Teddy Goitom

Social media has given one Senegalese photographer the opportunity to launch his professional career. When his parents and family were unable to understand his passion for photography, a Facebook community urged him to pursue his dreams.

Johannesburg and Cape Town have built burgeoning creative scenes for the latest in graffiti art and music. Heavy metal, in particular, has also made a resurgence in South Africa, with many bands jamming at sessions known as Rock Therapy.

“African art” is taking new form in Kenya, as an active community of African creatives are pushing innovation. One 3D artist in particular turns heads by animating a Transformers-style battle royal representing political turmoil in Kenya.

Whether facing environmental issues head-on or inspiring people to reach for the power within themselves, art and music in Ghana are used as catalysts to move people to action and to show the world what it means to be African.

In 2003 Stocktown made its first documentary series for Swedish Television, a collage of street culture and urban inventiveness in four continents. The sequel Stocktown X South Africa, is a documentary about the contemporary vigorous, social and creative urban cultures of South Africa. When the Swedish directors Teddy Goitom and Benjamin Taft set off on a road trip across South Africa, they met fashion designers, punk bands, artists and guerilla filmmakers who all redefine what it means to be young independent and South African in the twenty-first century.

The documentary shows the awakening of the poor youth to social consciousness in the identification of life that imitates art with art that imitates life. It is the São Paulo chapter of the cultural history of national rap in the voice of its main exponents.