March 6, 2022

They’re Off: Mushers Begin Trek to Nome; Seavey Seeks Record

The 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race started Sunday with 49 mushers setting their sights on Alaska’s western coast.

The race will take the mushers across Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving terrain, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the unpredictable Bering Sea ice.

The winner is expected to cross the finish line in the western Alaska coastal community of Nome about nine days after the start.

For the first time ever in 2021, the race did not finish in Nome because of the pandemic. Instead, the race started in Willow, went to the ghost town of Iditarod and then doubled back to Willow.

Dallas Seavey won the 2021 race, matching musher Rick Swenson for the most wins ever with five apiece. Swenson, 71, last won in 1991 and hasn’t raced the Iditarod since 2012.

Seavey is looking to make history by becoming the first musher to hold six titles. Seavey has said he will likely take a break after this year’s race to spend time with his daughter.

There are two four-time champions in the race with Martin Buser and Jeff King. Buser is running in his 39th Iditarod, and King stepped in just days before the race started to run musher Nic Petit’s team after Petit said on Facebook he contracted COVID-19. Also in the race are 2018 winner Joar Leifseth Ulsom and 2019 winner Pete Kaiser.

Fifteen mushers signed up but withdrew from the race before it started, including Petit and the 2020 winner Thomas Waerner of Norway, who wasn’t able to secure travel documents to the U.S.

Source: Voice of America

March 6, 2022

‘Lost Daughter’ Wins Top Prizes at Independent Spirit Awards

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” “Drive My Car” and “Summer of Soul” were among the big winners at the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards Sunday.

The ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally was held in a tent by the beach in Santa Monica, broadcast on AMC and IFC. It is the cool, casual counterpart to some of the more traditional film awards shows.

“If you don’t win, you can just walk straight into the ocean,” Offerman said.

Gyllenhaal won best feature, director and best screenplay for her adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel “The Lost Daughter.”

Through tears, Gyllenhaal said that more than anything she believes in love. She was effusive in her praise for her crew.

“You were the first people to tell me I was a director,” she said. “Thank you to Netflix — I can’t even believe this — for your support. … Nobody ever makes their first movie and comes out loving their financiers.”

“I love independent film,” Gyllenhaal added. “I grew up making independent film.”

Japan’s “Drive My Car, which has also been nominated for a best picture Oscar, picked up best international feature.

Taylour Paige won best female lead for “Zola,” which was based on a Twitter thread about a wild trip to Florida.

“Wow, I am in shock. I wrote something because I’m not eloquent and I’m drunk,” Paige said.

She thanked her grandmother who passed away on the day she got word of her nomination and Zola for, “knowing that your story was worth telling.”

Simon Rex won best male lead for playing an ex-porn star in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.” Rex said his career was in the dumps before Baker called him for the shoestring film.

“I’m reeling from the whole experience,” Rex said. “This is basically a glorified student film…I’m grateful and humbled.”

Mullally and Offerman got the show off to a lively start, both in three-piece suits and vests with no shirt underneath. Sarah Silverman made an appearance in a pre-taped segment offering her services as a backup host because Mullally and Offerman joined Twitter “before 2015.”

The married co-hosts said they’d hoped to be the biggest Hollywood couple in the room and were dismayed that Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard were there to upstage them.

“A-listers and indie stars? Pick a lane you greedy bastards,” Offerman said.

They acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Offerman said he hopes “Putin (expletive) off and goes home” and implored the audience to send him off with a “Spirit Awards salute.” Many raised their hands with a middle finger.

The show’s honorary chair Kristen Stewart also spoke about the war.

“We’re compelled to stand with the people of Ukraine,” Stewart said. “We stand with the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing this war.”

Historically, the Spirit Awards are held on the Saturday afternoon before the Oscars, but this year moved up a few weeks.

“Summer of Soul” won best documentary. The film brings back to life the largely forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

“I’m not going to cry right now, I’m not, I’m not,” “Summer of Soul” director Questlove said.

Troy Kotsur got another boost before the Oscars, winning best supporting actor for “CODA.” He also won the Screen Actors Guild prize.

“I can feel the spirit of the arts and we can celebrate together,” Kotsur said.

“Squid Game’s” Lee Jung-jae also followed up his SAG win with a Spirit Award.

Marlee Matlin, who presented the first screenplay award to Michael Sarnoski for “Pig,” implored the screenwriters to think of deaf actors when crafting scripts.

Andrew Garfield made an appearance to present the Robert Altman Award to his friend Fran Kranz, who he acted with in a Mike Nichols play. Kranz’s debut “Mass” is a small ensemble about a mediation in the aftermath of a school shooting between parents of a victim and parents of the perpetrator.

Best supporting female went to Ruth Negga, for her turn in Rebecca Hall’s “Passing.” A technical glitch muted the first part of her virtual speech. The black-and-white Netflix film also won best cinematography, for Edu Grau

The show can sometimes serve as a preview of what will happen on Oscar night. Last year, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” picked up best feature and director at the Spirit Awards before going on to win the top prizes at the Oscars. “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave” also all won at the Spirits before taking best picture at the Oscars.

Because of their production budgets, many top awards contenders this year were not eligible, including “Belfast,” “King Richard” and “The Power of the Dog.” To be considered, films must have cost less than $22.5 million to make.

