree with far-reaching branches — an image he says is very rare in Ethiopia these days. He said he is trying to use art as a way to alleviate the problem of deforestation, and profits from his recent book will go toward the county-based nonprofit group Trees for the Future.
Tebabu Assefa, a member of the Takoma Park Community Action Group, which co-sponsored the event, said he wanted to give the public a chance to see Ethiopian culture, but also allow local Ethiopians to embrace their own traditions.
‘‘Each community has its own rich history, rich culture, but all of them are busy in life,” said Assefa, who came to the United States from Ethiopia in the 1980s. ‘‘They’re busy assimilating and trying to make art, and they don’t have the opportunity to bring their culture out.”
Next to the main exhibit, in the passageway that leads to the atrium’s main hallway, hangs the art of several Ethiopian students from Piney Branch Elementary School.
Rachna Rikhye, the ESOL teacher at Piney Branch, said she was approached by Sims after collaborating with Art for the People on a previous project. She thought it would be a great way to involve her Ethiopian students, several of whom drew self-portraits for the exhibit.
‘‘The kids really enjoyed themselves and had a very positive experience,” Rikhye said. ‘‘They showed a lot of pride in their culture.”
Asfaw said that kind of community involvement was welcomed by the artists.
‘‘It’s great,” he said. ‘‘You appreciate the community to be able to embrace and appreciate our work and support our causes.”
The aromas of incense and freshly ground coffee filled the Takoma Park Community Center on Saturday during a reception for the city’s first art exhibit to exclusively showcase local Ethiopian artists.
The exhibit, which will be on display throughout March, features the photography and paintings of four professionals, all originally from Ethiopia, as well as about a dozen Ethiopian students from Piney Branch Elementary School.
Setegn Atenaw plays the mesinko, a violin-like instrument widely played in Ethiopia, for a crowd gathered Saturday. (Photo: Naomi Brookner)
Alice Sims, who organized the exhibit through her Takoma Park-based nonprofit group, Art for the People, said the show was meant to provide an opportunity for cultural exchange between the area’s large Ethiopian population and the community.
Several dozen people attended the reception Saturday, which included an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, Ethiopian food donated by local restaurants, and the music of Setegn Atenaw, who plays the mesinko, a one-string Ethiopian instrument.
Artist Matewos Legesse came dressed in a traditional white shirt, pants and shoes that he said would be worn to formal events in Ethiopia. Legesse contributed several paintings to the exhibit, many depicting women and apples painted in vivid colors.
‘‘The colors of Africa are so bright, very colorful,” said artist Debebe Tesfaye, whose paintings of Ethiopian market scenes also featured vibrant colors, which he said is a reflection of the dress and culture of the east African nation.
Photographer Andarge Asfaw, who came to the United States in 1972 and lives and works in Silver Spring, said he has traveled to five continents, but nothing compares to being able to capture images of his homeland.
Asfaw’s photos at the exhibit were from a trip back to Ethiopia he took in the 1990s and illustrated scenes that included wheat fields, mountains, churches and marketplaces.
‘‘When you travel to a new place, you have no idea what it’s like; you have no understanding of the culture,” he said. ‘‘But when you travel back to a country after 27 years, you can see if it moved backward or forward.”
To Asfaw, Ethiopia has moved backward in one major way. Three decades ago, he said, the country was 80 percent forest, but as nomads cut down trees for cooking and fires, that number is down to 3 percent.
One of Asfaw’s photographs showed an Ethiopian market built around a large tree with far-reaching branches — an image he says is very rare in Ethiopia these days. He said he is trying to use art as a way to alleviate the problem of deforestation, and profits from his recent book will go toward the county-based nonprofit group Trees for the Future.
Tebabu Assefa, a member of the Takoma Park Community Action Group, which co-sponsored the event, said he wanted to give the public a chance to see Ethiopian culture, but also allow local Ethiopians to embrace their own traditions.
