Industry News
A Vision of the Present
Radoslav Zilinsky’s 2007 enchanting painting “The World” depicts a distant future where enormous prosperity is accompanied by enormous disparity. Funny because his future looks a …What is Hive Colab?
Hive Colab is the newest co-working space on the East Africa scene. But what is it and where did it come from? To …U.S. State Department’s Conversation with African Innovators
Last week representatives from the U.S. State Department Elana Berkowitz and Bruce Wharton reached out directly to innovators in East Africa to discuss the Apps …Google Developer Days Coming to Kenya, Uganda
Google is hosting two events in September to teach the use of Google technologies and products in Africa… Google is dedicated to making the Internet relevant …Asia and Africa, Fastest Growing Facebook Regions
Facebook recently hit the half billion users mark (more than a quarter of all internet users) and somewhat unsurprisingly developing countries are fueling a lot …TED Recap: A Fornication of Ideas Pt. 1
TED Global 2010 wrapped up last week in Oxford, UK. As a TED Senior Fellow, I’m lucky in that I’ve now attended three TED events …
The TED Phone
At TED Global in Oxford, UK this week TED and Nokia announced a partnership to bring TED talks to Africa and other developing parts of …Hive Colab Announced in Uganda
Earlier in the day we announced Apps < 4> Africa, a competition for app developers across Africa. Also, today in Uganda, Appfrica Labs in …Apps for Africa Contest Announced in Nairobi
Over the past few weeks myself, Solomon King of NodeSix.com, Joshua Goldstein an Appfrica Fellow, Jessica Colaco at the iHub in Nairobi, Philip Thigo and …
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District 9 Storms Hollywood
The South African sci-fi film Disctrict 9 is a certifiable smash hit. This is unquestionably great for Neill Blomkamp (ka-CHING!) but could potentially be a huge step forward for South Africa’s emerging film industry. Already the film is ranked among the Top 100 films of all time as ranked by IMDB.com’s userbase. A critic at The NewYork Observer writes “District 9 is the most exciting science fiction movie to come along in ages; definitely the most thrilling film of the summer; and quite possibly the best film I’ve seen all year.”
But to put in purely economic terms, the film was shot for $30 million U.S. dollars and has already grossed $47 million….on it’s opening weekend alone. If you don’t want to know anymore details about the plot stop reading now.
[Begin Spoiler Alert]
The film’s plot revolves around aliens coming to earth where they land in Johannesburg, South Africa. It’s not long (28 years) before the powers that be ‘section them off’ in a place called District 9, to be kept separate from the rest of society. The obvious overtone here is that the movie is an allegory for apartheid, in general, but specifically Cape Town’s District Six (get it? 9 is an inverted 6) where 60,000 native residence were forcibly removed based on their race and ethnicity. In the movie the separation is between ‘human’ versus ‘non-human’ until the whole thing goes horribly wrong…
[End Spoiler Alert]
We mentioned District 9 back in April of this year in a post called “Sci-Fi in South Africa“.