Music by Prudence will be the opening film at Abära – the International Disability Film Festival in Dublin, on Thursday October 20th! And the best news of all: Prudence is traveling to Ireland to attend the festival!

Abära is Ireland’s first ever International Disability Film Festival. The aim of the festival is to celebrate progress made by people with disabilities while increasing awareness and understanding of the many challenges still faced by people with disabilities around the world.

During the gala opening night, Prudence will be interviewed by RTÉ’s Arts & Media Correspondent, Sinéad Crowley. Limited tickets are available.

And if you can’t make it to the opening night, no worries: preceding the screening on Friday evening, Prudence will be present again, interviewed by Rod Stoneman, Director of the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, NUI Galway.

The festival runs from Thursday October 20th until Sunday October 23rd.

For ticket information, click here.

To download the full festival program (PDF), click here.

And even more right here.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Dublin, here we come!

Prudence was appointed Unicef’s national Goodwill ambassador last Tuesday. She will be working closely with Unicef on advocacy to protect children from all forms of violence, particularly children with disabilities.

Unicef’s Dr Peter Salama said: “This appointment is in recognition of Prudence’s bold endeavors to use her vocal talent to speak on behalf of millions of Zimbabwean children.

“Her voice has provoked positive actions for children and has helped move Unicef’s work in Zimbabwe,” he said.

In a Press release, Unicef said Prudence has been given the befitting appointment in recognition of her genuine commitment to communicating strong and clear messages advocating for the rights of children with different forms of disability.

“In being appointed as a national goodwill ambassador, she joins local singer legend Oliver Mtukudzi, appointed three months ago as regional goodwill ambassador for Unicef, in using music to highlight issues affecting children in Zimbabwe and in the region,” reads the release.

“Her music reflects on the neglect she experienced by her parents because of her condition and encourages love and protection of all children regardless of their physical condition.

“In the Oscar-winning documentary film, ‘Music by Prudence’, Prudence relieves her many hardships in life to encourage and empower young people living with disabilities,” reads the press release.

Read more on Zimdiaspora.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Prudence gets Unicef position!

So much has happened for Prudence, ever since Music by Prudence stole the hearts of so many people, and certainly after winning the Academy Award for best Documentary Short. After the media frenzy surrounding Kanye Gate whirled down, the focus was on Prudence, where it belonged. Soon after the Oscars, Prudence came back to the US for a whirlwind tour; Human Rights Watch teamed up, and with their generous help and support the film has become the cornerstone of an advocacy campaign, and Prudence a role model for many.

Prudence visited the White House, and overnight became a star in her home country, Zimbabwe, as well.

The most amazing thing that happened to Prudence, however, happened earlier this year. It had become harder for her to breath as a collapsing spine wore on her lungs, and she received spinal surgery in Denver, straightening her back!

Recently, the Denver Post portrayed Prudence and her amazing story, as she’s been in Denver for a number of months, rehabilitating from the major operation. Read her interview right here.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Prudence’s amazing journey

Last month, Prudence and the film were featured on Spotlight Radio. Spotlight Radio is a great source for people who want to learn English. It’s is a daily 15 minute radio program that uses a special English method of broadcasting. They use fewer words, slower speed, and shorter sentences.

People can listen to Spotlight Radio online, on public radio stations, and in school classes.

Listen to the Spotlight broadcast on Music by Prudence right here.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Spotlight on Prudence

Music by Prudence has been nominated for an Emmy in Outstanding Music and Sound! Congratulations to sound mixer Chris Bertolotti, music producer Ted Mason, and music engineer Joseph Colmenero, and of course to the musical geniuses of the band Liyana, and to their star singer, Prudence Mabhena.

The 32nd Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards Ceremony will be held at September 26, 2011.

Click here to see all the nominations.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Nominated for an Emmy!

Prudence Mabhena has had spine surgery in the United States to save her singing career!

In the past, Prudence could sing for one to two hours during a show without a break. But recently, she’s had to do shorter shows and take breaks in the middle and come back.

It became harder for her to breathe as a collapsing spine wore on her lungs. “I was getting tired. After doing anything, I was so tired,” Prudence, now 23, said from the Denver Children’s Hospital on Thursday.

On Jan. 24, she had a surgery there in which doctors put rods into her spine and were able to straighten it. And Mountainfilm, in large part, made that happen. Here’s how.

