![.... But Some Of Us Are Brave]()
Beiruth walks beneath a flattened light, the industrial yellow and concrete of the taxi rank. Or she stalks it, haunting the hollow luminescence in white fishnet stockings criss-crossing borders on her legs. The camera holds tight at her flank – a hand swinging at its sides – and next to it, the partial view of a red onesie stretched over ass, a sign in white and blue above it: Atlantis. Something covers her head, her face, flickers muted in intervals, in tandem with the onesie rigged to shimmer with the colours of the spectrum. A man in a white wife-beater leans to, cocks head to one side, holds his arm out to get attention. Another stops in his tracks, stares animatedly, looking so we can look at him looking. A woman in black shimmies for Beiruth, or the camera. From somewhere, an external diegetic voice asks, “You tryna fuck me?” With the onesie belted around the waist she stands, splayed hard against the wall of the Universal Church, back and palms flat under the blue of the crucifix hanging above her, bouncing off her helmet. She moves slow, horizontal, as if navigating the face of a cliff. Her hand feels the wall tentatively, then reaches for the white gating that secures the entrance of the church. She extends a leg out, stilloetted, finds footing, and spins her body, pirouetting into position. And then she climbs, her helmet obscuring her path. Obfuscating. She stays ready for the eventually of having a man try to crack her skull in one day. She has a hole in the top of her head, or she is avoiding one. Are you trying to fuck me?
Read MoreFor a concept that appears so frequently throughout the Bible, the "Upper Room" has so many shifting meanings and contexts, that it is difficult to pin down what it really is. First mentioned in the Old Testament, it is thought of as having particular significance as a sacred site. A space for things holy. In the Book of Chronicles, David instructs his son Solomon to build the Temple of God.
In the titular track of her latest album, the live offering Holy Room, singer-songwriter Somi also taps into this tension, this fear-fragility-fortification triangulation. First recorded in for her 2017 release, Petite Afrique, Holy Room is a disarming love song. Part gospel, a millennial spiritual, the song is complicated by Herve Samb’s guitar playing, Somi’s psalm in the chorus declaring the Takbir. Allahu akbar.
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![Kenyan Oscar nod is an intimate story of love in a time of witchcraft]()
A few hours and one hot, uncomfortable drive later, he's In the cool of his grandmother's house in rural Kaloleni, Mombasa. There's a bowl of mandazi on the table. Chai cools in three cups around it. One cup for our protagonist, the grandson Karisa. One cup for his father seated on the edge of the couch, to the left of his mother and one cup for Karisa's grandmother, the reason we are all in this room with fried dough confections in a round silver thing in front of us.
"Are you going to church?" Grandma Kamango asks the child of her child. There's some friendly jostling. A few bold proclamations made about the bible. Karisa’s father, no longer willing to account for his dedication to the faith, walks out. "That's not a sin," he says, a short while before making his abrupt exit. "Not going to church," he continues. "What sin is that?" The camera pans to a dolly that decorates a chair In the room, Jesus on the cross in its centre. But the grandmother will not give up her argument, so he calmly gets up and leaves the room as his sister walks in, carrying in her hand an old family picture.
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