‘‘Each community has its own rich history, rich culture, but all of them are busy in life,” said Assefa, who came to the United States from Ethiopia in the 1980s. ‘‘They’re busy assimilating and trying to make art, and they don’t have the opportunity to bring their culture out.”
Next to the main exhibit, in the passageway that leads to the atrium’s main hallway, hangs the art of several Ethiopian students from Piney Branch Elementary School.
Rachna Rikhye, the ESOL teacher at Piney Branch, said she was approached by Sims after collaborating with Art for the People on a previous project. She thought it would be a great way to involve her Ethiopian students, several of whom drew self-portraits for the exhibit.
‘‘The kids really enjoyed themselves and had a very positive experience,” Rikhye said. ‘‘They showed a lot of pride in their culture.”
Asfaw said that kind of community involvement was welcomed by the artists.
‘‘It’s great,” he said. ‘‘You appreciate the community to be able to embrace and appreciate our work and support our causes.”
Friday, March 7, 2008
Mulatu Astatke performs at Harvard Univ.
By Corydon Ireland, Harvard News Office
It’s not easy to be a musician in most of the Third World, said legendary Ethiopian composer and musician Mulatu Astatke, who is a 2007-08 Radcliffe Fellow. Music is not typically taught in elementary schools, and in later life, opportunities for musicians are limited by poverty.
In Ethiopia “we have beautiful music, beautiful dance, and in general we have a beautiful culture — but little chance to develop,” said Mulatu (Ethiopians are generally referred to by their first names) in a Feb. 27 presentation.
The slight, soft-spoken composer was at Radcliffe’s 34 Concord Ave. Colloquium Room to give an audience of 70 a primer on Ethiopian contributions to world music — and on his own contributions as a transnational composer. (Mulatu originated a jazz fusion form known as Ethio-jazz. He recently composed music for the soundtrack of director Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 “Broken Flowers.”)
Early on, Mulatu wanted to be an engineer. But he went to high school in North Wales, where a rich arts curriculum allowed him to uncover his talent for music. “I found my calling there,” he said.
Then came more music schooling in London, before Mulatu moved to Boston, where in the late 1950s he was the first African student at the Berklee College of Music — “the only place in that time,” he said, to study jazz.
After further training in New York City, and more than a decade in the West, Mulatu moved back to Ethiopia, where he survived decades of civil war and the vagaries of changing political regimes. Mulatu taught for a living, though he was pressured out of one university job for promoting “imperialist music.” He also pioneered a groundbreaking radio music show in Addis Ababa and traveled frequently into the countryside to perform.
Today, the 67-year-old composer considers part of his musical mission to revive and improve upon the traditional instruments of his country. Modern groups are recording music based on Ethiopian rhythms and musical themes, said Mulatu, but none is reawakening the potential of traditional instruments.
For one, he pioneered the idea of increasing the number of strings on the krar, a bowl-shaped six-string lyre traditionally made of wood, cloth, and beads. He upgraded the instrument — now commonly amplified — to eight strings, then to 12.
If traditional instruments are limited, young players will turn to more versatile Western instruments — and lose a sense of their own culture, said Mulatu. There are ways to alter and improve the old, he said, without compromising the tonal qualities that underlie Ethiopian music.
The composer’s own signature instrument is the vibraphone, a set of graduated aluminum percussion bars that resemble a marimba or a xylophone. In Mulatu’s hands, said Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “the vibraphone becomes the dawal” — the resonant “bell stones” that call the faithful to prayer at Ethiopian churches. (Shelemay, also a Radcliffe Fellow this year, is Harvard’s G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and a professor of African and African American studies.)
After his Western training in music, Mulatu made a study of the complex layering of regional Ethiopian music traditions. It’s “a very diverse and a very [musically] rich country,” said Radcliffe Fellow Steven Kaplan, a professor of African studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the presentation, he praised Mulatu for delving into lesser-known musical traditions among tribes in southern Ethiopia.
The composer once brought musicians from four different tribes together in an Addis Ababa television studio and orchestrated a cross-tribal fusion performance. Clips from that filming were among the several musical and video interludes played or shown during the Radcliffe event.
