What does it mean to be black, female, and foreign in a world that doesn’t value these attributes? Television audiences will have the chance to ponder this question as season 12 of the award-winning documentary series AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange brings viewers the story of Amina this month. Helmed by Turkish director Kivilcim Akay, Amina tells the story of a young African immigrant living in Istanbul and confronting the harsh realities of life. The film airs on WORLD Channel at 8 p.m. ET (10 p.m. PT) on Monday, January 27, on AfroPoP, the public television series dedicated to bringing real stories of life, art and culture in the modern African Diaspora to public television audiences.
Amina’s dreams of a better life for herself and her young daughter take her from Senegal to Turkey, where she faces the cold facts of life as an African immigrant. Working as a model in a textiles shop, the young, single woman aspires to a modeling career in high fashion, while struggling to provide for a child back home in Senegal.
“Amina so movingly captures the often-crippling effects of intersectionality on one young woman, providing a sobering look at the trials facing immigrants in a modern world still plagued by prejudice and fear,” said Black Public Media Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz.
Produced by Black Public Media (BPM) and co-presented by American Public Television (APT), this season of AfroPoP premieres on Monday, January 20, with an episode featuring My Friend Fela by Joel Zito Araújo, a look at the life of Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti, and director Opiyo Okeyo’s short film on legendary drummer Tony Allen, Birth of Afrobeat. Following the January 27 debut of Amina, episodes in season 12 include: Daddy and the Warlord (February 3) by Shamira Raphaëla and Clarice Gargard, a look at Gargard’s trip to Liberia to uncover the truth about her father’s work with war criminal Charles Taylor; Gilda Brasileiro: Against Oblivion (February 10) from Viola Scheuerer and Roberto Manhães Reis, an examination of one woman’s discovery of proof of an illegal slave-trading post in Brazil; and the season finale episode (February 17) featuring Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris’s personal documentary on his stepfather, B. Pule (“Lee”) Leinaeng, who fought against apartheid as a foot solider in the African National Congress; it airs with Spit on the Broom by Madeleine Hunt-Erlich, an experimental short on the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of Black American women organized in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad.
Related: Listen to Harlem Legend Rudean Leinaeng Talk About her New Book on The Danny Tisdale Show.
All episodes of season 12 of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange will also be available for streaming on worldchannel.org beginning on the day of their broadcast premiere.
AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange is co-executive produced by Leslie Fields-Cruz and Angela Tucker. The program is produced and directed by Duana C. Butler with the generous support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional information on the series and its episodes can be found by visiting www.blackpublicmedia.org. For viewing information, check local listings or visit www.aptonline.org.
Black Public Media (BPM), formerly the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), is committed to enriching our democracy by educating, enlightening, empowering and engaging the American public. The nonprofit supports diverse voices by developing, producing and distributing innovative media about the black experience and by investing in visionary content makers. BPM provides quality content for public media outlets, including, among others, PBS and PBS.org and BlackPublicMedia.org, as well as other platforms, while training and mentoring the next generation of black filmmakers. Founded in 1979, BPM produces the AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange documentary series and manages the 360 Incubator + Fund, a funding and training initiative designed to accelerate the production of important black serial and interactive content.
American Public Television (APT) is is the leading syndicator of high-quality, top-rated programming to the nation’s public television stations. Founded in 1961, APT distributes 250 new program titles per year and more than one-third of the top 100 highest-rated public television titles in the U.S. APT’s diverse catalog includes prominent documentaries, performance, dramas, how-to programs, classic movies, children’s series and news and current affairs programs. Doc Martin, Midsomer Murders, America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, AfroPoP, Rick Steves’ Europe, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television, Front and Center, Lidia’s Kitchen, Kevin Belton’s New Orleans Kitchen, Simply Ming, The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, James Patterson’s Kid Stew and NHK Newsline are a sampling of APT’s programs, considered some of the most popular on public television. APT also licenses programs internationally through its APT Worldwide service and distributes Create®TV — featuring the best of public television’s lifestyle programming — and WORLD™, public television’s premier news, science and documentary channel. To find out more about APT’s programs and services, visit APTonline.org.
Based at WGBH in Boston, WORLD Channel tells stories that humanize complex issues. WORLD shares the best of public media in news, documentaries and fact-based informational programming that helps us understand conflicts, movements and cultures that may be distinct from our own. WORLD’s original content offers a national platform to makers examining issues too often ignored by mainstream media. These emerging and master filmmakers spotlight a diversity of voices, telling stories not heard elsewhere. WORLD has won a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and numerous national honors—including 1st and 2nd place Native Media Awards, an RTNDA Kaleidoscope Award, a Media for a Just Society Award, two Lesbian & Gay Journalist Awards, a Gracie and an Asian American Journalists Award. Carried by 163 partner stations in markets representing 65% of US TV households, WORLD can also be experienced via WORLDChannel.org and social media platforms.
Photo credit: 1) Amina’. 2) ‘Amina’ by Kivilcim Akay.
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