#African folktales

[adarkrainbow]

Fairytales in French cinema

Pictures from "Kirikou et la Sorcière" (Kirikou and the Witch/Sorceress) by Michel Ocelot.

The mid-20th century was marked by Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast... Jacques Demy's Donkeyskin left its print on the latter half of the 20th century... And Michel Ocelot's Kirikou burst out of the dawn of the 21st century. As I said before, this movie could be compared in term of scope, effect and popularity, to what The Lion King was in America... (except this movie's better :p)

Adapting a West African folktale while sharing modern messages about issues such as the power of tyrants or the nature of discrimination, using all sorts of traditional African artstyles for its design ranging from Ancient Egypt to the Benin, this movie enormous success (it even was adapted as a world-renowned live-action musical) completely redefined the animation industry in France in the early 21st century.

[uwmspeccoll]

An African Fine Press Friday

As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, I was introduced to this handmade, hand-printed little book by noted African American book artist and letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. (b. 1948),entitled How Wisdom Came to the World, printed in Oak Park, Illinois at Kennedy’s Jubilee Press in 1992 in an edition of 50 copies.

The piece is an adaptation of a Yoruba folktale about a man named Ijapa who tried to keep all the wisdom of the world to himself and, with the help of his son, comes to realize that wisdom is for everyone. Ijapa literally means “That which moves around awkwardly” in reference to a turtle or tortoise, which is an animal trickster of Yoruba legend. Therefore, this accordion book is printed on pages that are hand-cut in the shape of a turtle. Although the pages are unnumbered, each page has has a different number of small, printed turtles to indicate the order it should be read. The accordion folds down into a 10 x 13 cm square that is housed in a handmade, four-fold amate “paper” enclosure with a turtle motif on the outside.

View more posts on the work of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

View more Black History Month posts.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

- Elizabeth V., Special Collections Undergraduate Writing Intern

[fortunaestalta]

[ariel-seagull-wings]

@grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @adarkrainbow @themousefromfantasyland @softlytowardthesun @tamisdava2 @fairytaleslive @princesssarisa

[ijys-folktales]

Today, I woke up feeling like a sloth in a snowstorm. The cold outside is telling me to stay in bed, and my blanket is totally on board. Even the lion knows when to rest, right?"

[yunicstales]

He Came Back from the Evil Forest and this Happens #Africantales #africa...

#viralpost2024 #folklore #yunicstales #tales #story #storytimes #folklore #folkart #tales #story #storytimes #folklore #yunicstales #fyp

[justexperience1]

🌍✨ Step into the magical world of African folklore with “The Enchanted Union: The Maiden and the Masquerade”! Join Adaora and Eze on a journey of love, trust, and resilience. This enchanting tale will transport you to a realm where the human and spirit worlds coexist in harmony. 🌟

🎥 Watch the full story on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/svhk99ide2c

💬 What did you think of Adaora and Eze’s story? Let us know in the comments!

[judgingbooksbycovers]

African Folktales

By Roger Abrahams.

[jakemilleraudio]

Episode highlight from African Folktales Season 4 edited and mixed by me

[uwmspeccoll]

Spotlight: African Folktales

For Black History Month I found another book of folktales (shocker) to share with you all! The fun and exciting part of this job is being able to look into things that one would not normally take the time to explore, and I have been given the opportunity to do nothing but explore and dig into the expansive collection we have in Special Collections (if you aren’t getting interested to come in and take a peek, you should be).

The book I am keen on sharing is The Ox of the Wonderful Horns: And Other African Folktales, a children’s book from our Historical Curriculum Collection, published in New York by Atheneum in 1971. The stories were retold and illustrated by Ashley Frederick Bryan (1923-2022), an American writer and illustrator for children’s books, of which most of his subjects focus on the African-American experience. Bryan’s desire and challenge for the anthology was to “bring the stilted language of the linguists’ narration back to an oral tradition through rhythm and poetic verses.”

This anthology features five tales from Akan-Ashanti, Angolan, South African, and Kaffir myths with various illustrations accompanying us through each story. The illustrations switch between half-page black and white and full-page color that are meant to evoke African wood block motifs that suggest the ochres and reds of African clay dyes and African textile designs; very eye-catching and absorbing!

View another of my posts.

View more Black History Month posts.

