Mixing Hollywood : ONOMOllywood

Hollywood film classics with an African twist

BET picking up on the ONOMOllywood buzz today.

Photographers Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé teamed up to give iconic American and French films an African makeover. Shot between Senegal—Diop’s home country—and Côte d’Ivoire, the ONOMOllywood series features local emerging actors and models reinterpreting Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Matrix, American Beauty and other critically acclaimed box-office hits that transcend racial, social and geographical barriers. –Patrice Peck

Hollywood in Afrika

German STERN talking about ONOMOllywood. Below is the English translation:

What would it look like if Hollywood were in Africa? Two photographers have restaged major movie scenes with black actors. Can you guess the correct movie?

The ONOMOllywood photo series is making Hollywood and Africa meet. The photographers, Antoine Tempé and Omar Victor Diop restaged scenes from classic films with black models, in Africa. For both it came like a game with their personal as well as collective memories. Omar Victor says: “growing up watching these movies, I remember playing roles with my friends as a kid, impersonating James Bond as if I was Roger Moore, and running around the house searching spies in my mom’s kitchen…” The project was commissioned by Onomo International, a business hotel chain in Africa.

The scene of the photo [above] is not an easy guess for the younger generation. However this movie is a masterpiece from 1966 and is set in the swinging London . It is about a murder, which a photographer believes he can solve thanks to a shadow on one of his enlargements.

The photo model on the floor was originally played by Veruschka Countess of Lehndorff, and the photographer by David Hemmings . The movie was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Six images from ONOMOllywood featured in OFF The Wall magazine

The magazine OFF The Wall is publishing in its n° 1 issue a portfolio of 6 images from the series “ONOMOllywood, revisiting great movie classics” by Antoine Tempé and Omar Victor Diop. Onomo Visual Art, the cultural promotion label of the hotel group Onomo International has given free reigns to two photographers —Antoine Tempé and Omar Victor Diop— to create a series of photographs in which they revisit some of the greatest movie classics. OFF The Wall can be purchased at Colette, O.F.R., Le Bal, le Palais de Tokyo, Centre Commercial, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Agora Presse, La Hune, La Chambre Claire, Drugstore Publicis, Artazart, Centre Commercial, Rouge 58, Palais de Tokyo, La Photo Librairie, Le Bal Books, Le Merle Moqueur au 104.

This week, Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé have been shooting the last scenes of their ONOMOllywood series at hotel Onomo Dakar. They’ve let the architecture of the hotel inspire them to recast a vast range of movies spanning the 50s French nouvelle vague Le Mépris, the swinging 70s cult movie Blow Up or the futuristic 90s box-office hit The Matrix.

A few images from the series will be unveiled in May in the N° 1 issue of the magazine OFF The Wall, to be released at the Paris Photo L.A. show.