Dr. Rick Hodes knows spines. He appeared at Mountainfilm in 2009 with the movie “Making the Crooked Straight,” a documentary that focused on Hodes’ endeavors in Ethiopia, where he helps facilitate spinal surgeries for children with crooked backs. Hodes also adopts as many kids there as he can to put them on his health insurance. He’s a bit of a saint, to say the least.

His film won the Moving Mountains Prize that year, which donated money to his cause — money Hodes used for another life-saving surgery — and Festival Director David Holbrooke brought him back as a judge in 2010.

He crossed paths with Mabhena, who was here with Music by Prudence, the film about her struggles and triumphs, and Hodes examined her while his son stood guard at the door.

“My whole life is bad backs,” Hodes said Wednesday. He took photos and notes, and arranged for a surgery in Ghana. That fell through, but he worked out another surgery in Denver at the Children’s Hospital, performed by Dr. Mark Erickson.

If she hadn’t have gotten the surgery, her back could have pushed into her lungs further. Because she sits in a wheelchair, her problem is worsened.

“She would have, at some point, had to stop singing. Her work would be in breathing, not singing,” Hodes said. “We’re not going to somehow cure her. On the other hand, she’s going to have a much more quality and quantity of life.”

All this, because of Music by Prudence playing at a film festival in a tiny mountain town. A festival that got its start with roots climbing films and van-dwelling mountaineers.

“It was Mountainfilm Festival that brought us all together. … It’s sort of funny how life works,” Hodes said. “Somehow, Mountainfilm is making the world a better place.”

That’s not lost on Holbrooke.

“It’s wild — two people from Africa in this world of broken spines, and we’re able to connect them. We’re able to help them,” Holbrooke said. “I love that. This is what the heart of our festival is — making people’s lives better if we can.”

On Thursday afternoon, Prudence felt well enough to wheel around the hospital and take a phone call.

“I’m good,” she said. “The doctors are surprised by my recovery.” She was expected to spend three to four days in intensive care recovering from the surgery. She spent a night and was out, that spirit of hers pushing her along. If everything goes to plan, she’ll have another surgery on Monday, this one to straighten out her hip so she can sit upright in her wheelchair instead of twisted.

“I feel straighter,” she said. “Now, I can lie on my back, and even sideways without any pain.”

And that seemed impossible at a time for the impossibly contorted Prudence, who was called an ant in her home country, where disabled people are looked upon like a curse. Prudence, whose smile beams like streetlights in perfect dark, was abandoned by her mother, looked after by her grandmother and then lived with her father and stepmother, where she was neglected and left alone to wallow. She ended up at a school for the disabled, where she found her calling in music.

She’s far from alone these days. She’s just recorded a gospel album, and her hope is to return home and belt out an enormous set supporting its release.

“My hope is to go back and launch the show,” she said. “I’m hoping to make it a very, very big launch.”

When Prudence is waiting to feel better, she sings a song. It’s called “My Hope.”

“I start singing it in my heart, and it gets me going,” she said. “I still have that hope that everything will be fine.”

And for now, it seems, it will.

Source: NewsDze-Zimbabwe

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Prudence has spine surgery in America

Black Book’s nightlife guru Steve Lewis talked with director Roger Ross Williams, about their wild days in the eighties, and about Music by Prudence, the Oscar upheaval, and future projects. Here are some highlights from the interview:

First off, we all know you as that guy who got shoved aside while accepting the Academy Award. Tell us about making the film, getting it out there, and the award. What was in your mind up there?
There is nothing that really describes the feeling of winning an Oscar, but I will try.  When my name was called it was as though I had won a new car on The Price is Right. ‘Come on down!’ was all I could think as I raced to the stage.  When I arrived on stage I felt the weight of the moment, the silence, the pressure, the incredible spotlight that was on me. I also felt grounded and ready to speak from my heart. My desire was to tell the world about this amazing girl and her band Liyana, and how I was so happy that everyone could finally know and love them like I had grown to know and love them. Most importantly, I was there to honor Prudence. She was in the audience that night, and I had worked hard to get her there from Zimbabwe, secure her a seat, and make sure the cameras were in position and ready to film her if we won. Of course, that speech didn’t happen.

