Of African Female Filmmakers

Hermon Hailay, dir. Price of Love (2015)

"Traditionally denied access to the medium of film, African women have been increasingly taking control of the camera in recent years. Female video makers are exploring cultural conventions and innovative strategies that challenge Eurocentric and male chauvinistic assumptions/readings of black female subjectivity. One of the most innovative video-films by an African woman that emerged from this practice is Veronica Quashie's Twin Lovers (Ghana, 1996). The film is about the consequences of urban life, the lure of the city, promiscuity among young people, and the menace of of 'sugar daddies.' The film revolves around the central character Juliet, who at about the age of 22 is still a virgin until she meets Kobbie - not by choice, but in the company of socializing friends. Her friend Doreen slips a narcotic into her drink making it possible for Kobbie to lure her home to be raped. Kobbie is a rich engineer and, as a notorious Casanova, he uses his charm and other dubious tactics including intimidation and deceit to achieve his goal. As a village girl, Juliet is pure, but the city full of vices, to which she went for education, destroys her ambitions. Now pregnant, she is terrified that her father will kill her if she fails to perform puberty rite, a ritual of honor that makes parents proud. In tranquil villages where tradition is upheld, sex and pregnancy before marriage are abhorred. Here, the film reminds us that villages are where cultures and traditions are preserved in modern Africa, while the city is a confluence of foreign influences. This emphasis on purity and culture also explains why in those days in Africa, civil servants who lived in the cities would go home to their respective villages to marry, ignoring the young city women, who were thought to be contaminated."

Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, 2003, 130

"Video Booms and the Manifestations of 'First' Cinema in Anglophone Africa,"

in Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake

"Dear Ijeawele": Adichie's Feminist Manifesto

Photo Source: Dreamstime.com

(By Chimamanda Adichie)--“DEAR IJEAWELE, OR A FEMINIST MANIFESTO IN FIFTEEN SUGGESTIONS”

Dear Ijeawele,

What joy. And what lovely names: Chizalum Adaora. She is so beautiful. Only a day old and she already looks curious about the world. Your note made me cry. You know how I get foolishly emotional sometimes. Please know that I take your charge – how to raise her feminist – very seriously. And I understand what you mean by not always knowing what the feminist response to situations should be. For me, feminism is always contextual. I don’t have a set-in-stone rule; the closest I have to a formula are my two ‘Feminist Tools’ and I want to share them with you as a starting point.

The first is your premise, the solid unbending belief that you start off with. What is your premise? Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only.’ Not ‘as long as.’ I matter equally. Full stop.

The second tool is a question: can you reverse X and get the same results?

What Nollywood Tells Us About Nigeria

Odia Ofeimun

(The Guardian)--Nigerian poet and critic, Odia Ofeimun, has been writing about life in Lagos for the last forty years. This past summer on a rainy June afternoon, I spent a few hours interviewing him while co-producing a radio documentary about Nollywood (streaming in full here). His observations reflect many of the key tensions in contemporary Nigerian life. The following quotes are culled from the interview at his home in the Oregun section of Lagos: 

Odia Ofeimun: "Lagos is a city you get to and feel like you can achieve anything in the world. It is not the most beautiful city, but it has its seductions. It is a society that sucks you in, and even when you are not part of the shaking or the moving of the city, you begin to have the feeling that you too will be there one day."

"There is a headiness the average Lagosian has — you do not really feel that the big man, no matter how big he is, is your boss, the man you call "Oga." And he, the man you call "Oga," knows that you do not really regard him as your master. "Oga" does mean master, but the average Lagosian who calls you "Oga" is just doing it to silly you. Those who take him seriously are fools."