FYI, just saw this in a brochure for First Run / Icarus Films (distributed
in materials for participants at the ASA conf.) - it is also on the web at
http://www.frif.com/new2005/brul.html . Hadn't heard of this before, but it
is another example of Africa as a continent of many alphabets:





"Bruly Boubaré's Alphabet" A film by Nurith Aviv



In n the 1950's, Ivory Coast artist Frederic Bruly Bouabré created several
hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to
help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly. Although some
600,000 Bétés live in the Ivory Coast, their language is not taught in
schools, and all education is conducted in French.



Bouabré's 400 pictograms, in various combinations, provide a playful yet
tangible method of instruction, as demonstrated in BRULY BOUABRE'S ALPHABET.
As the now elderly Bouabré explains, his aim was to "form a specific African
writing from scenes of human life." Today a small number of people continue
to use Bruly's alphabet, and museums around the world have exhibited his
drawings.



"[Bouabré] deciphers the world as a visual text, creating a comprehensive
guide to everything and everyone. Over decades Bouabre created a visual
manuscript, an art manifesto, of life, death and everything; a
metaphysically sympathetic curation of the entire modern world as it relates
to our needs [and manipulated our superstitions and our prejudices,
re-categorizing our world to defy them." - BBC



"[Bouabré's work] reveals the universal need to make some kind of sense of
the confusions of contemporary politics and culture. But while... the
symbols are bursting with data, interpretations are left entirely to the
viewer. In the end, these herculean efforts to create order only confirm the
elusiveness of genuine knowledge or certainty." - Art in America



** 2006 Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival

** 2005 African Studies Association Film Festival



17 minutes / color

Release Date: 2005

Copyright Date: 2005



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