Blog, Uncategorized - Sunday, April 5, 2009 17:40 - 0 Comments

Trip to FESPACO

By Drew Hinshaw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like many Americans living in Africa, I expected the local reaction to Barack Obama’s election to be instantaneous and euphoric, but was surprised to note how much more gradual—and more meaningful—his election has played out in the culture.  Election night passed without firecrackers or confetti, but in the four months since, the president’s exotic name has been woven into proverbs, placed on a pedestal, then incessantly dropped with awesome reverence by musicians and talk show hosts alike.  Surely, in time that wave of hopeful re-examination will touch the lens of filmmakers–maybe even Nigerian filmmakers, who tend to exploit post-colonial pessimism as ruthlessly as Nigerian politicians.  One positive sign: Nollywood tabloids report that the country’s studios are in a kind of moon race to produce the first (and therefore definitive) Obama biopic, although that pursuit seems to have been deferred by all following the realization that very little of our president’s life took place in a location that could pass for Nigeria.  But still.  Even if Nollywood’s film crews never manage the capital to ship their gear to Chicago, there are scattered signs across the continent—fair elections here, emerging private sectors there—that the usually vexed tone of African cinema has a corner to turn.  One day, some day. 

Yet one wouldn’t catch Hope Fever from FESPACO, Burkina Faso’s Pan-African Film Fest, where films are generally funded by and screened before wealthy foreigners; homegrown Nollywood videos, with their crude and jarring depictions of African distress are effectively disqualified on technical criteria. Strange that even without the input of trauma-mongering Nollywood directors, the 21^st edition of FESPACO showcased a fairly gruesome set of films.  Here’s how “The Seed” director, Joshua Bee Alafia sums up the prevailing mood: “It’s been brutal.  I’m seeing prostitutes getting their faces cut. Stabbings. Beatings.  I’ve been really struck by the nihilism of the films.”

As if to collaborate Alafia’s take on the atmosphere, the awards committee hands their Golden Stallion to Ethiopian Haile Gerima’s “Teza,” a movie about the powerlessness of common Ethiopians during the violent regime of Haile Mengistu—who was an asshole. Their Silver Stallion goes to “Nothing but the Truth,” an equally dour entry in which director John Kani explores the maddening moral ambiguities of post-apartheid South Africa, where freedom has by no means brought prosperity.

In a different, more stagnant or malaise-marked year, either film would have defined the historical moment–but this was 2009, a year whose memes of hope and change were not lost on African audiences, and this year only one film I experienced hinted at a grander and more coherent direction for African cinema: Tunde Kelani’s “Aurgba.”  Kelani’s film tells the story of a corruption-bedeviled village that embarks on a magnificent and transformative cleansing ritual.  And, true to the times, Obama b-roll is plastered all over it.

Kelani is a Nigerian filmmaker, of and yet above the Nollywood circuit.   His themes, settings, elaborate wardrobes, and the grandiose theatrical performances he coaxes out of his actors all signify as Nollywood; so too, does the contemplative grammar of his films. Less Nollywood-esque is his resplendent attention to visual detail—he shoots in HD, either unaware or unconcerned that his films will likely be compressed and sold via poor-quality VCDs.  His actors speak little English, mostly Yoruba—which intrigues academics–and his subtitles convey the euphemistic beauty of that language.  In fact, he may be among the first Nollywood filmmakers to use subtitles—ever.

By itself, that approach to African cinema would be noteworthy, but it’s an even larger distinction in FESPACO, a film festival that has struggled for nearly half its existence on how or whether to acknowledge Nigerian home video.  Founded in 1969 at a time when director Edward Rice Burrough’s Tarzan imagery was bouncing back onto African screens, the biennial film fest was an intended as a gathering ground for filmmakers in the newly-liberated continent.  FESPACO was to be place where Africans could negotiate what images of themselves they wished to project, not only to the outside world, but across African borders as well. If colonialism had denigrated and divided Africans, film was seen as a redemptive medium, one on which black people could re-unite and re-discover their greatness.  For a continent reeling from overpopulation and underdevelopment, it was an illogically hopeful and expensive medium to pursue.

“It was a revolutionary period,” film professor Fara Awindoor says.  “Africans wanted to prove that we can do it, too.”

Unfortunately, by “ do it” we can assume Awindoor means “produce aesthetically pleasing films on 35 mm equipment.” But the high-costs of film production proved to be the tripping wire for FESPACO, as African directors found themselves dependent on foreign funders, primarily French.  Naturally, that initial quest for artistic self-realization was compromised by investors who, however well-intended, tend to promote their own ideological agenda.  African voices were obscured, if not actively marginalized in the process.

“Here we are,” Awindoor continues, “we want to produce films that show us for ourselves, and we have to seek foreign funding to produce them.”