To the Western ear and eye, the wind instruments were captivating. They included long trumpetlike wooden horns called malakat and end-blown flutes that each produce one pitch and together a complex melody.
The ideal way “to explore multiple forms” of music, said Mulatu, is through jazz.
Performance opportunities like the one in Addis Ababa also give obscure musicians (many of them farmers) artistic exposure beyond their villages, he said. “These people have been deprived of being heard in the world, or even their own country.”
Performance is also one way of bringing Ethiopian music into the modern age, and to “give identity to modern Ethiopian music,” said Mulatu. “I’ve been writing music here to come up with that identity.” He described the Radcliffe experience — with its opportunities for reflection, collaboration, and composition — as “one of the best years of my life.”
Mulatu is writing music for an electronic opera, and the first section of it will premiere in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre April 14. “The Yared Opera” will blend the old and the new, and incorporate traditional chant texts in Ge’ez, the Ethiopian liturgical language.
Part of the opera score was sneak-previewed on DVD for the Radcliffe audience. It’s based in part on the chant of St. Yared, the founder of Ethiopian church music thought to date back to the sixth century. Mulatu hopes future performances will feature live musicians in concert with the electronic version, and staged at the rock churches of Lalibela, a holy city in northern Ethiopia.
While at Radcliffe, Mulatu is also working on an oral history project with Kaplan and Shelemay. The two scholars have recorded 11 sessions with him so far, including the Feb. 27 presentation. Kaplan and Shelemay sat on either side of him, and alternated asking questions.
The oral history sessions, including DVDs and recordings, will be added to a new collection on Ethiopian musicians in the United States that Shelemay is assembling for the Library of Congress. She called Mulatu an “ambassador” for Ethiopian artistic tradition.
The premiere of the first section of Mulatu Astatke’s ‘The Yared Opera’ is part of a free performance of his works by the Either/Orchestra at 8 p.m. April 14 in the Sanders Theatre. The concert is the final note of an April 13-14 Ethiopian Cultural Creativity Conference at Harvard, which features scholarly presentations on the visual, musical, and literary artistic contributions of the Ethiopian diaspora.
It’s not easy to be a musician in most of the Third World, said legendary Ethiopian composer and musician Mulatu Astatke, who is a 2007-08 Radcliffe Fellow. Music is not typically taught in elementary schools, and in later life, opportunities for musicians are limited by poverty.
In Ethiopia “we have beautiful music, beautiful dance, and in general we have a beautiful culture — but little chance to develop,” said Mulatu (Ethiopians are generally referred to by their first names) in a Feb. 27 presentation.
The slight, soft-spoken composer was at Radcliffe’s 34 Concord Ave. Colloquium Room to give an audience of 70 a primer on Ethiopian contributions to world music — and on his own contributions as a transnational composer. (Mulatu originated a jazz fusion form known as Ethio-jazz. He recently composed music for the soundtrack of director Jim Jarmusch’s 2005 “Broken Flowers.”)
Early on, Mulatu wanted to be an engineer. But he went to high school in North Wales, where a rich arts curriculum allowed him to uncover his talent for music. “I found my calling there,” he said.
Then came more music schooling in London, before Mulatu moved to Boston, where in the late 1950s he was the first African student at the Berklee College of Music — “the only place in that time,” he said, to study jazz.
After further training in New York City, and more than a decade in the West, Mulatu moved back to Ethiopia, where he survived decades of civil war and the vagaries of changing political regimes. Mulatu taught for a living, though he was pressured out of one university job for promoting “imperialist music.” He also pioneered a groundbreaking radio music show in Addis Ababa and traveled frequently into the countryside to perform.
Today, the 67-year-old composer considers part of his musical mission to revive and improve upon the traditional instruments of his country. Modern groups are recording music based on Ethiopian rhythms and musical themes, said Mulatu, but none is reawakening the potential of traditional instruments.
