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AFRICA FEST 2007 - AUGUST 11, 2007 at WARNER PARK
Join African Association of Madison, Inc. for $25 per year:Oct - Sept.
Mail check to: AAM, PO Box 1016, Madison, WI 53701
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"“I was inspired to do the film because I put a relaxer (chemical) on my daughter’s hair when she was six years old, and it all fell out. As a result, to make her feel comfortable, I ended up cutting all of my relaxed hair off and going natural with her. And it was a journey that took me all the way to here (to the Austin Women’s Film Festival).”
Six years old is too young to relax the hair. Of course it fell out.
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"In the days before volcanoes were invented, lava had to be hand carried down from the mountains and poured on the sleeping villagers.
This took a great deal of time."
----- Original Message -----
From: Aggo Akyea <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 2:59 pm
Subject: Film Encourages Africans and African Americans to Cultivate Natural Hair
To: [log in to unmask]
> *****************************************************************
>
> AFRICA FEST 2007 - AUGUST 11, 2007 at WARNER PARK
>
> Join African Association of Madison, Inc. for $25 per year:Oct - Sept.
>
> Mail check to: AAM, PO Box 1016, Madison, WI 53701
> Phone: 608-258-0261 -- Email: [log in to unmask]
> Web: www.AfricanAssociation.org
>
> *****************************************************************
>
> Film Encourages Africans and African Americans to Cultivate Natural
> Hair
>
> By Darren Taylor
> Washington
> 22 May 2007
> http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/Film-Encourages-Africans-and-African-Americans-to-Cultivate-Natural-Hair.cfm
>
> US singer Macy Gray and 'big hair' ... The film, 'New Growth',
> advocates for 'natural' hairstyles
>
> The city of Austin in the United States has hosted an international
> film festival at which several works with Africa-related themes were
> shown. One that received a lot of attention was a documentary produced
> by an African-American filmmaker, Michelle Farris-Lewis. She uses her
> film to celebrate people of African descent who’ve refused to
> straighten their hair in favor of “going natural.” In the second of a
> five-part series focusing on Africa-related films that were shown at
> the Austin festival, VOA’s Darren Taylor reports on Farris-Lewis’s
> film, entitled “New Growth.”
>
> Michelle Farris-Lewis is a native of South Park, an inner city area of
> Houston, Texas, where she filmed the documentary that received an
> enthusiastic round of applause from the audience in Austin.
>
> But Farris-Lewis says she filmed “New Growth” with Africans in mind as
> well.
>
> “So many Africans think the way that we African-Americans do: That
> they must have nice, straight hair in order to be accepted, in order
> to get good jobs,” she explains.
>
> “The film is actually comprised of what I call hair stories, of women
> who have taken this journey from relaxed (straight) hair to natural
> hair – that’s one part of the film. And then the other is the opinions
> of other people, like men – I make sure I go to barbershops and I get
> their opinions and the way they feel about hair, because a lot of the
> things that we do to our hair as women has to do with the men in our
> lives.”
>
> In one of the most striking scenes in the film, shot in a Houston
> barbershop packed with men – and testosterone – a young man having his
> hair cut reflects: “As far as I’ve always been brought up and what
> we’ve been taught, is that the only good hair is hair you can run your
> fingers through. If you can’t run your fingers through it, then it
> ain’t good hair.”
>
> “Comments such as this,” says Farris-Lewis, “reveal the social
> conditioning that black people all over the world have undergone….
> There’s a ‘good hair, bad hair’ thing going on in black communities.
> It’s like if you have the wavy, close to Caucasian, European hair –
> that it’s good. And as close as it is to African – the kinky – then
> it’s bad.”
>
> During another scene in the film, an elderly man emotionally laments
> that black people have lost their “respect” by straightening their hair.
>
> “Some of you all remember that, back in the day, when we were brothers
> and sisters – soul people – we were wearing it natural! People
> respected us! The Hispanics respected us, the Asians respected us; the
> white man respected us! We don’t have that respect left!” he exclaims,
> to the agreement of the men around him.
>
> “New Growth” includes footage of women and men, who, according to a
> pamphlet promoting the film, are “reveling in their own process – a
> process that does not involve chemicals or complex salon treatments,
> but a processing of the mind that allows one the freedom to embrace
> who they are naturally and to be proud.”
>
> What happens in America is the same as what happens in Africa, says
> Farris-Lewis: “Black people putting dangerous, damaging products on
> their hair to straighten it, to look white, because society makes them
> feel inferior, makes them feel that their natural hair is dirty. And
> they’re willing to go through great pain, and spend a lot of money, so
> that they feel they fit into society by means of their hairstyles.”
>
> A “personal and traumatic experience” spurred Farris-Lewis to produce
> “New Growth.”
>
> “I was inspired to do the film because I put a relaxer (chemical) on
> my daughter’s hair when she was six years old, and it all fell out. As
> a result, to make her feel comfortable, I ended up cutting all of my
> relaxed hair off and going natural with her. And it was a journey that
> took me all the way to here (to the Austin Women’s Film Festival).”
>
> She says the “dangerous” standards of beauty that are thrust upon
> people – and especially women – in America, are disseminated through
> various media – like Hollywood and music videos – and then spread to
> Africa.
>
> “African women see these images, and they aspire to copy Americans.
> They put all sorts of damaging products on their hair. They begin to
> believe, like we do here, that women can only be beautiful if they
> have long, shiny, flowing hair.”
>
> In “New Growth,” Farris-Lewis also interviews African-American women
> who are refusing to “go natural” and are insisting that they have a
> right to straighten their hair.
>
> In a revealing comment in the film, a woman with straight hair
> provides viewers with some of the psychology and societal standards
> behind her decision to continually relax her curly hair: “When I do
> get my hair straightened like this, the first thing that a lot of
> people say is: Oh, your hair is so pretty…. Instead of every day when
> I wear it out and bushy and curly, I never get any compliments.”
>
> Farris-Lewis repeatedly emphasizes that her film is not intended to
> criticize those women of African descent who choose to straighten
> their hair.
>
> “The film is just a celebration of women who have decided: I don’t
> want to do that anymore; I just want to be me and be what God made me.
> It’s not really to condemn anyone that has chosen to relax their hair,
> but just to celebrate those who’ve chosen not to,” she says.
>
> Farris-Lewis also insists that she’s not advocating a “return to the
> 1970’s, with massive Afro hairdos or that everyone must look like Bob
> Marley…. Natural doesn’t have to be Afro, huge hair. Natural is just
> something without chemicals – many black men that you see, they have
> natural hair; it’s really the women who struggle with the idea of
> processing their hair, because we’re taught that we have to have this
> long hair, we have to have this straight, flowing hair. Natural means
> you have chosen not to chemically process your hair. And black hair in
> its natural state is not straight.”
>
> Despite her attempts to “celebrate rather than condemn” with her
> documentary, Farris-Lewis clearly sees the film and the issues it
> raises as a struggle. “How many black actresses and black singers and
> successful black businesspeople do we see out there these days with
> natural hair?” she asks rhetorically, adding: “Ninety-nine percent of
> my friends have permed hair, so I’m in no way preaching!”
>
> Farris-Lewis is working on a number of future projects, and says she’d
> like to hear specifically from women in Africa about their “hair
> struggles and how they feel about natural hair, and the pressure
> they’re under to conform to Western standards of beauty.”
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Email her at [log in to unmask]
> Part of the film can be viewed at www.MySpace.com/New_growth
>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
> Aggo Akyea
> http://akyea.tribalpages.com/
> http://www.attamills2008.com/
>
> "Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my
> baskets,
> I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."
> WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau – 1854
>
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