kindness, my ticket to life. how it contributes to our well-being

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Kindness, my ticket to life.How it contributes to integration.

The Kindness effect

Avatars’ photos by Maurizio Raffa

Text by Pina Anna-Grace De Rosa

How it contributes to our well-being

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Text by Mahen Bonetti Photos by Paolo Mazzo

How it contributes to integration. Kindness, my ticket to life.

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#10. Kindness, my ticket to life. How it contributes to integration.

Text by Mahen Bonetti Photos by Paolo Mazzo

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© 2014 Editions GentletudeRiva Caccia 1d POBox 5710CH-6901 [email protected]

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GentleBooklets It is a series of long-form articles written by different authors. The booklets, designed for a quick read, feature texts and images. We have kindly asked to the authors to comment on the term “kindness.” Authors and photographers have donated their work.The motivations behind the project are the same as those of Gentletude, the desire to spread awareness about the need for “kindness” in our society, a society too focused on personal success to remember the basics of everyday living and respect for the environment that hosts us.Our decision to present these ideas in a series of publica-tions is due to the awareness that, in order to stimulate people to think about these issues, it is necessary to pre-sent some concrete examples. In this case, the examples are provided in the texts written by the authors.

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Kindness became my barometerKindness is my t icket to l i fe! A l i fe which has chal lenged and rewarded me with a t icket, that serves as my moral compass. I have always compared/appl ied k indness with the strat i f icat ion of the c lass system. Al though most modern societ ies would c la im that a c lass system is non-existent and that everything is open and free, even-tual ly i t does becomes apparent, that the layers and nuances of the fabr ic of most societ ies dictate otherwise. Throughout my l i fe, I str ive to al ign mysel f wi th those known for their buoyancy, for a lways bouncing back. So, no matter what chal lenges are posed, there’s th is sort of opt imism, which is also a very Afr ican qual i ty. As someone who arr ived in the U.S. over 40 years ago, under the condi t ions of an exi le, my fami ly and I received so much support f rom people in our host country. Having grown up in Sierra Leone dur ing my format ive years, my tradi t ional educa-t ion unconsciously aided me in navigat ing the adopted social norms of my colonized Br i t ish educat ion.

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Hence, America fe l t l ike an uninhibi ted space, permit t ing me to express mysel f f reely, thus cal ibrat ing my cur iosi ty about l i fe wi th the course of my journey. You must know that I am not an academic or f i lmmaker. Having l ived in the U.S. for many years and knowing how Afr ica and Afr ican were per-ceived by the masses, especial ly through the night ly news, made my urgency even greater to f ind a way to dispel many of the misconcept ions about the cont inent and her people. Yes, i t is t rue that the last 50 years, the cont inent has been ravaged by warfare, famine and too many despots, however, what she has given the wor ld is cul ture. Especial ly in the Americas – in every as-pect of contemporary cul ture in th is coun-try, you f ind her footpr ints. So as a way to gauge my karma, Kindness became my barometer. I needed to make use of the baton that had been passed on to me by my parents, who were at the helm of act iv ism for the pan-Afr ican movement in Sierra Leone, at the dawn of indepen-dence.

Their generat ion had this movement to wrap their brains around and I was st i l l in the wi lderness, f ight ing to make my mark!

Africa and CinemaAfter having l ived in the U.S. for a lmost 10 years, I found mysel f fu l ly entrenched in the heady days of l i fe in the 80’s New York scene. In the 1980’s Spike Lee began making f i lms about black people, and Afr i -can music ians l ike Fela Kut i and Youssou N’Dour were creat ing a new genre in the record stores cal led “World Music.” “Afr i -can Americans” started becoming the des-ignat ion of choice for many black people. For me, the cul tural context seemed r ipe for developing Afr ican cul tural events. At that t ime, I had just f in ished a degree from Bradford Col lege and was working at advert is ing giant Young and Rubicam and later at the publ icat ion Newsweek. At f i rst , I started promot ing Afr ican-themed part ies, which brought in a diverse crowd hungry for the sounds of the cont inent. However, the joyous and r ich cul ture of Afr ica was rarely conveyed in mainstream media, which tended to focus str ict ly on

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poverty and famine. I real ly fe l t that other people were always speaking for Afr ica, but d idn’ t know how to combat th is. Then I happened to at tend the Locarno Fi lm Fest ival in Switzer land in 1989. There I saw several Afr ican f i lms, includ-ing Ousmane Sembene’s Ceddo, which was part on anthology celebrat ing th i r ty years of Afr ican cinema. The idea of start ing an Afr ican f i lm fest ival in New York suddenly came to me. This atmosphere and energy mot ivated me to launch a f i lm fest ival , wi th no training or studies related to making a program l ike th is. I t was the kindness of the space I inhabi t that gave me the freedom to com-municate wi th people, and receive encour-agement f rom them. In my mind, “ there was this urgent need to f ind a way to show my daughter, my fr iends, and the people of New York, the Afr ica in which I grew up -- to give them a more mult i faceted depict ion of th is cont i -nent that shaped me into the person I am today.”

