The Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, will on Sept. 21 launch the “Q4- Lagos Initiative” meant to improve awareness of local tourism potential in the state.

Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf, the Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, in a statement on Sunday, said that the initiative would be launched in collaboration with stakeholders in the tourism, hospitality and creative subsectors.

The commissioner said the ministry recognised the need to leverage on the need for domestic tourism and encourage Nigerians to take their vacation within the country.

She noted that the ‘Q4-Lagos Initiative’ was inspired by the famous slogan “Eko For Show”.

According to the commissioner, this should be seen as a call out to the global industry that Lagos is ready to entrench its prime position as the destination of choice for tourism.

“The objectives of the initiative include selling Lagos to the world through a designed permanent merchandising, marketing social platform to optimise revenue generation opportunities for the economy.

“To also collate comprehensive data of events during the holiday period and determine the number of inbound tourists for the industry while maintaining standards to meet global quality demands,” she said.

According to Akinbile-Yusuf, the concept is expected to deliver high value for fun lovers.

She said the ministry would partner with relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to encourage more Lagosians to partake in the various events put together by private organisers.

“For us to deliver on this mandate, all event organisers are expected to get a clearance from the Ministry of Tourism without paying anything to enable the government to plan and monitor these events,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria (CEAN) revealed that the top five highest-grossing films in Nigerian cinemas in August were Hollywood films.

Ope Ajayi, CEAN’s national president, disclosed this in an interview with newsmen.

He said the five Hollywood movies generated N378m from tickets sold across cinemas in the country in August.

Ajayi said the figure represented a 28 per cent increase compared to N294m realised in August 2021.

He, however, said there was a 19 per cent decline in tickets sold in August, as generated N471m in July.

“The 37 films shown in August realised over NGN378 million at the box office. 13 Hollywood films accounted for 72.4 per cent while 16 Nollywood films made a little over 22 per cent.

He said the figures bring its lifetime revenue at Nigeria’s box office to over N350 million, as of 31st August,” he said.

‘The Man Died’, a memoir of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s prison experience initially published in 1972, is set to be adapted for the big screen.

The book chronicles the account of his arrest and 22-month imprisonment during the Nigerian Civil War.

It was revealed on the same weekend that ‘Elesin Oba’, a screen adaptation of Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Renowned playwright Awam Amkpa, in an interview BookArtVille on Monday, said that he had received Soyinka’s nod to produce the film.

Amkpa is a Drama, Social and Cultural Analysis professor and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the New York University (NYU) in Abu Dhabi.

The 63-year-old said he works on the project with the Nigerian filmmaker Femi Odugbemi and the culture communicator Jahman Anikulapo.

The adaptation

On the new project, Amkpa said it is at the preliminary, pre-production/ script workshop stage.

He added that although there is no clear funding source, he is consulting his extensive contacts list, but the New York University, where he lectures, allowed some $400,000 seed money for the project.

“The film will be a fictionalised account of a nonfiction material”, he said.

He explained that he has been in meetings with Soyinka and other people across the country on the project.

“We are consulting several biographies of the era. A good back story leads to an original film,” Amkpa added.

‘The Man Died’

During the Nigerian Civil War, which took place from 1967–1970, Soyinka was accused of assisting the Biafran secessionists.

In that period, he was arrested and incarcerated for 24 months, most of it spent in solitary confinement in a 4ft by 8ft cell.

Disney Original is making a documentary on Anthony Madu, a Nigerian ballet dancer.

Madu became famous in 2020 after a video of him dancing barefoot in the rain went viral.

The upcoming documentary ‘Madu’ captures the events after uploading a 44-second video of Anthony dancing in the rain.

Nigerian director Joel Kachi Benson, who won the Venice Award in 2019 for his virtual reality documentary ‘Daughters of Chibok’ is directing the feature project alongside Oscar nominee Matt Ogens.

Disney Original Documentary was announced at the D23 Expo, unveiling its future projects.

Making the announcement, Marjon Javadi, Vice President of Disney Original Documentary, said that Anthony comes from a community with limited opportunities.

The documentary, he said, is a lifetime chance for Madu to pursue his dream.

In a joint statement, Joel Kachi Benson and co-director Matt Ogens said, “Our shared journey is about curiosity and creating an understanding of different cultures through our connection with each other.”

They described their experience on the project as a journey of discovery, growth, belonging and acceptance.

“Making his voice heard is our ultimate drive, and we believe Anthony’s extraordinary story will make the most captivating, emotional, and riveting film either of us has told,” they added.

Madu, who was 11 then, mesmerised many viewers worldwide with his pirouettes and leaps.