And yet, while FESPACO was sputtering out, downplaying its radical aims for the sake of of foreign capital like so many African nations at the time, the world’s third largest movie industry was emerging by surprise from the sprawl of Lagos.  Apocryphal tales surround the birth of Nollywood—it is often said that the genre was created by electronic storekeepers who needed a way to get rid of excess VHS cassettes–but those stories express a certain truism: In the early 1990s, as VCRs landed in Nigeria, aspiring and extremely business-minded filmmakers discovered an emerging market, and a cheap means through which to reach that market.  Produced entirely on video equipment, then rapidly edited and dubbed to cassette, the costs of producing a Nollywood hit were entirely within the reach of Nigerian venture capitalists.  With 140 million Nigerians to reach, it didn’t take long for the genre to grow by exponents.

Artistically, the fertile economics of Nollywood were reflected quite plainly in its brazen sense of self: Filmmakers relied upon and catered to nobody beyond the borders of Nigeria.  Films dealt in recondite Nigerian mythology and equally cryptic Nigerian English—both of which were completely incomprehensible to most outside audiences. While the high-brow African cinema of Kwah Ansah and Souleymane Cissé strove to explore universally modern experiences of alienation and uncertainty, the Nigerian video industry tended to dive towards the lower of the two common denominators, earning the -ollywood in its Nollywood.  Hallmarks of the cinema include drawn-out shouting matches that breach the limits of distortion, sight gags often against the disabled, and slapstick bordering on domestic abuse.  In fact, the slap fight could be safely considered central to the entire art form: “A Nigerian flick without slaps is like a Bollywood movie without the dance,” Nigerian poet Tolu Ogunleshi writes, only half sarcastically.

Yet no matter how technically careless, base, and Nigeria-centric their work may been, the country’s filmmakers ultimately achieved a Pan-African audience that the continent’s high-brown filmmakers can only envy.  Today, Nollywood’s distribution chains stretch throughout the Black diaspora, from Kenya to Crown Heights to the Caribbean; within Africa, the popularity of their work leaps over otherwise stubborn boundaries of class and ethnicity, extends through remote villages, as well as megalopolises.  If the agonizing production values seem like the handiwork of thoughtless filmmakers, they could also be construed as a sensible response to the urban hell of Lagos—an attempt to replicate on camera the aesthetics of urban turmoil.  Sound issues—unbearably loud arguments, inaudible mumblings—have their own unnerving and perhaps not unintentional effect: Women in Nollywood quite literally have a difficult time being heard amidst the loud belligerence of tyrannical “big men” characters.

And yet, how ever critically or popularly viable the art form has become, Nollywood movies are virtually disqualified from FESPACO, largely on the grounds that this is video—not cinema.

“Our festival is for films,” FESPACO organizer Baba Hamma told the BBC at the onset of FESPACO’s 20^th edition, in 2007.  “That means you have to bring films on 35mm and Nollywood usually makes movies on a video tape.”

Two years later, the 21^st edition made an enormous half-step towards accommodating Nollywood: This time around, FESPACO accepted entries filmed on HD video. That would be fantastic and auspicious news, except for the fact that few Nigerian filmmakers have completed the transition to HD.  Many, for example, shoot on HD, then edit on antiquated systems.  For the film buffs who pack FESPACO’s bleachers, this is exactly the kind of heedlessness that should disqualify any filmmaker, Nigerian or not.

But even beyond the format hurdles, there is a pervasive sense among many Africans that FESPACO belongs to Francophone Africa, to French-speaking audiences, to the French.  English-language films at the festival are commonly screened in distant and dilapidated theaters; Often, French-language films are subtitled in a second layer of French for clarity.  At the 2009 festival, Nigerians, Ghanaians, and other Anglophone Africans complained in public and in print of feeling unwelcome; no doubt their feelings mirror the sentiments of Nollywood directors who rarely bother to submit their work.

“It’s technological, sure, but it’s also attitudinal,” Awindoor says, regarding FESPACO unofficial “ban” on Nollywood.

To get a grasp on these attitudinal issues, I sit down with a FESPACO panel of mixed Anglophone-Francophone film critics to explore their view on Nollywood, and its place in African cinema. Their grievances run the gamut: A drama student complains that Nigerian producers only cast light-skinned actresses, another complains that Nollywood’s glamor standards set an impossibly high bar for African women, and promotes artificial and superficial ideals of beauty.  A Jamaican professor, living in Niger, complains that the filmmakers have an ahistorical attitude towards Africa’s problems, obsessing over social ills without contemplating their source.  She, probably figuratively, encourages more filmmakers to make movies about the pyramids and other highlights of African history.  The recklessness of the cinema is roundly mocked, in waves of laughter—the typecast actors, bombastic trailers, inane plots, all very humorous. Ghanaian cultural critic Kofi Anyidoho recounts that the purpose of FESPACO is to combat the Western World’s degrading, Joseph Conrad notions of Africa, but laments that “we [Nigerian filmmakers] are complacent in projecting some of these same images.”

However muddled the panel’s commentary may be, it’s not hard to miss the underlying and sensible objection FESPACO’s elite, academic audience has with Nollywood; that Nollywood, with its haphazard slap fights, crippled man gags, superstitious witchcraft plots, and sloppy approach to filmmaking depicts Africa in a bad light.  Or, from the point of a discerning film buff, in a single cheap kino flo with the doors spread wide. 

