LOS ANGELES: John Singleton, who made his movie directorial debut with the acclaimed “Boyz n the Hood” about young men struggling in a gang-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood, died on Monday at the age of 51, his family said.
Singleton recently suffered a stroke, a family spokeswoman said.
“We are sad to relay that John Singleton has died,” a statement from the family said. “John passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends.”
Earlier on Monday, the family said it had made the “agonizing decision” to withdraw life support from Singleton.
Singleton was a native of South Central Los Angeles, the community that was the setting for “Boyz n the Hood,” a drama about friendship amid the peril of gang violence.
He became the first African-American and the youngest person to be nominated for an Academy award for best director, at age 24, for the movie.
Singleton later directed movies such as action film “2 Fast 2 Furious” and historical drama “Rosewood.” He is the creator and executive producer of current cable TV series “Snowfall” about the start of the cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.
His family said Singleton “is a prolific, ground-breaking director who changed the game and opened doors in Hollywood, a world that was just a few miles away, yet worlds away, from the neighborhood in which he grew up.”
US film director John Singleton dead at age 51
US film director John Singleton dead at age 51
- Singleton became the first African-American and the youngest person to be nominated for an Academy award for best director, at age 24, for the movie
Archeologists discover world’s oldest artwork in Indonesia’s Sulawesi
- Newly dated artworks are believed to have been created by ancestors of indigenous Australians
- Discovery shows Sulawesi as one of world’s oldest centers of artistic culture, researcher says
JAKARTA: Hand stencils found in a cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi are the world’s oldest known artworks, Indonesian and Australian archeologists have said in a new study that dates the drawings back to at least 67,800 years ago.
Sulawesi hosts some of the world’s earliest cave art, including the oldest known example of visual storytelling — a cave painting depicting human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. Found in 2019, it dates back at least 51,200 years.
On Muna, an island off the province’s southeast, researchers have discovered new artworks which are faint and partially obscured by a more recent motif on the wall. They used a new dating technique to determine their age.
The cave art is of two faded hand stencils, one at least 60,900 years old and another dating back at least 67,800 years. This makes it the oldest art to be found on cave walls, authors of the study, which was published this week, said in the journal Nature.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency, or BRIN, and co-author, said this hand stencil was 16,600 years older than the rock art previously documented in the Maros-Pangkep caves in Sulawesi, and about 1,100 years older than stencils found in Spain believed to have been drawn by Neanderthals.
The discovery “places Indonesia as one of the most important centers in the early history of symbolic art and modern human seafaring. This discovery is the oldest reliably dated rock art and provides direct evidence that humans have been intentionally crossing the ocean since almost 70,000 years ago,” Oktaviana said on Wednesday.
The stencils are located in Liang Metanduno, a limestone cave on Muna that has been a tourist destination known for cave paintings that are about 4,000 years old.
“This discovery demonstrates that Sulawesi is one of the oldest and most continuous centers of artistic culture in the world, with roots dating back to the earliest phases of human habitation in the region,” said Prof. Maxime Aubert of Australia, another of the study’s co-authors.
To figure out the stencils’ ages, researchers used a technique called laser-ablation uranium-series dating, which allows for the accurate dating of ocher-based rock art. The method uses a laser to collect and analyze a tiny amount of mineral crusts that had formed on top of the art.
The study also explored how and when Australia first became settled, with the researchers saying the stencil was most likely created by the ancestors of indigenous Australians.
