Benin Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Sasha Urban editorViola Davis is no stranger to transformations. In the past couple years alone, she’s played DC’s Amanda Waller, Ma Rainey and even Michelle Obama. But in the warrior epic “The Woman King,” the trailer for which dropped Wednesday, Davis plays a character unlike any she’s played before.Davis stars in the film as Nanisca, the general of the real all-female military unit known as the Agojie (also known as Amazons) in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

African filmmaker Toyin Ibrahim Adekeye’s first feature documentary film, Bigger Than Africa, is scheduled to premiere on global streaming platform, Netflix.

Who is nominated for Best Global Music Performances?The nominees all hail from Africa and Asia, with many representing Nigeria. Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based singer and composer Arooj Aftab is nominated for her song “Mohabbat”. Nominated for their collaboration of “Do Yourself,” is Angelique Kidjo, a Beninese singer-songwriter, and Burna Boy, a Nigerian singer/rapper.

EXCLUSIVE: Warrior Women With Lupita Nyong’o, a documentary about a forgotten female army, is heading to Smithsonian Channel.

Nigerian authorities on Wednesday, as part of a modest but growing effort in some European countries to return African art taken by colonial powers.Jesus College is the first U.K. institution to give back one of the artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes.

France is displaying 26 looted colonial-era artifacts for one last time before returning them home to Benin.The wooden anthropomorphic statues, royal thrones and sacred altars were pilfered by the French army in the 19th century from Western Africa.President Emmanuel Macron suggested that France now needed to right the wrongs of the past, making a landmark speech in 2017 in which he said he can no longer accept "that a large part of many African countries’ cultural heritage lies in France.” It

The U.S. on Thursday regained a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, three years after the previous administration withdrew from it.

Nigeria later this month, making it the first U.K. institution to hand back one of the artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes.Jesus College announced in 2019 that it would return the Okukor, a statue that was taken from the Court of Benin in what is now Nigeria.

PARIS -- French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that his country will return 26 African artworks — royal thrones, ceremonial altars, revered statues — to Benin later this month, part of France's long-promised plans to give back artwork taken from Africa during the colonial era.Discussions have been under way for years on returning the artworks from the 19th century Dahomey Kingdom. Called the “Abomey Treasures,” they currently are held in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

Sting is putting a new spin on one of his classics.

Peter Gabriel has gathered musicians from around the world to re-record his 1980 protest song “Biko”.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Guardian notes, many obtained through colonization or plunder by "explorers." (See: the Benin Bronzes, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and the Parthenon Marbles, among many others.) The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted to share new photographs of their family with @DavidAttenborough.

Pan troglodytes verus , is the first group of chimpanzee to be added to the list of critically endangered apes.

Beloved Nigerian reggae star Majek Fashek has died at age 57.

It was going to be an important year for Angélique Kidjo.

Like many artists, Grammy-winning Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo — whom Time magazine once called “Africa’s premier diva” — has felt the staggering effect of the coronavirus crisis, which forced the cancellation of her Daughter of Independence concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.