As I was interrupted, I first felt shock, then horror, and then I quickly realized that I needed to turn the focus back to Prudence, who deserved more than anything to be acknowledged and recognized there at the Kodak Theater. Thankfully, I managed to get in the last line, mentioning that she was there, and that the Oscar was for Prudence. My crack Internet team back at the hotel had a copy of my acceptance speech and they reacted very quickly, and posted it online within ten minutes of the interruption. Our website got hundreds of thousands of hits—so many people got to read what I had to say and there was such an outpouring of love and support that I was totally in awe of the kindness of humanity. In the end, it brought more attention to the film than anything I could have ever said.

How did you come to Prudence?
I had been working in non-fiction television for many years and wanted to take the leap into independent documentary. I heard about Prudence and her band Liyana, and started writing to one of the heads of the school she attends in Zimbabwe, called King George VI. The school sent me some footage of Prudence and Liyana, and short stories written by all the band members about their lives. When I read them and saw the footage, I knew this was something special, and I was determined to make the film. I will never forget that first trip to Zimbabwe; I spent thousands of dollars of my own money and two weeks filming Prudence and the band. That original interview with Prudence is still the most poignant moment in the film, when she talks about spending years neglected lying under the mango tree left with nothing more than her own hopes, dreams, and her music.

Tell me about Sundance this year?
I just got named a Fellow of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program for my new project in East Africa. This means that, in addition to financial support, The Sundance Institute has invited me to the festival this year to meet with potential funders and pitch my new project. Making a documentary film is expensive, and we have to spend a lot of time raising funds. That is not my favorite part of the job, but with the generous help and support of organizations like Sundance, it makes the process a lot easier. I used to cover the festival for the Sundance Channel years ago and it’s an amazing experience for filmmakers. I am looking forward to going to Park City this January with my new project.

Read the full interview here.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Blackbook Interview

Prudence and director Roger Ross Williams were interviewed by O, The Oprah Magazine:

Subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, singer Prudence Mabhena shows that “disability does not mean inability.”

Prudence Mabhena has a voice as sparkling as the bluest ocean, with a little sob of an undertow burbling beneath it. That voice pours out of Music by Prudence, a moving portrait of the 23-year-old Zimbabwe native, lead singer of the Afro-fusion band Liyana. Born with arthrogryposis, which causes severe deformation of the joints (doctors amputated her legs when she was a child), Mabhena weighs about 50 pounds and uses a 600-pound wheelchair. “When I see myself singing in the film,” Mabhena says, “I don’t know how I do it.”

As painfully recounted in Music by Prudence, which received this year’s Oscar for short-subject documentary, most of Mabhena’s family abandoned or abused her―not an unusual fate in Zimbabwe, where disability is often attributed to witchcraft. Her fortunes began to turn at age 9, when she enrolled in the King George VI School in Bulawayo (one of the few learning centers for the disabled in the country) and formed Liyana with fellow students.

Coming home in March from the Academy Awards ceremony, Mabhena was thronged by well-wishers at the airport. “With the Oscar, she is now the most famous woman in Zimbabwe, celebrated by the society that once shunned her,” says Music by Prudence director Roger Ross Williams. Currently, Mabhena is preparing for Liyana’s U.S. tour later this year (check out their peppery, marimba-tickled songs at MusicByPrudence.com). “I want to show the world that disability does not mean inability,” she says. “And I want someday to write a Broadway musical.”

Find the article, published in the June issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, on the O website.

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, The most famous woman in Zimbabwe talks to ‘O’

Last month was an amazing month in the history of Music by Prudence. The film premiered on HBO, and was seen at film festivals all over the country: in Telluride, Colorado; Silver Spring, Maryland; Mendocino, California, and many other places. But what made last month extra special was Prudence Mabhena’s return to the US.

One of the most special moment was the opening night of the International VSA Festival, held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on June 6. VSA, the international organization on arts and disability, was founded more than 35 years ago by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to provide arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increase access to the arts for all.

First, Prudence performed a rousing rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’.

Prudence also sang a traditional African song ‘Jike’l Emangweni’ (Dancing Along), accompanied by musicians Dominic Shodekeh Talifero and Jason Armstrong Baker.

Finally, Prudence delivered a rousing rendition of ‘Ipi Ntombi’ (Where’s My Lady).

For more information, visit www.vsarts.org

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, An Amazing Performance (video)

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a recent interview with director and producer Roger Ross Williams, on his film, Prudence, and on getting Kanyed:

As Roger Ross Williams says, laughing about it in hindsight, he holds two records in the annals of the Academy Awards. One – and this is the important one – is that he’s the first African American to win a directing Oscar, for his documentary short, “Music by Prudence.”