For one, he pioneered the idea of increasing the number of strings on the krar, a bowl-shaped six-string lyre traditionally made of wood, cloth, and beads. He upgraded the instrument — now commonly amplified — to eight strings, then to 12.
If traditional instruments are limited, young players will turn to more versatile Western instruments — and lose a sense of their own culture, said Mulatu. There are ways to alter and improve the old, he said, without compromising the tonal qualities that underlie Ethiopian music.
The composer’s own signature instrument is the vibraphone, a set of graduated aluminum percussion bars that resemble a marimba or a xylophone. In Mulatu’s hands, said Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “the vibraphone becomes the dawal” — the resonant “bell stones” that call the faithful to prayer at Ethiopian churches. (Shelemay, also a Radcliffe Fellow this year, is Harvard’s G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and a professor of African and African American studies.)
After his Western training in music, Mulatu made a study of the complex layering of regional Ethiopian music traditions. It’s “a very diverse and a very [musically] rich country,” said Radcliffe Fellow Steven Kaplan, a professor of African studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the presentation, he praised Mulatu for delving into lesser-known musical traditions among tribes in southern Ethiopia.
The composer once brought musicians from four different tribes together in an Addis Ababa television studio and orchestrated a cross-tribal fusion performance. Clips from that filming were among the several musical and video interludes played or shown during the Radcliffe event.
To the Western ear and eye, the wind instruments were captivating. They included long trumpetlike wooden horns called malakat and end-blown flutes that each produce one pitch and together a complex melody.
The ideal way “to explore multiple forms” of music, said Mulatu, is through jazz.
Performance opportunities like the one in Addis Ababa also give obscure musicians (many of them farmers) artistic exposure beyond their villages, he said. “These people have been deprived of being heard in the world, or even their own country.”
Performance is also one way of bringing Ethiopian music into the modern age, and to “give identity to modern Ethiopian music,” said Mulatu. “I’ve been writing music here to come up with that identity.” He described the Radcliffe experience — with its opportunities for reflection, collaboration, and composition — as “one of the best years of my life.”
Mulatu is writing music for an electronic opera, and the first section of it will premiere in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre April 14. “The Yared Opera” will blend the old and the new, and incorporate traditional chant texts in Ge’ez, the Ethiopian liturgical language.
Part of the opera score was sneak-previewed on DVD for the Radcliffe audience. It’s based in part on the chant of St. Yared, the founder of Ethiopian church music thought to date back to the sixth century. Mulatu hopes future performances will feature live musicians in concert with the electronic version, and staged at the rock churches of Lalibela, a holy city in northern Ethiopia.
While at Radcliffe, Mulatu is also working on an oral history project with Kaplan and Shelemay. The two scholars have recorded 11 sessions with him so far, including the Feb. 27 presentation. Kaplan and Shelemay sat on either side of him, and alternated asking questions.
The oral history sessions, including DVDs and recordings, will be added to a new collection on Ethiopian musicians in the United States that Shelemay is assembling for the Library of Congress. She called Mulatu an “ambassador” for Ethiopian artistic tradition.
The premiere of the first section of Mulatu Astatke’s ‘The Yared Opera’ is part of a free performance of his works by the Either/Orchestra at 8 p.m. April 14 in the Sanders Theatre. The concert is the final note of an April 13-14 Ethiopian Cultural Creativity Conference at Harvard, which features scholarly presentations on the visual, musical, and literary artistic contributions of the Ethiopian diaspora.
The World's Richest Black Person is from Ethiopia
Ethiopia born Mohammed Al Amoudi is the World's richest black person with a net worth of $9 Billion. Forbes magazine March 2008 edition puts him at number 97 in the world and the 6th richest person in all of Africa and Middle East.
Forbes wrote "Two of the most noteworthy new entrants are South Africa's Patrice Motsepe and Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, the first black Africans to make their debut among the world's richest. Dangote is also the first-ever Nigerian billionaire." I have no idea what Forbes editors think of Mohamed Al Amoudi who was born and raised in Ethiopia, whose mother is Ethiopian.
