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Entries tagged with 'Africa'
Posted Dec. 4, 2007,
Serval!
By Ann Magnuson
When the news of the world gets me down and I begin to believe the hype and the snark I just click onto Macchuie's Gallery and all is right with the universe. Ordinarily I wouldn't approve of keeping exotic pets. Raising a wild animal in a suburban home isn't exactly what nature intended. But this serval cat seems to be getting along fine -- especially with these Scottish breeders' other domestic cats. The story of how this one-day-old orphaned cub found itself in this home in Scotland is fascinating but it's the pictures that turn me on. Cuteoverload! I was lucky enough to see a serval in the wild (in Botswana) and wish I could have one for my very own. But I don't think he'd survive long here in Los Angeles. I wonder if Tippi Hedren has any serval cats up at her Shambala wildlife santuary?
I WANTS ME SOME SERVAL!
Posted Jun. 25, 2007,
Darwin's Nightmare: See It
By Ann Magnuson
I saw the DVD of Hubert Sauper's 2004 documentary Darwin's Nightmare over the weekend and I highly recommend this movie to everyone. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever seen and probably one of the most essential. This YouTube viewer made the above complilation but you can see more scenes from the film here and here.
Sauper's style is at times quite brutal in it's unflinching directness and yet also poetic. There is no narrator and many things are left unexplained, but he captures the uneasy strangeness of Africa, a place where great beauty and great cruelty too often co-exist. The DVD extras feature a very good interview with the director who explains how globilization and social Darwinism are at the root of much of the evil the befalls the poor souls who are unlucky enough to be born poor and in Africa. Vanity Fair and a host of A-list celebrities are currently propelling "the dark continent" into the limelight but Sauper's films take us places than Annie Liebowitz never could. I could not believe the things I was seeing and will truly never be the same after watching Sauper's films.