-- Elizabeth, Special Collections Undergraduate Writing Intern

[bestiarium]

Antjie Somers [South African folklore]

Bogeymen are one of the most common recurring character types among folktales: an evil monster, ghost or undead human that comes out at night and takes misbehaving children. Sometimes to eat them and sometimes just dragging them off to an unknown (yet likely unpleasant) fate. In South Africa, children were told similar tales about Antjie Somers, a local folk character originating from the 19th century. Though she checks all the boxes of a typical bogeyman character, there is one thing that sets her apart from the others: Antjie Somers is human with no clear supernatural traits.

As the story goes, there once was a man named Andries Somers. He worked on a fishing vessel (interesting note: in some variations, he was a slave rather than a conventional fisherman) and was known for his exceptional work ethic: when Andries hauled in his nets, his skill and strength put his fellow fishermen to shame. Aside from being talented and diligent, Andries was also brave and kind-hearted, as he had saved people from drowning on several occasions.

Alas, his diligence bred jealousy in his comrades until one day they decided to teach him a lesson. The fishermen banded together and surrounded Andries on a beach, intending to rough him up. But Andries was a man of exceptional strength and knocked all of his assailants to the ground. When the dust settled however, he saw that one of his attackers couldn’t get up: the man had hit his head falling down and died on the spot. Knowing that he would be charged with murder if he stayed, Andries saw no choice to flee.

He stole a kopdoek (a kind of headscarf) and a dress from his sister and ran away disguised as a woman. After fleeing far away, he eventually found new work in a settlement somewhere over the mountains, where his former comrades would never find him. Andries worked in a vineyard and it wasn’t long until his employer noticed his exceptional work ethic and put him in charge of the other workers. But here his sad past repeated itself, and he soon found himself the target of jealousy and anger from his co-workers. Eventually, they found the dress and kopdoek Andries still kept in his hut, and mocked him endlessly about it. They called him Antjie (a feminine name) and poked fun of him for crossdressing. He endured these childish taunts for three days, before packing his stuff and leaving under the cover of night, full of anger and disappointment.

Andries was never found, but after a while, children who had been sent to the forest to collect lumber started telling stories of a strange elderly woman dressed in a striped dress and kopdoek, wearing a sack over her shoulder. The woman was always angry and would threaten kids with her knife, threatening to kill them and stuff their corpses into her sack. Their parents connected the dots and assumed this mysterious woman to be Antjie Somers, as they had taken to calling Andries. From then on, people would warn their kids to behave, lest Antjie Somers stab them and take them away in her sack.

This story actually has some political context, as it originated in a period of tension between workers and farmers following the then-recent abolishment of the slave trade. I won’t go into the details here, but there is quite a bit of historical context to this tale if you want to read up about it.

Though Antjie/Andries is the protagonist of the story, this character was later demonized further and turned into a demonic monster, a goblin, a monstrous woman with animal-like characteristics or a witch in some retellings. In this last version, Andries quite literally became a woman when he turned evil, which also has some political subtext. In fact, because the character was crossdressing and gender-nonconforming, Antjie Somers is sometimes regarded as a queer character, though I assume this is more of a modern interpretation (he only donned the dress to disguise himself, after all). The moral of the story however remains quite simple: don’t leave children unattended in creepy woods.

Sources: Steenekamp, M., 2011, Antjie/Andries Somers: Decoding the bodily inscriptions of a South African folklore character, research report submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements of the Master’s degree of Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa. Croeser, C., 2020, A wilting whisper of Antjie Somers: a meditation on the witchery and gender-non-conformance of Afrikaans Folklore Figure Antjie Somers, Scrutiny2, 25(2). Gorelik, B., 2021, Cross-dresser as a bogey: on the gender ambiguity of Antjie Somers in South African folklore, South African Journal of Cultural History, 35(1). (image source 1: Anja Venter) (image source 2: Galago on Deviantart)

[mask131]

The fracture goes even deeper when you consider that, in France, it is not just a "regular" movie. It is one of these movies you designate as THE movie. I would dare say this movie is France's local equivalent of "The Lion King".

Both movies defined an entire generation that was marked by them. Both became in a short time huge pop culture references (and "Kirikou" in France is a proverbial name just as famous as the expression "Hakuna Matata", same with how Karaba is just as a classic of childhood villains as Scar).

Both movies had several sequels (Kirikou and the Witch became part of a trilogy of animated movies). Both movies had a lot of side-materials (Kirikou not only had his movies being turned into children book, he also appeared in children documentaries about African wildlife and there was a video game made). AND both movies had a friggin musical made for them! In fact, the musical of Kirikou looks a lot like the musical adaptation of The Lion King - to the point myself I once mistook a picture of one for the other.