By our count of the World Billionaires list from Forbes, Ethiopian born Mohamed Al-Amoudi is the World's Richest Black Person. The second richest black person is Nigeria's Dangote.
So let it be known, the richest Black Person is Ethiopian.
Other Black Billionaires
The second richest black person is Nigerian Aliko Dangote after Ethiopia born Mohamed Al-Amoudi shown below.
Aliko Dangote
And 46 year old South African Patrice Motsepe is the third richest black person
South African Patrice Motsepe
Source: Nazret.com
Forbes wrote "Two of the most noteworthy new entrants are South Africa's Patrice Motsepe and Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, the first black Africans to make their debut among the world's richest. Dangote is also the first-ever Nigerian billionaire." I have no idea what Forbes editors think of Mohamed Al Amoudi who was born and raised in Ethiopia, whose mother is Ethiopian.
By our count of the World Billionaires list from Forbes, Ethiopian born Mohamed Al-Amoudi is the World's Richest Black Person. The second richest black person is Nigeria's Dangote.
So let it be known, the richest Black Person is Ethiopian.
Other Black Billionaires
The second richest black person is Nigerian Aliko Dangote after Ethiopia born Mohamed Al-Amoudi shown below.
Aliko Dangote
And 46 year old South African Patrice Motsepe is the third richest black person
South African Patrice Motsepe
Source: Nazret.com
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Prominent Artists Engage UNFPA’s ‘Stop Early Marriage’ Campaign
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) organized a canvas painting event at Meskel Square on 7& 8 March 2008 participating Ethiopia’s prominent artists in its campaign under a theme “Stop Early Marriage”.
A painting of a 100 meter canvas, which is the largest piece of painting ever painted in Ethiopia, by 30 of Ethiopia’s prominent artists including Desta Hagos, Alem Teklu, Bekele Mekonen, will be launched at the Square on March 8, the International Women’s Day, commemorated this year under a theme “Investing in Women and Girls”, UNFPA officials disclosed on Monday.
Dr. Monique Rakotomalala, UNFPA Representative to Ethiopia at Hilton said the canvas painting event is one of the major activities forming part of the national campaign entitled “Stop Early Marriage”, which was conceived a few months ago by UNFPA, the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Population Council.
more on
A painting of a 100 meter canvas, which is the largest piece of painting ever painted in Ethiopia, by 30 of Ethiopia’s prominent artists including Desta Hagos, Alem Teklu, Bekele Mekonen, will be launched at the Square on March 8, the International Women’s Day, commemorated this year under a theme “Investing in Women and Girls”, UNFPA officials disclosed on Monday.
Dr. Monique Rakotomalala, UNFPA Representative to Ethiopia at Hilton said the canvas painting event is one of the major activities forming part of the national campaign entitled “Stop Early Marriage”, which was conceived a few months ago by UNFPA, the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Population Council.
more on
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Ethiopia - Kenenisa stars in controversial documentary film
By Abiy Demilew
Source: Capital
One of the leading athletes of the world, and a multi-record holder, Kenenisa Bekele, has fallen into controversy over a documentary, 'Love…keeps me running,' revolving around the athlete's life.
Abiy Fekyebelu, managing director of Abiy International Film, screenplay writer and co-director of the documentary, told Capital that Kenenisa has stopped the film's premiere, which was scheduled to be screened at the launch of the Ethiopian millennium in September 2007.
According to Abiy, differences started to rise between him and the athlete after the finalization of the documentary a year ago as they couldn't come to common understanding and agreement on how to proceed with the issue of screening the documentary.
"I've only received ETB 150,000 from Kenenisa for production costs including actors' fees," says Abiy. "The film is now in the hands of the athlete for the last year, without any action and us failing to benefit from the work."
According Abiy, production took two years with around 100 actors and others involved including leading athlete Major Haile Gebresellasie, athlete Tariku Bekele, former athlete and currently coach Tolossa Kotu, singer Habtemichael Demisse, actor Yinebeb Tamiru.
