I’ve recently moved to London, officially for Academic purposes, but unofficially to bask in the ultimate Global City and take part in it’s exhaustive list of arts and culture and general weekending inside the city’s heart. London is the bastion of mixing and diffusing, home to every culinary cuisine from virtually every corner of the earth, the premiere fashionista hotspot, and global trendwatching in politics, music and the catwalk.

Toronto-based MC and Poet Boonaa Mohammed never shies away from sharp words that uncover the harsh realities of immigrant life in Canada and countries of the West. The title of his latest spoken-word video, Green Card - commissioned for the Mayworks Festival of Canada - tells a powerful tale of the unjust and silent truths of immigrant hardships in countries where getting papers is like “winning the lottery”. Watch the video for a little slice of this narrator’s pointed perspective.

‘Fulton Street’ is a documentary taking place in Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill. The project is titled for the Fulton mainway that bisects these neighborhoods in Central Brooklyn, currently in the throes of gentrification. To personify this phenomenon, I am approaching subjects who have lived and worked in Central Brooklyn their entire lives. The project connects ongoing gentrification to the quality of life for residents and business owners in a modern world community of African, Caribbean, Arab, Latino, Southern, and Asian people of color. The main subjects are predominantly African American, ranging from 18 to 80 years old.

A week after the too-big, and controversy-laden Toronto International Film Festival has officially packed its bags (until next year), Toronto can start making room for the takeover of the 2nd Annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival …

Current TV has produced a documentary on Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona. Spain has one of the highest numbers of Pakistani migrants in Europe, second to the UK. Current TV’s documentary shows some of the challenges …

Every year, as the crisp winds of September arrive and labour day post-summer humdrum is laid to rest - a painful anniversary reminds all of us why the world we live in is a very …

“Exotic locales” in “far and dangerous places” are not new muses for musicians from the West. Although most of my own iTunes playlists consist of music and musicians from around the world - fitting into the too broad “world music” category - I am always wary of such collaborations and how they represent the muse/country in question, and of how these musical encounters can turn into self-indulgent congratulatory efforts for the recording artist. A new collaboration comes from Swedish songstress Victoria Bergsman, lead singer of The Concretes and famous for lending her soft, feminine voice to indie darlings Peter Bjorn and John. For her latest project, Bergsman travels to Pakistan with producer/guitarist/engineer Andreas Soderstrom to record her solo album “East of Eden”.

Worldtown has been on a short hiatus due to its people taking too much time bouncing around the globe and too little time producing tales for the site. In any case, we apologize for this interruption and present you with a short list of websites with similar mandates that you should check out ASAP. Without, of course, sacrificing any loyalty to yours truly.

Last month, Nicolas Sarkozy essentially declared that the wearing of the veil by Muslim women was a “sign of subservience” not coinciding with French ideals, and therefore not to be tolerated in France. He went …

LAL, Toronto’s politically charged, electronically driven :: On Tour in Canada this Summer
From July 30th to August 21st

Check out a date near you.