The video eventually fetched him a scholarship at the 100-year-old Elmhurst Ballet School in the U.K.

Footage of the feature documentary was shown to audiences at the D23 Expo held in California, USA, from 9 September through 11th.

Independent Curators International, the New York–based nonprofit that looks to support the work of curators around the world, will give its 2022 Leo Award to Candice Hopkins, one of today’s most closely watched and influential curators. Hopkins will share the award with the nonprofit American Indian Community House.

Hopkins, a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation, is the inaugural director and chief curator of Forge Project, “a Native-led initiative centered on Indigenous art, decolonial education, and supporting leaders in culture, food security, and land justice based in the Mahicannituck valley on the unceded homelands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok, the Peoples of the Waters That are Never Still, who now reside in Wisconsin and are known as the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans,” according to a release.

Founded in 1969, the American Indian Community House provides community support, including elder care and raising awareness around HIV/AIDS within Native communities, to the 35,000 Native Americans, from more than 70 Indigenous tribal affiliations, in New York City. The organization also maintains an exhibition space, AICH gallery that has shown work by artists like Greg Hill and Mario Martinez.

In addition to her work at Forge Project, Hopkins has been known for her curatorial work around the world that has charted new paths for the ways in which the work of Indigenous artists is supported, presented, and written about. Most recently, she served as the senior curator for the first two editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. She also was a member of the curatorial team of Documenta 14 in 2017, and helped organize several editions of the SITElines biennial at SITE Santa Fe in New York. She also worked on the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Additionally, Hopkins has also been a co-curator on numerous groundbreaking group exhibitions focused on Indigenous artists, including “Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years” a multi-venue exhibition in Winnipeg in 2009, “Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art” at the National Gallery of Canada in 2013, “Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now,” at Crystal Bridges in Arkansas in 2018, and “Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts,” which debuted in 2019 and has since traveled to seven venues through ICI.

When renowned art collector Peggy Guggenheim commissioned a young Jackson Pollock to paint a mural for her New York townhome in 1943, she was confident that she had discovered the next great American artist. The product of that commission, Mural, has been recognized as one of the most significant American artworks of the 20th century and launched Pollock to international stardom.

Similarly, when Guggenheim donated Mural to the University of Iowa in 1951, it signified a kind of arrival for the public university’s already prestigious art department. Mural and the University of Iowa have since become interchangeable symbols of artistic excellence; yet for the past 14 years, Pollock’s magnum opus has been only tenuously tethered to its Midwestern homestead since a devastating flood struck the university’s art museum in 2008 and displaced its collection. While all the works were recovered, they were left without a permanent home, and many of the university’s linchpin holdings—including Mural—were forced to take up temporary residence in galleries and storage units around the world.

But on July 14, 2022, after years of restoration work and tours throughout the United States and Europe, Mural returned to the University of Iowa, kicking off a celebration a decade and a half in the making.

The University of Iowa’s reputation as a world-class enclave for fine art dates back more than a century. The university began offering formal curricula in fine arts in the late 19th century, but planted its stake as a pioneering institution for arts education in the 1920s with the introduction of the “Iowa Idea,” the then-novel concept that artists and art scholars ought to practice alongside one another within an academic context, allowing each to study and be challenged by the other’s work. The university’s School of Art and Art History was founded in 1938 with the Iowa Idea as its guiding principle, and defined a graduate-level art theory and practice program that became the blueprint for the modern master of fine arts degree.

The Australian government has launched an industry review on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, a major gas export hub, after concerns were raised by indigenous women about damage to ancient rock art.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek agreed to appoint an investigator to assess the full impact on ancient rock art from industry on the Burrup Peninsula, in response to an application by two Indigenous women representing a group called Save Our Songlines.

“The consultant will take as much time as necessary to prepare the report. There is no legal deadline,” a Plibersek spokesman said in emailed comments.

Once the review is done, the investigator must make a recommendation to the minister on whether to order new native heritage protection on the Burrup Peninsula, home to more than a million ancient rock carvings which have been nominated for a World Heritage List. UNESCO.

The sites lie near an industrial zone where there are two liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants run by Woodside Energy Group and fertilizer and explosives plants run by Norway’s Yara International.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to consider all impacts of any Burrup industry on our sacred rock art sites and provide permanent protection under federal laws,” said Indigenous woman Raelene Cooper, who applied for review under Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Law on Heritage Protection.

Plibersek last month rejected a request from the same group seeking to block the construction of a A$4.5 billion ($3.0 billion) fertilizer plant after consulting with the local representative group for traditional owners, the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, about the impact of its potential in ancient rock art.