Capital's repeated attempts to contact Kenenisa were unsuccessful. However, on February 27, Kenenisa told Amharic weekly The Reporter that the film 'encroaches on his current private life' and that he is dissatisfied with the production quality of the film.
Abiy disclosed to Capital, that the central theme of the movie circles around the athlete and his late wife, Alem Techale
and that everything was done in full agreement with Kenenisa.
"There was no point in Kenenisa's complaint about the quality standard of the film since the entire production was made by a team of professionals from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) at the Sheraton Hotel," says Abiy.
"After the finalization, we have both invited guests to critique the story and production quality, and we received appreciation for the quality of work we created," Abiy recalled.
"Love…keeps me running", a two hour work, is directed by Lebanese Elie Abi AAD, with Abiy involved as assistant director.
Asked about efforts to solve the dispute through negotiation, Abiy told Capital that he was forced to address the issue in the media after negotiations failed and the athlete resorted to 'verbally threatening me.'
In a letter sealed and signed by Kenenisa and headlined Kenenisa Bekele Trading, Kenenisa solicits the support and cooperation of all concerned bodies to Abiy International Films.
"I've made this movie only out of love and respect of the athlete, not for profit," says Abiy, "But still, I need my rights respected as per the agreement."
Various attempts made to contact Kenenissa remained unsuccessful all through the week.
Capital learned a negotiation effort has been started by unmentioned artists on Saturday, before Capital went for print.
Source: Capital
One of the leading athletes of the world, and a multi-record holder, Kenenisa Bekele, has fallen into controversy over a documentary, 'Love…keeps me running,' revolving around the athlete's life.
Abiy Fekyebelu, managing director of Abiy International Film, screenplay writer and co-director of the documentary, told Capital that Kenenisa has stopped the film's premiere, which was scheduled to be screened at the launch of the Ethiopian millennium in September 2007.
According to Abiy, differences started to rise between him and the athlete after the finalization of the documentary a year ago as they couldn't come to common understanding and agreement on how to proceed with the issue of screening the documentary.
"I've only received ETB 150,000 from Kenenisa for production costs including actors' fees," says Abiy. "The film is now in the hands of the athlete for the last year, without any action and us failing to benefit from the work."
According Abiy, production took two years with around 100 actors and others involved including leading athlete Major Haile Gebresellasie, athlete Tariku Bekele, former athlete and currently coach Tolossa Kotu, singer Habtemichael Demisse, actor Yinebeb Tamiru.
Capital's repeated attempts to contact Kenenisa were unsuccessful. However, on February 27, Kenenisa told Amharic weekly The Reporter that the film 'encroaches on his current private life' and that he is dissatisfied with the production quality of the film.
Abiy disclosed to Capital, that the central theme of the movie circles around the athlete and his late wife, Alem Techale
and that everything was done in full agreement with Kenenisa.
"There was no point in Kenenisa's complaint about the quality standard of the film since the entire production was made by a team of professionals from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) at the Sheraton Hotel," says Abiy.
"After the finalization, we have both invited guests to critique the story and production quality, and we received appreciation for the quality of work we created," Abiy recalled.
"Love…keeps me running", a two hour work, is directed by Lebanese Elie Abi AAD, with Abiy involved as assistant director.
Asked about efforts to solve the dispute through negotiation, Abiy told Capital that he was forced to address the issue in the media after negotiations failed and the athlete resorted to 'verbally threatening me.'
In a letter sealed and signed by Kenenisa and headlined Kenenisa Bekele Trading, Kenenisa solicits the support and cooperation of all concerned bodies to Abiy International Films.
"I've made this movie only out of love and respect of the athlete, not for profit," says Abiy, "But still, I need my rights respected as per the agreement."
Various attempts made to contact Kenenissa remained unsuccessful all through the week.
Capital learned a negotiation effort has been started by unmentioned artists on Saturday, before Capital went for print.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
