There are obviously concerns about the impact on Africa through a decrease in commodity exports (and income) to China. Yet such shifts also signal opportunity and perhaps changes in China's approach towards the continent, to include 'softer' issues - like closer public interaction…The 6th iteration of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held this week in Johannesburg, South Africa.

A group of orphans and street children have been trained in photography and asked to capture the world around them […] It became known as the Murmushi Photo Project. As well as giving them a practical means by which they might one day make a living, it provides them with a visual voice through which they can document their worlds.

And the winner for most charitable nation in the world is ... Myanmar. Coming in second: the United States. […] The ranking confounds the common perception "that generosity and wealth are connected to one another," says Adam Pickering, the international policy manager of the London-based Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)...Only five of the G20 countries appear in the top 20, he points out. 

[…] Films are targeted at an international audience, which is already saddled with its own preconceptions of Africa [...] Why tie the film so explicitly to a cause that “needs immediate attention,” if not to profit on the outdated idea of that there is a foreign land that needs saving? Art can certainly dramatize real-life events, but it can’t be the earnest volunteer on the street with a Greenpeace clipboard.

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa says the much-anticipated film Mandela's Gun will be released in the first quarter of 2016. Mthethwa is busy drumming up support for Africa Day next year, where he signed agreements with counterparts in the fields of film cooperation, oral history and cultural exchange programs. He says they will be using cultural diplomacy to forge people-to-people relations.

The South African documentary, Miners Shot Down, on Monday night walked away with the International Emmy award for best documentary. The film covers the 2012 Marikana massacre when mineworkers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more.

Jakarta is already running a promotional campaign, ‘Enjoy Jakarta,’ which the city launched in 2005. But Alistair Speirs, a Jakarta-based brand consultant who worked on the campaign, told the Jakarta Globe in 2012 that Jakarta had, “Failed to deliver the values promised.” Speirs said that the city’s problems had “overshadowed” the campaign’s message.

Palestine's 2015 Oscar entry, the Wanted 18, tells a tragically absurd story of how a herd of cows are hunted down by Israeli authorities, who did not look fondly on the community's attempts to be self-sufficient. Through archival footage, re-enactments and claymation, film-makers Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan use dark humour to tell this lesser-known tale of a farm gone rogue...