And two, he is the first Oscar winner to be Kanyed when he stepped up to accept his award.

Sure, there have been random Oscar-speech hijackings over the academy’s 82 years – but they were before the verb to Kanye entered the lexicon, inspired by Kanye West’s obnoxious interruption of Taylor Swift’s Video Music Awards acceptance spiel last fall.

“Yeah, I’m solidified in the academy archive,” says the Easton, Pa., native, on the road last week with the subject of his inspirational doc, Prudence Mabhena, a wheelchair-bound 21-year-old from Zimbabwe with a voice like angels. “Music by Prudence,” which Williams filmed in Zimbabwe over 2008 and early 2009, premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. on HBO2.

The Oscar-night Kanye incident – as viewers who weren’t bored silly by the otherwise somnambulistic ceremony may recall – happened when Williams, about to go into his thank-you litany, was upstaged by Elinor Burkett, his erstwhile producer.

The two had had “bad differences” over the project, as Burkett has since confirmed. A lawsuit was filed. An out-of-court settlement was struck, and Burkett was removed from the film.

But her name was still on the Oscar nomination credits, and so Burkett was there at the March 7 Hollywood ceremonies, televised the world over. She claims that she introduced Mabhena to Williams, and that without Burkett’s involvement, there would be no film. Williams acknowledges that she told him about Mabhena and her band, but says that he raised the funds, and made the inquiries and contacts that got the project rolling.

“Pretty quickly, even standing there, I realized that this was an interesting moment. This is like a moment you don’t normally see. . . . At the end, I got to point out Prudence, and that was great.”

“So unfortunately, the fact that I was the first African American to be recognized with a directing Academy Award got overshadowed,” says Williams, 37, on the phone in a van being driven (not by him) from Bethlehem to Philadelphia recently. “It didn’t get overshadowed in the African American press, but it did on E!. . .”

That said, Williams acknowledges that the usurpation on live TV brought more attention to the film – and to Mabhena, seated amid the betuxed and begowned movie-biz crowd – than it would have if his speech had gone off undisturbed. And, Williams says, Burkett’s muscling in didn’t really ruin the moment for him.

“I was certainly taken aback,” he says. “But I pretty quickly, even standing there, realized that this was an interesting moment. This is like a moment you don’t normally see. . . . At the end, I got to point out Prudence, and that was great.

“But my speech was about Prudence, and that finally the world could see the Prudence that I fell in love with, the Prudence whose spirit I was inspired by, and finally I was getting this platform to say, ‘Now you guys get to know this incredible woman.’

“That didn’t work out as planned.”

As Williams’ film describes, Mabhena has arthrogryphosis, a rare congenital disorder that deforms the joints of the body. Shuttled between family members and abused by her stepmother, Mabhena, since age 9, has lived at the King George VI School and Center for Children With Disabilities in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

“Music by Prudence” chronicles Mabhena’s life story, her childhood despair, and her musical awakening. She and several of her classmates, also with disabilities, formed a band, Liyana. She now teaches at her old school, and is using her newfound fame to become a disability rights advocate and activist.

On her current visit to the States, she and Williams are presenting the 32-minute film, followed by Q&A sessions and usually an impromptu number or two from Mabhena. (“Everywhere we go, every screening we do, someone always asks Prudence to sing,” Williams says.)

Williams, whose family is descended from the Gullah, West African slaves brought to the Carolinas to grow rice, lives in New York. He’s been working in documentaries and television for the last 15 years, but “Music by Prudence” is his first independent project. He attended Northampton Community College just outside Bethlehem, Pa., and then New York University. A journalism major, he got the movie bug when he was assigned to cover the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in the mid-’90s.

“I was so impressed by the documentary filmmakers who had taken such great risks to follow their passion,” he recalls. “The amount of energy it takes to get films made, I was so impressed by that, and by the art of filmmaking. . . . I just thought this is what I want to do. Some day I’m going to be there. I’m going to be the filmmaker.”

A decade and a half later, Williams has an Oscar – and a place in the academy’s record books.

“Not bad,” he acknowledges. “Not bad.”

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Music by Prudence > Oscar winning documentary by Roger Ross Williams, Interview: upstaged during his big moment with Oscar