THE NELSON & WINNIE MANDELA STORY ~STORIES~

Winnie Mandela may have emerged as an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa during her ex-husband Nelson Mandela's imprisonment in 1963, but it took until 2013 -- as she turns 76 -- for her story to get the full Hollywood treatment.
Jennifer Hudson Was 'Very Intimidated' By the Role of Winnie Mandela

The Oscar-winner confined herself to the prison set to prepare for the role.

I'm so glad that Jennifer went to the Motherland in order to understand better and spend time there; GREAT (y)

NELSON MANDELA IN NEW BIOPIC~The film is based on Mandela's autobiography~

A new screen biopic of Nelson Mandela does not shy away from the less flattering aspects of his character, according to its British star.

"It was important we had both sides, the good and the bad," said Idris Elba.

Early scenes in Justin Chadwick's film show Mandela as a womaniser who was violent to his first wife Evelyn.

"I didn't want to deface Mr Mandela in any way," the Luther actor continued. "But I didn't want to portray him in a way that wasn't honest."

Elba was speaking at the Toronto Film Festival, where Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom had its world premiere this weekend.

Based on the former South African president's autobiography, the film charts his early life as a lawyer, his political activism and the 27 years of imprisonment that preceded his democratic election in 1994.

Naomie Harris, also British, plays Mandela's second wife Winnie in Justin Chadwick's two-and-a-half hour drama.

'Brave choice'

The film has had a mixed reception from critics, with one calling it "more dutifully reverential than revelatory or exciting".

"We've seen the saintly Mandela we all know and love," continued Elba, who did not meet "Madiba" before embarking on the project.

"It was important for us to take the audience on a journey prior to that and understand who he was."

The internationally revered anti-apartheid campaigner, now 95, was released from hospital last week after three months of treatment for a recurring lung infection.

"Like everybody I've been very concerned for his health but I've been keeping optimistic," Elba told reporters on Sunday.

According to Chadwick, the Hackney-born actor was the right person for the biopic despite being from England and bearing little physical resemblance to its subject.

"There were other obvious choices, but Idris was the brave choice," said the director, whose other credits include the BBC's 2005 dramatisation of Dickens' Bleak House.

"He doesn't look like Madiba, but we weren't going for a lookalike, soundalike version."

"Idris managed to capture the Mandela magic," agreed Terry Pheto, the South African actress who plays Evelyn in the film.

Industry reviews

Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, David Harewood and Sidney Poitier are among the others to have portrayed the beloved statesman on film and television.

Elba, whose other films include summer blockbusters Thor and Pacific Rim, has been singled out for praise by critics who have seen the film in Toronto.

"It takes a commanding actor to fill the shoes of the man most instrumental in ending institutionalised oppression in South Africa," wrote David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter.

"The charismatic Idris Elba proves equal to the task."

According to Screen International, though, the film is "too tasteful and conventional to offer much insight into the remarkable man it wishes to celebrate".

"It doesn't have much of a point of view about its narrative, serving more as a rote recitation of memorable moments."

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is one of several Toronto titles this year to draw their inspiration from real-life figures.

Julian Assange, Jimi Hendrix and Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts also feature in films in this year's line-up.

The launch of Chadwick's film coincides with the UK release of Diana, a biographical drama about Diana, Princess of Wales that drew a withering response from the British media.

The Toronto International Film Festival continues until 15 September.

reuters, bbc, afp

                                            IDRIS ELBA AS NELSON MANDELA                                                   

WELL DONE TO OUR ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 

Abro~

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STORY

ACCRA, Ghana—Architect Joe Osae-Addo moved back to his native Ghana in 2004 from Los Angeles to build a home for his family. A simple enough idea, except that Mr. Osae-Addo wanted to use local timber, local bamboo, and local adobe mud blocks in the construction of his home, none of which exist in commercial quantities in Ghana.
So Mr. Osae-Addo, a former architecture lecturer at the University of Southern California, had to source the materials himself and work with local builders who weren't necessarily open to his new approach.

"It was very, very difficult," Mr. Osae-Addo says. "Everything takes twice as long in Ghana."

Construction projects in Africa are slow-moving, bureaucratic affairs in the best of times. They rely on imported materials, mostly concrete. To veer from that formula is to invite trouble, frustration, headaches.

But Mr. Osae-Addo does have some experience in this regard.He designed a house for the Brad Pitt-led charity in New Orleans, Make it Right, and runs his own firm, Constructs LLC, which strives to use local materials for long-lasting, energy efficient housing and commercial projects.

The firm has several large-scale projects in the works in Ghana, Liberia and Angola. Those include a proposed 500-unit site in Ghana's future oil hub, Takoradi, for Anglo-Irish oil company Tullow Oil Plc. TLW.LN +3.58%

"The way things have been built over the last 30 years [in Ghana] is not sustainable," Mr. Osae-Addo says. "The passion is not about the intrinsic quality of the products we buy locally but how we can use them in a much more commercial and industrial application so they're available to the people."

One such effort led Mr. Osae-Addo to work with a Chinese company to begin building a bamboo-processing facility in Ghana, where bamboo grows in the wild.

"Until Africa, or Ghana, develops the materials and the system for industrial, sustainable construction techniques we will never solve our housing problem," he says. "If we keep importing housing solutions it will never work."

Mr. Osae-Addo's own house is a 2,500-square-feet, one-story environmental marvel. It's slightly hidden from view by trees and vines that hang down from its wrap-around timber balcony. The inside of the house is spacious and breezy, since Mr. Osae-Addo didn't want air conditioning in his home despite the tropical heat and humidity. He built the house on a raised foundation and used slatted window screens to allow air to pass through. Rainwater is collected in several large tanks to be reused, and solar panels on the roof provide supplemental energy during frequent power outages.

Yet the house requires constant vigilance from nearby dangers. Mohamed, the caretaker, lives on the property and often has to run over to neighbors' homes to tell them to stop burning refuse or wood—the sparks could easily waft over the wall and set Mr. Osae-Addo's house on fire.

Since he didn't want to put a coil of barbed wire on top of the wall or install an alarm, as do many homeowners in Ghana, Mr. Osae-Addo has two dogs that act as a security system. A recent visitor to the house was greeted with deterrent-worthy growls and bared teeth before Mohamed came and silenced them. They are likely the only dogs in Ghana with a neatly-made, well-ventilated bamboo house built by an architect.



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STORY SOURCE:
WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465502937442216.htmlOTHER SOURCES: http://www.villagevolunteers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Bamboo.pdf

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