Get on the Bus
In 1952, the beautiful and talented orphan Asnaketch Worku became Ethiopia’s first female stage actress, a brazen act in a politically conservative environment where artists were branded amzari (“not going to heaven”). In 2011, her funeral was attended by thousands, not for her 30 years in the theater, but for her songs. Described as the Edith Piaf of Ethiopia by film director Rachel Samuel, Worku was a champion of a fading tradition of “poetic jousting,” improvisations which laid her life bare to the strains of the lyre-like krar. Samuel’s documentary ASNI: Courage, Passion, & Glamour in Ethiopia captures the brilliance of Worku, even in her final bedridden months, as part of this year’s superbly curated Matatu Film Festival. The screening is followed by a live musical performance by Zéna, one of the few traditionally trained women specializing in the harp-like kora. Like the vibrant Kenyan jitneys for which the event is named, this year’s festival is jam-packed. The preshow opens with a dinner inspired by the movies — cornmeal fritters drizzled with wild honey, coconut curry, twice-fried green plantains — served before poetic polymath Saul Williams reads from his latest book US(a.)
