Taylor Swift director defends 'colonial' Africa video

The director of Taylor Swift's new video has defended it following criticisms it depicts a whitewashed version of Africa.

The video for Wildest Dreams had been accused of glamorising a "white colonial fantasy of Africa".
But director Joseph Kahn has said it "is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950".
Swift has not commented on the controversy around the video.
In a statement Kahn denied that the video only includes white people.

"The reality is not only were there people of colour in the video, but the key creatives who worked on this video are people of colour."
He points out he is Asian American, while the producer Jill Hardin and editor Chancler Haynes are African Americans.
"We collectively decided it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would have been accused of rewriting history.
"This video is set in the past by a crew set in the present and we are all proud of our work."
"There are black Africans in the video in a number of shots, but I rarely cut to crew faces outside of the director as the vast majority of screen time is Taylor and Scott (Eastwood).''

The video has been viewed more than 19 million times since it was released on Monday, but criticism was quick to come online.