For the final assignment of a class I teach on Media and Africa at The New School I asked students to make short video profiles of African immigrant experiences in New York City. Most, if not all, of the students had never blogged before, nor filmed, much less edited something for public viewing. None of the films are longer than 7 minutes. The films are equally powerful and involved immense effort on the part of the students and I have links to all the videos here, but let me highlight two of them in this post. The short film above, “The Big Dreamer,” just below, tells the story of Lookman Mashood, co-owner of Buka, a Nigerian restaurant that opened this year in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. (Robert Sietsema, Voice food critic, checked it out already.)

The second film, below, is a profile of a young, Nigerian-American singer, Tigre Fisher:

Other videos covered immigrant performers on Broadway, the relationship between African-Americans and African immigrants in Harlem; the travails of African diplomats at the United Nations; and a Nigerian chief who lives in Queens.