The path to make dreams come trueI t was to be several years though, before th is dream project became a real i ty. Even af ter having the Fi lm Society of L incoln Center and Brooklyn Museum on board, gett ing the funding took longer than I had expected. Nonetheless, I d id not feel demoral ized, but rather, my passion just become more visceral and I was relent less in f inding more l ike-minded people to take this jour-ney with me. Final ly, in 1992, Ford and Rockefel ler Foundat ions came through with start-up funds, and the next year the f i rst Afr ican Fi lm Fest ival (AFF) took place. The f i rst year we had hoped for a modest turnout, but to my surpr ise, Afr ican cin-ema was embraced by audiences show af-ter show. In the ensuing years, I was encouraged and chal lenged by the Afr ican f i lmmakers to persevere. When I founded the New York Afr ican Fi lm Fest ival in 1990, i t was di ff icul t to imagine i ts t ransformat ion into one of the leading f i lm fest ivals showcasing f i lm from around

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the Afr ican Diaspora in the Uni ted States. The cl imate at the t ime, wi th the f i rst s igns of South Afr ica moving towards democra-cy and the raging civ i l war in Liber ia was then, as i t is now, a cause for both hope and concern. In the last twenty years, the New York Af-r ican Fi lm Fest ival has responded to an increasing demand from American audi-ences for f i lms that address the real i ty of Afr ican exper ience and show the range of exper imentat ion wi th and synthesis of Af-r ican and Western aesthet ics.

Humor and Kindness: The African FilmHumor and kindness have formed the ba-sic ingredients of many Afr ican f i lms. From the ear ly works of Senegalese Sem-bene Osumane, “ the father of Afr ican Cin-ema”, to the most recent movies coming from the cont inent and the Diaspora, we are constant ly presented with laughter, touch, and shar ing as ways to navigate the complexi ty of everyday l i fe. When we talk about k indness, we are ta lk-ing about something more than abstract generosi ty: we are also ta lk ing about the

ways bodies interact in space and t ime. There is something unique in the way Af-r ican f i lms focus on touching, on int imacy, and on the shar ing of communal space. And of course, at the level of choreogra-phy, we have dance. For people accustomed to the stereotypes of mainstream TV and Hol lywood, where the del icate texture of human emot ion has been boi led down to the same stock ges-tures and phrases, the same cardboard characters endlessly recycled by the hot star of the moment, there is something ar-rest ing in the s imple real ism with which Afr ican cinema treats the expression of love, humor, surpr ise and joy. This one-of-a-kind vi ta l impulse can be seen equal ly across the cont inent, f rom the cut-rate v ideos of Nol lywood to the highly wrought art ist ry of such f i lm fest ival f ix tures as Abderrahmane Sissako, Os-valde Lewat-Hal lade and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.I would even argue that k indness is the most important element of f i lmic praxis in Afr ica, g iven the enormous economic, ed-ucat ional , and personal restr ict ions faced

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by Afr ican f i lmmakers in comparison with their counterparts in other countr ies. For these men and women, making a f i lm is an odyssey, and the journey from inspi-rat ion to real izat ion is of ten a long process of col laborat ion and commitment f raught wi th sacr i f ice, wi th the end of establ ishing dialogue with the publ ic. For these directors, every step in the f i lm-making process is a sacr i f ice made wi l l -ingly in order to establ ish understanding between the cont inent and those outside i t , the Diaspora and those on the main-land, women and men, compatr iots and neighbors.I am my biggest cr i t ic and f ind mysel f con-t inuously wonder ing i f I have done the r ight th ing or how can I improve on what we’ve already started. When I see people of a l l hues and genders exi t ing the theater cont inuing the debate of what they’ve just seen on the screen, or turning a program panel d iscussion into a courtyard negot iat ion ta lk, I feel reas-sured that we are making our l i t t le bi t of contr ibut ion to al leviat ing the poverty of spir i t !

