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Film Screening: ‘Finding Fela’
February 21 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
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The documentary “Finding Fila” is being shown Feb. 21 and 22 at Cinema-C Studio.
Studio-C Cinema is showing the film “Finding Fela,” from Academy award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, Feb. 21 and 22. The documentary tells the story of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s life, his music, his social and political importance. He created a new musical movement, Afrobeat. Kuti,who died in 1997, fused American jazz and funk rhythms with highlife to form Afrobeat, which became hugely popular across the continent and beyond in the 1970s.
Kuti used the Afrobeat forum to express his revolutionary political opinions against the dictatorial Nigerian government of the 1970s and 1980s. To the government of Nigeria, he represented revolution. To the world, he became a musical visionary. It has been said of Kuti that he made a musical form where there was no form.
His influence helped bring a change towards democracy in Nigeria and promoted Pan Africanist politics to the world. The power and potency of Kuti’s message is completely current today and is expressed in the political movements of oppressed people, embracing his music and message in their struggle for freedom.
James Schamus of Focus Pictures, which produced the film, said that Kuti might be “the most globally influential pop artist outside the Beatles in the last 50 years.”
Doors open at 6:15 p.m. for complimentary wine, cheese and art gallery browsing. The screening begins at 7 p.m. Informal discussion follows. Admission is $9 for Cornelius residents; $10 non-Cornelius residents.
More information and advance tickets are available at www.studioccinema.com
