Saturday 14th November from 7pm-10pm UK time, Zoom Webinar.
On the 10th November 1995 Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other people from the Ogoni people were executed by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. They were leaders of a non-violent campaign against the destruction of the Ogoni Delta in Nigeria by the oil industry, especially Royal Dutch Shell.
Virtual Migrants are proud to be co-organising this Global Arts Night in support of the Ogoni and other communities fighting extractivism around the world with Platform, in collaboration with MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) and Voices that Shake!
Virtual Migrants contribution will be to showcase CCCTV, featuring chopped up Continent Chop Chop content hosted by Sai Murray, and including the launch of two unreleased films featuring Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey. (The link to view these films will go live at the same time as the event):
I Will Not Dance to Your Beat – poem by Nnimmo Bassey
I Thought It Was Oil, But It Was Blood – poem by Nnimmo Bassey
The Climate Crisis Needs System Change – an interview with Nnimmo Bassey
The event links the murder of the Ogoni 9 to current global struggles, and features:
*Panel discussions
*Short film screenings
*Artistic presentations
*Performance, poetry and singing for justice
*Collective meditation/ Healing practice
*and much more!
*live English subtitles + translation in french & Spanish will be available
To book tickets:
FB event here https://fb.me/e/356cJWlYy
WATCH OUT for further film launches:
On the 21st November we will be publishing two films documenting our ‘Breathe’ project:
In June 2019 Virtual Migrants and Numbi Arts collaborated on ‘Breathe!’, a protest/performance that asked who controls the local environment in Tower Hamlets, and questioned planning processes that are racialised and exclusive of the people who actually live in a given locality. These films show the protest performance created by young people and others as they occupied an abandoned community garden under threat from ‘developers’.
and on the 28th November two more films, from our 2015 touring production Continent Chop:
EPM – Ethical People Movement campaign promotion video – for the first time we’re making the spoof film from the show available, which looks at white saviour syndrome and charity ‘ethics’ – particularly relevant as Comic Relief stand down their celebrity offensive (or should that be the other way round?) and a film specially commissioned for the performance: Blind Spot – climate justice poetry video by Zena Edwards, which calls to account the ‘whiteness’ of climate campaigning.