Of course, as a woman, I am especial ly sensi t ive to the role of c inema in the l ives of Afr ican women. Female sol idar i ty and cooperat ion have been the bedrock for many Afr ican soci-et ies and their formal and informal econ-omies, and dur ing the worst moments of famine, war, economic cr is is and social upheaval , these nets of mutual a id have kept Afr ican countr ies al ive. I feel mysel f to be a part of th is shared dest iny, and i t is therefore both a duty and a pleasure to help spread the voices of the men and women from my cont inent and the Diaspora whose works are featured in the Afr ican Fi lm Fest ival .My bel ief is that most spaces we inhabi t a l ready provide the opportuni ty for the in-tegrat ion of cul tures. And at the foundat ion of that integrat ion is Afr ica. The integrat ion process impl ies a k ind at t i tude: the way in which humans adapt themselves to a foreign environment and the way in which others are ready to wel-come them create an extraordinary mix of sol idar i ty, understanding, consciousness

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and comparison, only possible through a cul ture of gent leness. This I real ized short ly af ter set t ing foot on the shores of America, whose ci t izens are composed of people f rom al l over the wor ld. Outside of Afr ica, the largest number of people of Afr ican descent are found in the Americas—from Uruguay up to Canada, because when the ships came they went al l the way around. I f you look at what const i tutes America’s cul tural references —jazz, bluegrass, banjo, qui l t ing, a l l the way up to hip hop in contemporary cul-ture—al l of these things have their roots in Afr ican cul ture. Now, i f we al l agree that the moving im-ages is one of the most powerful , acces-sible ways to reach many people at one t ime, then f i lm gives people the opportu-ni ty to t ravel to di fferent places in Afr ica, and to connect to the cul tural references that surround them every day. This was my mot ivat ion. Simultaneously, th is lets people start rethinking their im-age of Afr ica. You start f inding your foot ing wi th in that

space, how you relate to the cont inent and i ts diaspora. Afr ica is a very large cont i -nent. A lot of people tend to th ink of i t as a monol i th ic whole, and things l ike the Af-r ica Is A Country Blog have picked up on that, but there are in fact over f i f ty coun-tr ies there. And within those countr ies, there are nu-merous tr ibes and ethnic i t ies and cul tures. So real ly, just having an Afr ican Fi lm Fes-t ival is an act of cul tural integrat ion, an act of k indness. When you add to that the fact that i t is tak-ing place in New York, and by extension in the Uni ted States, there is a natural inte-grat ion that takes place just in having au-dience members who aren’ t Afr ican come to see these f i lms and meet the f i lmmak-ers and ask them quest ions af terward. The discussions af ter the Fest ival , the smal l ta lk between f i lmmaker and audi-ence members af ter the f i lm when we are al l f i l ing out of the c inema, are pr iceless.

Kindness, films and integrationI bel ieve that Kindness can faci l i tate the process of integrat ion between a host cul-

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ture and that of an immigrant.In my opinion, i t is not a lways the f i rst in-st inct a host cul ture might feel toward an immigrant, but i t is a radical idea, one that seeks to balance what a host cul ture has to offer and what an immigrant is br inging. We are al l fami l iar wi th the schema in which the immigrant is taking, taking, tak-ing, but what i f we were to th ink of the host cul ture and the immigrant as taking part in a type of exchange? This is more and more the real i ty these days with the global ized, digi t ized world we l ive in. With that idea of an exchange, k indness becomes both a mot ivator and a condui t for integrat ion. So f i lm is a set t ing for k indness, both the k indness of the Fest ival and programmers in host ing, but also the k indness of the f i lmmakers in giv ing us their stor ies.Kindness is one of the v i r tues, so i ts se-cret to overcoming relat ionship problems isn’ t a new idea of course. I t ’s very ancient in fact . When we are k ind to one another, i t smooths the road, i t puts our interests on the same level as the interest of others.

So the host cul ture’s adopt ion of k indness towards immigrants makes i t possible for there, again, to be an exchange of sorts. Benevolence and generosi ty are on the other s ide of th is coin, and i t ’s that spir i t of generosi ty that fueled my desire to found the Afr ican Fi lm Fest ival . Fi lm is a very compet i t ive wor ld, and I hoped in some smal l way to show these f i lmmakers some kindness in the foreign land of America. Over the past twenty years, I ’ve been very moved to see so many men and women come to the Fest ival and love i t , to t rea-sure these f i lms and f i lmmakers, who give so much of themselves to the real izat ion of these f i lms.Art can support Kindness, in terms of the care of and at tent ion to others; in the process of coming into contact wi th oth-ers v ia v isual storytel l ing, hopeful ly one’s eyes and heart are opened to the s i tua-t ions and pl ights, the hopes and desires, of the narrat ive (or documentary) subjects portrayed in a f i lm or work of ar t . By t ransforming an audience’s perspec-t ive of a given place or people, we are hopeful ly beginning a process whereby

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they might one day be in a posi t ion to ex-tend kindness to those people i f they come across them in their waking l i fe, having seen them in a cel lu lo id dream. I t is perhaps ideal ist ic, but th is would be a great legacy for the Fest ival to have in the l i fe of New York and each of the c i t ies across the States where we show f i lms.

