Afropolitan

Each initial segment will be framed around one of the eight core interview questions. After asking each subject the basic openers (name, location, what do you love about your city, who is your style idol, where is your favorite place to shop, where do you get news, what magazines/sites/authors do you read, where do you hang out, who are your favorite artists) we get into the larger questions that will frame each episode. The episodes are as follows.

1. What does it mean to be black? 2. What does it mean to be Afropolitian? 3. What characterizes the global black experience? 4. What is your relationship with your home nation, and how is that complicated by your race/ethnicity? 5. How do people in the african disapora advance in the 21st century? 6. What do you know about (people in other nations)? 7. How do you feel the effects of racism/colonialism in your country? How do you think it is compared to other nations? 8. What is happening politically in your country, and how do you think it will affect your life?

Each person (or group) will be filmed, and their answers will be edited together into one series of narratives for the videos. Then, after filming is complete, the team will sit down and analyze what illustrative media should go with each video arc – for example, an audio postcard from Paris or an photo gallery from Senegal. After that, the historical framework will be polished and developed alongside the core content, and each piece will be translated into 140 character and SMS sized chunks for distribution and translation. Each region will receive a playlist, and a request for video uploads where users can create their own videos about their experiences and submit them to the site.

Future Project

If we can successfully build the infrastructure for this project, and create a workable model around it for transnational storytelling in semi-real time, we’d then apply this framework and set up to other diaspora projects. Specifically, we’d like to move to cover other racial/ethnic groupings – Asian, Latino, Indigenous. We’d also like to eventually do a project on “buffer” or “sandwich” classes – people who are between ruling classes and lower classes.

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