These awkward and seemingly irreconcilable differences between the world of FESPACO and that of Nollywood would be an easily compartmentalized predicament–an aesthetic issued buried in the obscure cinema of an under-reported segment of the globe—if the rivalry between FESPACO and Nollywood didn’t so uncannily mirror the fundamental political divide that has complicated Africa’s forward movement since independence.  Across the continent, the end of colonialism opened up two great rivalries in African politics: strident mass politicians who attracted huge followings; and more conservative, pragmatic elites who endeavored to make Africa presentable to foreign investors. It’s the feud, to take Ghana as an example, between Ghana’s founding father J.B. Danquah, who spoke Oxford English about Oxford values, and its first president Kwame Nkrumah, who did things like stomp in sheep’s blood when he won elections.  In Nigeria, that same pattern played out in the form of a civil war between radical secessionists and Nigeria’s foreign-backed federal forces, while in Burkina itself, that pattern pit Thomas Sankara—the theatrical military coup-leader who forced corrupt ministers into peasant’s work—against  Blaise Compaoré, the French-friendly current president who had Sankara executed.

The fact that African cinema so closely mimics the divisions over which coups and civil wars have been launched suggests that cinema may be one of the world’s most inherently political art forms–and that in African cinema, there is even more at stake than usual.

What is both telling and inexplicable, then, is how films from both camps tend to arrive at the same fatalistic conclusions.  Whether in the galleries of FESPACO or the Nigerian chop bar, I’ve come to see a lot of plots where well-intentioned yet tragically ordinary Africans are repeatedly overwhelmed by larger powers such as–in the case of FESPACO–economic forces, military regimes, pernicious social structures, or–in the case of Nollywood movies–hysterical mothers-in law, disease, some kind of witchcraft potion, mafias.

• • •

Of course, not every film at the 21^st edition could be safely pigeonholed as pessimistic, nor was every film stylistically divorced from the aesthetics of Nigerian movies, either.  Abdoulaye Dao’s  “Une Femme Pas Comme les Autres”—a women unlike the others—deservedly wins (NAME OF AWARD),  for its perky satire on polygamy.  The film posits a woman who repays her husbands infidelity by recruiting a second husband/partner-in-prankery.  Aesthetically, the film employs harsh lighting, bourgeoisie settings, long-winded grammar, slick background muzak,  predictable sight gags–all hallmarks of Nigerian home video that nonetheless bedazzle and amuse the theater’s largely European audience.

But it’s Kelani’s film that amplifies the stakes. It’s difficult to imagine a film that swings for an audience as broad as Kelani’s—he transmogrifies common Nollywood devices like the slapfight and the inexplicable illness into more dignified and universal devices—and yet the film is almost provincial in its concerns.  When a central character’s infant falls horrifyingly ill, her far more levelheaded friend takes time to prescribe a series of thoughtful remedies, concluding in an AIDS test (a subject all too many Nollywood films would deal with deal with in a vocabulary of witchcraft).  The ever vexed subject of rape—and how to depict it—is dealt with remarkable prudence, while corruption is transformed from an abstract evil, into a localized and relatable vice. Rather than sensationalize his character’s hardships, Kelani uses them as a chance to demystify African dilemmas, meticulously so–the film offers an extremely tailored response to a very particular set of agrarian, African concerns.

Yet “Arugba” contains glimpses of the village’s place in the wider world.  The impetus of change for the village is a series of ex-pats who have returned home: the foreign-trained doctor who comes back to build her clinic despite a culture of corruption, the Nigerian “been-to’s” who bring money, ideas, and a certain can-do spirit, the quasi-Rasta mindful of a larger black consciousness that dwarfs ethnic or parochial ties–these characters bring hints of an outside world that is clamoring for this small village to achieve its greatness.   Through them, and through other inklings of the world beyond, Kelani hammers his point relentlessly.  At one point, the village chief flops down onto a living room couch in a state of despair, when who should come walking across the TV screen?  The 44^th president of the United States, striding on stage for his victory speech.  The lesson is an unmistakable “yes, we can.”

But more than offering barefaced, pep-rally encouragement, Kelani’s film is about reaching a working medium between Nollywood cynicism and new century idealism. It is pragmatic, mindful of Nigeria’s unfortunate past, and respectful of it’s characters cynicism, but flush with ideas and confidence that even this troubled, sin-ridden community can transform itself through collective optimism. It honors a certain majesty latent in Yoruba culture that is often obscured not only by Nigerian cinema, but by foreign conceptions of Africa as a sufferable place. Almost incidentally, it bridges the broad and awkward gap between African and European audiences, and wraps FESPACO neatly into its fold.  The festival-goers largely missed it—perhaps it was a language barrier thing—but there it was, a great film ghettoized into one of the city’s humblest theaters, suggesting that African cinema can be that common gathering and healing space FESPACO’s founders intended it to be. Hope and unity.  Unity and hope.