Kindness around the worldIn my opinion, k indness can have univer-sal aspects common to al l cul tures. So many cul tural t radi t ions have a version of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you. This is essent ia l ly a version of k indness. So I th ink there has always been this im-pulse on a cul tural level to extend benev-olence and kindness to others, the idea that th is is our highest way of being to-ward one another. And as our wor ld becomes more and more integrated, i t is essent ia l , to my way of th inking, that we cont inue to cul t ivate th is k indness. I t is easy now to do so much on our own, wi thout human contact , v ia computers, but

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art and f i lm can cul t ivate k indness through storytel l ing, as I have already descr ibed. Even i f cul tural d i fferences can involve a di fferent way of doing things, i f you look beyond the act ions, or behind them, you can of ten see that the values are the same. I th ink most i f not a l l cul tures value hospi-ta l i ty, which is in essence an act of k ind-ness, part icular ly when done for immi-grants, but hospi ta l i ty looks very di fferent f rom one cul ture to another! Perhaps the smal lest uni t of cul ture is the fami ly, and fami l ies, though of ten gett ing i t wrong, are meant to be vessels of sup-port , and by extension, k indness, so al l cul tures would, to my mind, seem to str ive toward kindness in their bet ter moments, even i f that looks di fferent in Senegal than in Ethiopia, in Br i ta in than in Brazi l .

ConclusionI hope that our Fest ival celebrates diver-s i ty, both wi th in Afr ica and between Afr ica and the United States. So i f a universal d imension does exist to k indness, as enacted in the Fest ival , i t would be a universe of d i fferences.

I t ’s that appreciat ion of d i fference that seems to actual ly be necessary for k ind-ness to extend across cul tures. Even i f we’re able to say, look, k indness is a universal value, we are never al l going to agree on what that looks l ike. So, we keep doing the Fest ival , invi t ing audiences and f i lmmakers to see a new story and talk about i t , and hopeful ly we’re moving forward. Twenty years ago seems l ike yesterday, but i t ’s a s igni f icant amount of t ime, and hopeful ly we’ve been here long enough that we can say we are making a di ffer-ence.

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AUTHOR

Mahen BonettiMahen Bonetti was born in 1956 in Sierra Leone to a family that has experienced the ups and downs of post-colonial politics. Several of her relatives were forced into exile in the United States and England in 1970. Mahen could only return in 1980 for the funeral of her maternal uncle, former Prime Minister Sir Albert Mar-gai, who died in the United States. Mahen received her bachelor of arts in administrative studies at Bradford College and pursued graduate studies in media communication at New York Univer-sity. She worked at Young and Rubicam and at News-week’s editorial and advertising division, before be-coming founder and executive director of the African Film Festival Inc. in 1990. Her experiences led her to the conclusion that media could be used to encourage positive change in the world - not just to entertain, but also to educate.

www.africanfilmny.org

PHOTOGRAPHER

Paolo MazzoBorn in Padova, lives and works in Milan. Profes-sional photographer since 1988, he’s partner of F38F, that produces advertising,publishing and architecture photographs. Focused on social themes, beside stu-dio work he conceived and produced several person-al projects, about the cultural regeneration of a forgot-ten mining city (Arsia, Croatia, work in progress); the fugitive Sahrawi people (“Voci distanti dal Mare”, Na-poli 1998; “Il Coraggio di essere un popolo”, Reggio Emilia 2002); the urbanistic analysis of the city where he lives (in F. Oliva, L’urbanistica di Milano, Hoepli ed-itore, Milano 2002; A. Arcidiacono, L. Pogliani (a cura di), Milano al futuro, et al./edizioni, Milano 2011).Since 2002 he collaborates with the the Academy of the Architecture in Mendrisio.Since 2007 he is one of the coordinator of the ISSI, the international Summer school Ivrea. He gave lec-tures and workshops at the IUAV in Venice, at the Polytechnic of Milan and Turin and at the humanitar-ian school of photography in Milan. He won “Marco Bastianelli- Opera Prima“ Prize in 2010 and he took part to different solo and group exhibitions.

www.be.net/paolomazzoF38F/frame

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GENTLETUDE

Gentletude is a neologism composed of the words “gen-tilezza” (gentleness/kindness) and “attitudine” (attitude). It pursues the aims for a better world without violence, ar-rogance and rudeness. A world where caring and paying attention to others, common sense and balanced com-petitivity are the most important things. The production provided by the association was completely free, based on the Commons Creative Criteria. Gentletude in Italy is a non-profit organization (NPO), and in Switzerland is a non-profit association.

Contact Gentletude on the website: www.gentletude.com

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The integration process implies a kind attitude:

the way in which humans adapt themselves

to a foreign environment and the way in which

others are ready to welcome them create an extraordinary

mix of solidarity, understanding, consciousness and comparison,

only possible through a culture of gentleness.

kindness, my ticket to life. how it contributes to our well-being

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term kindness

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