I will even dare say that there is something to be said about how the subject was chosen and treated for these two movies about Africa made for a non-African audience. I mean, on the American side we have animals instead of humans who are enacting very European tropes, from Shakespearian tragedy to Hitler recreations... And on the French side we have a realistic and accurate depiction of an actual village, we have a wide array of humans, and we have the adaptation of a typical West-African folktale...

Cough cough... I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

(And it is so funny to know that in the US a school-teacher marched her class out of theaters... In France this movie is shown in school and used by class teachers for their programs - or as a reward for good students, you known have a classic animated movie to have a bit of fun... So again it is fascinating to see how in the US this movie is perceived as "dangerous" while in France it is "safe".)

@ariel-seagull-wings @themousefromfantasyland It remains fascinating to me that, in the US, the film Kirikou and the Sorceress is kinda obscure and only available in a blurry print and old non-anamorphic DVDs while in other countries it's just... a children's film? Like, a restoration was on the Criterion Channel for a few months some years ago, but that's been gone for ages now.

It's because of the completely nonsexual animated nudity that's so matter-of-fact within the film and normal among the culture it portrays that it becomes irrelevant. And some people might say, "Well, if it's irrelevant then they could have just censored it for the US release," but like... that would have been a loss to the film.

Like, it's all very well for people to say things like "Nudity in and of itself is nonsexual" but having a film where the nudity is so mundane you might even forget about it (or at least be forced to confront your own cultural biases regarding nudity) shows that.

This is the way these people live. It is ordinary. The film doesn't try to otherize its characters because of it.

It just is.

And that makes it integral to the film.

I only saw the film for the first time when it appeared on the Criterion Channel, but I feel like if I'd grown up with it (there would have been no chance of that; my family would have confiscated the DVD), I'd have had a less complicated emotional journey regarding my body.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

TONGUE MEET

(A Folktale from Quênia)

@faintingheroine @princesssarisa @softlytowardthesun @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @adarkrainbow @thealmightyemprex @scarletblumburtonofeastlondon @professorlehnsherr-almashy @themousefromfantasyland

Once upon a time in there was a very prosperous kingdom. There, everyone was happy and loved the king and queen, who was chubby, with rosy cheeks and a good laugh.

One day, without any explanation, the queen started to get sick, day by day she lost weight and her skin became dull and lackluster.

The king sought all the healers in the kingdom, however, no one found the answer to what was happening to her.

Determined, the king decided to seek a cure for his wife himself.

He left for the kingdom and one day, when passing through a field, he heard a good laugh, which reminded him of his wife. He went to the house and looking out the window saw a woman sitting with her husband, the two were laughing and he also saw that she was chubby and with rosy cheeks.

The king knocked on the door, and when the man answered, he was startled to see the king of his country standing in front of him.

Immediately, the king asked the man what he did to make his wife so beautiful and healthy, so plump with rosy cheeks.

The man immediately said:

“Because every day I feed my wife with tongue meat!”

The king hurried back to the palace and had the royal cook prepare a large beef tongue soup for the queen.

The cook promptly separated the tongues of every animal he could and made a great soup. The queen ate the soup, but it did not get better. She continued to lose weight.

So the king had an idea, he took the queen to the peasant's house and he took the peasant woman to the palace.

In a short time the queen became plump and flushed, the peasant woman became ill and began to lose weight.

The king returned to the peasant's house intrigued by the situation, wanting to understand what was going on.

Then the peasant explained:

“When I said that every day I feed my wife with tongue meat, I was talking about the stories I tell my wife every day, with my tongue.”

The king took the queen to the palace and began to tell her stories every day, she recovered fully and was never sick again.

That's why in Quênia everyone says that listening to stories is good for everyone's health.

[doormouseetcappendix]

Best Movies Of 2023 61-70

Medusa Deluxe directed by Thomas Hardiman

Nocebo directed by Lorcan Finnegan

Knock At The Cabin directed by M. Night Shyamalan

A Haunting In Venice directed by Kenneth Branagh

The Voyage Of The Demeter directed by Andre Ovredal

Malum directed by Anthony DiBlasi

Unicorn Wars directed by Alberto Vasquez

Castlevania: Nocturne directed by Sam Deats, Adam Deats, Saren Stone, Tam Lu

African Folktalkes Reimagined directed by Loukman Ali, Walt Mzenga Corey, Mohamed Echkouna, Voline Ogutu, Akorede Azeez, Gcobisa Yako

Animalia directed by Sofia Alaoui

[yunicstales]

Ahmed's Incredible Journey Through African Tales! #Africantales #african...