Arena — Season 1, Episode 344: New York - The Secret African City
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
eyond the familiar world of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, there is another New York, whose roots lie in West and Central Africa. Successive waves of newcomers of African descent have brought to the world's most glamorous city their own gods, myths and rituals. Robert Farris Thompson , Professor of Art History at Yale University, has been tracking down the survival of African traditions in New York. This film follows his exploration of Haitian vodun, the rituals which lie behind salsa music, the Brazilian martial art capoeira and hip-hop. It discovers how the lives of men and women, including a psychologist, a social worker, a businessman and an artist, have been affected by contact with African-derived religions.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.