World Channel Announces New Schedule for AFROPOP

The 12th season of AFROPOP: THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL EXCHANGE returns to WORLD Channel this Monday, February 10, following a brief hiatus due to live coverage of the impeachment trial. The public television series, dedicated to bringing American audiences TRUE LIFE stories of contemporary life in the African Diaspora, returns with two back-to-back episodes featuring the films Amina and Daddy and the Warlord, premiering at 8 p.m. ET (10 pm PT) and 9 p.m. ET (11 pm PT), respectively. The season finale will air on Monday, February 17, with another double feature showcasing Gilda Brasileiro: Against Oblivion at 8 p.m. ET and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela airing with the surrealist short Spit on the Broom at 9 p.m. ET. The episodes will also be available for streaming at worldchannel.org.

"We are happy to see AfroPoP return after this recent break," said Chris Hastings, executive producer and editorial manager for WORLD Channel. "In a season that highlights issues such as immigration, liberation and family, AfroPoP serves to remind us that no matter where we come from, ultimately our commonalities outweigh our differences."

Amina is director Kivilcim Akay's nuanced look at the life of a 29-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in Turkey striving to reconcile her dreams of a career in high fashion with the reality of her life in a foreign land and struggles to provide for her daughter back home. The film will be followed by Daddy and the Warlord from filmmakers Shamira Raphaëla and Clarice Gargard. The intimate examination of both family ties and family secrets brings viewers with Gargard to postwar Liberia as she attempts to connect with her father and learn the truth about his work and involvement with dictator and war criminal Charles Taylor.

Season 12 ends with a night of documentaries highlighting the struggle for liberation in Brazil, South Africa and the United States. The closing night double episode starts with Gilda Brasileiro: Against Oblivion by Viola Scheurer and Roberto Manhães Reis which profiles Brasileiro's fight against a culture of silence seeking to ignore its ties to an illegal slave-trading post in Brazil's Paraíba Valley, while providing witness to the horrors of slavery through rarely seen 19th century photographs of enslaved people. The night ends with the classic documentary Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela by Thomas Allen Harris paired with the short Spit on the Broom. Harris, a noted filmmaker and artist, brings audiences the story of his stepfather B. Pule ("Lee") Leinaeng, a foot soldier in the African National Congress. A moving profile of the fight against apartheid waged by Leinaeng and his peers, Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela also serves as a capsule of an American and African family merging in the Diaspora and of the everlasting bonds between father and son. Further examination of the eternal fight for freedom follows as Spit on the Broom from Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich premieres. Through a mix of dramatized scenes and glimpses of modern-day members, Hunt-Ehrlich's short experimental film introduces audiences to the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of Black American women formed in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad.

AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange is executive produced by Black Public Media (BPM) and co-presented by distributor American Public Television. The series is co-executive produced by Leslie Fields-Cruz and Angela Tucker and produced and directed by Duana C. Butler with the generous support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information on AfroPoP, visit www.blackpublicmedia.org. For viewing information, check local listings or visit www.aptonline.org.

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