Source: Voice of America

March 6, 2022

Basketball Africa League’s 2nd Season Begins

The fledgling Basketball Africa League tipped off its second season in Dakar, Senegal, on March 5, 2022, with a dozen men’s club teams from as many African countries vying for the 2022 BAL championship title.

Senegal’s Dakar Université Club and Guinea’s Seydou Legacy Athlétique Club faced off in the season opener. They had their eyes on the prize claimed by Egypt’s Zamalek in last year’s inaugural season.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the BAL’s original 2020 launch date by a year and restricted its games to two weeks in Rwanda’s capital. This season’s 38 scheduled games will extend over three months among Dakar, Kigali and Cairo.

The BAL teams have been split into two conferences: Sahara and Nile. The Sahara teams — from Guinea, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia – will compete against each other through March 15 at the Dakar Arena. Nile teams – from Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, South Africa and South Sudan — will play April 9 through 19 at Cairo’s Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex. Each conference’s top four teams will qualify for the playoffs, with a single-elimination tournament and finals at Kigali Arena May 21 to 28.

The BAL is a joint venture of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). It represents the NBA’s first collaboration operating a league outside North America.

“The NBA is making an investment in growing the game across the continent, broadly speaking,” NBA Africa’s president, Victor Williams, said at a February event celebrating a new NBA office in Lagos, Nigeria. Its original Africa office opened in Johannesburg in 2010.

A FIBA official said this second BAL season would “expand the scope and the entertainment value of the game” beyond the inaugural season’s two-week run in Kigali.

“Countries across Africa will see the games firsthand,” Sam Ahmedu, president of FIBA Africa Zone 3, told VOA. “It will help to also popularize the game and attract more sponsorship.”

Among BAL’s backers are companies such as Nike, Pepsi, Hennessy cognac and RwandAir.

The BAL’s parent organization, NBA Africa, has drawn strategic partners such as former president Barack Obama and investors including former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While football is the continent’s dominant team sport, interest in hoops has been growing. CNBC has reported the NBA’s goal of making it a top sport on the continent within a decade, focusing on the continent’s predominantly young and growing population. Africa has the world’s youngest population, with 70% of those in sub-Saharan Africa under age 30, the United Nations reports.

This season, each BAL team will have one prospect from the NBA Academy Africa, a basketball training center in Saly, Senegal, for top high school-age prospects. It’s through a new program called BAL Elevate.

“There is a natural synergy between the BAL and NBA Academy Africa, and this program will provide another pathway for elite African prospects to reach their potential as players and people,” Amadou Gallo Fall, the BAL’s president, said in a press release.

A talent pipeline?

Right now, the NBA has more than 50 players who either were born in Africa or have at least one African parent, according to a BAL representative.

Those players include two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, raised in Greece by parents from Nigeria; Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers and Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors, both native Cameroonians; and Neemias Queta of the Sacramento Kings, whose parents hail from Guinea-Bissau.

Some see efforts such as the BAL or the Basketball Without Borders program as a pipeline to the NBA. Last year’s league play drew 15 NBA scouts or team representatives, the Raptors’ scouting manager, Sarah Chan, told VOA at the time.

But other hoops devotees such as Relton Booysen contend the BAL should cultivate and keep talented players on the continent.

“My opinion is that the BAL is a prize. It is a prize for anyone in Africa, in the world, to play in the BAL,” said Booysen, head coach of the Cape Town Tigers, a South African team making its league debut April 10 in Cairo against Angola’s Pedro de la Rionda club. “It’s not like you want to use the BAL to feed players for the NBA. … I believe that the BAL will grow as big as the NBA and bigger.”

Hoops as cultural diplomacy

Scott Brooks, a sociologist and associate director of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute, said he sees efforts such as the BAL as a form of cultural diplomacy. “This is a global kind of community when you’re talking about basketball,” he said.

“It’s not just American culture taking over. We always get a piece of other cultures coming back,” Brooks added. “That’s what really makes this exciting.”

Brooks praised programs such as Basketball Without Borders, the NBA and FIBA’s global community development and outreach program to nurture young players — not only in the sport but also in academics, health and values.

“It’s not just building athletes, it is building leaders in Africa,” said Brooks, who also lauded the BAL’s president, Amadou Gallo Fall, for playing an instrumental role in such development. “His vision is not just that they play basketball,” Brooks said, but that “they learn servantship … and they come back to the continent and help him build it.”

Participating teams hope the BAL tournament will raise their visibility and support.

For instance, the Rwanda Energy Group (REG), which qualified for this season’s competition, is relatively unknown to Kigali resident Jean de Dieu Rukundo. “I have no idea about REG, but anyway I wish them success,” he told VOA.

REG’s sports coordinator, Geoffrey Zawadi, expressed confidence in netting new admirers. He said the 5-year-old club already has won two national league trophies and “our fan base is increasing year after year.”

VOA will partner for a second season with the BAL, broadcasting 31 games across its extensive radio network in Africa. That includes select games in English, French, Portuguese, Kinyarwanda and Wolof. New this year, VOA and the BAL will collaborate on additional programming including weekly podcasts from Dakar, Cairo and Kigali that will air across VOA and BAL online platforms. Games will be livestreamed at NBA.com and TheBAL.com.

Source: Voice Of America