Posts tagged with ‘Ghana’
A different kind of soccer World Cup will be held in Argentina in October. The city of Crespo plays host to the 2010 Amputee Football World Cup.
Not surprisingly African teams are well represented in international amputee soccer competitions. A large player pool is an unwelcome side effect of civil wars, regional conflicts and brutal ethnic violence.
This year’s World Cup was originally slated for last year but the host city of Novo Friburgo in Brazil withdrew its support at the last minute much to the dismay of the teams scheduled to compete.
“teams around the world lost thousands of dollars in non-refundable airline tickets, damaging the reputations of national amputee football associations around the world, and worst of all, crushing the hopes of players who dreamed of competing in a world championship tournament.”
Ghana are the current African champions but Sierra Leone are considered one of the favorites for this year’s World Cup.
Photo courtesy of Justin Hane.
“In the 1980s video cassette technology made it possible for ‘mobile cinema’ operators in Ghana to travel from town to town and village to village creating temporary cinemas. The touring film group would create a theatre by hooking up a TV and VCR onto a portable generator and playing the films for the people to see.
In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired - often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The ‘mobile cinema’ began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”
