Most Gorgeous Nigerian Women (apparently live abroad...)

I will bracket the concern whether there should be these lists of people classified by their physical attractiveness at all (I admit I'm a sucker for People Magazine's the 50 Most Beautiful People), but let me speak to another concern. As I read through the "artville" section in today's Leadership "Most Gorgeous Nigerian Women" by Zully Abdul, I was struck by the fact that with the exception of Nollywood actresses Dakore Egbuson and Genevieve Nnaji and possibly model Agbani Darego, the women (12 out of 15) featured here live and have careers outside of Nigeria. Now of course I am in favour of celebrating the achievements (beauty, career, or otherwise) of Nigerians wherever they may reside and I am uncomfortable with "more authentic than thou" arguments; however, what does this list say about the standards used in judgment and what does this mean to the target audience, which I assuming would be women living in Nigeria where print copies of Leadership are distributed? Is it that there is a paucity of "gorgeous" women who actually live and work in this country???? I've seen women just as gorgeous if not more so among my students at Bayero, singing in church, designing clothing in tailor shops, or sitting behind the counter at an MTN shop. (Granted these sorts of lists generally deal with glamourous public figures, but are there not at least 7 or 8 gorgeous and glamourous Nigerian women living in Nigeria?) What does this list say to Nigerian women in Nigeria who would like to be seen as "gorgeous"? That they must get visas and go appear in American music videos, Hollywood films, and Italian runways? And looking at these women, what does it say about what beauty is? All of these women appear to have straightened hair (with the exception of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ), they all appear to be wearing Western-style clothing, most of them seem to be fairly light skinned, and they are all rail thin....

It's not that I don't think these women are "gorgeous." I think they are. I also think there is a place for celebrating the accomplishments of expatriate Nigerians. But when there is so much beauty and creativity all around us here in Nigeria, why can't at least half of the "most gorgeous Nigerian women" highlighted here be ones living at home?

A related kvetch. Style. Nigerians have absolutely amazing styles. When I come to Nigeria from the U.S. I tend to leave most of my Western clothes there and just have clothing tailored here. When I go back to the U.S., one of the things I miss the most is getting to dress in beautifully designed, floor-sweeping skirts/wrappers whenever I like. But, and I noticed this while grading 113 gender analyses of Nigerian newspaper articles, it seems that often when 'style' is discussed in Nigerian newspapers it is more often about how to wear "skinny jeans," V-neck blouses, spagetti strap tank tops, etc. The photographs featured and advice given are (to pick a random number that seems about right) usually about 70% on 'Western' style. (I'm talking specifically of newspapers and not magazines like Ovation, which features a good deal of glamourous "traddie"). Now I think people should wear whatever they want and there is a case to be made that if it is worn by a Nigerian it becomes Nigerian style, but at the same time, it strikes me that there is something not quite right here...

Ali Nuhu Official Website

Grateful to Ibrahim Sheme's blog for pointing out that Hausa film superstar Ali Nuhu has a new official website. Very impressive.

Here's a good interview the Daily Trust did with Nuhu back in March, in which he talks about the censorship crisis.

Photo Credit: Hausamovies.com (Much better pics on Ali Nuhu's site, but I couldn't link to them)

Ousmane Sembene on Nigerian video films

I have spent all day reading articles on Nigerian film that I realized I had not yet read and needed to do so speedily before finishing my proposal. Via my library link I was able to get access to a fabulous issue of Film International (2007) 5:4. Most of the articles seem to have gotten beyond the cliched and simplistic haranguing of Nigerian films for not fulfilling some "universal" standard of "quality," and instead delve into the complex and revolutionary contributions Nigerian film is making to world cinema.

However, when I finished reading John McCall's article “The Pan-Africanism we Have: Nollywood’s invention of Africa”, I had to post his postscript, which described what tha Ousmane Sembene, (may he rest in peace), often proclaimed the "Father" of African cinema, recently said about the Nigerian film industry:

I quote from John McCall:
"A few years ago I was fortunate to be among a group of American scholars gathered in Dakar for an NEH Institute to discuss the current state of African cinema. Over the course of the Institute, the question of whether Nollywood movies should be taken seriously became a point of heated discussion. One day we were fortunate to have Ousmane Sembene as a guest speaker. When he completed his presentation, the first question he was asked was what he thought of the new Nigerian video movies. We were all eager to hear what the venerable father of African cinema had to say on this subject. Sembene smiled just a bit, removed the ever-present pipe from his mouth, and said that the Nigerians had found a way to reach the African audience--and that, he acknowledged--was a very great accomplishment. A true revolutionary, Sembene said that the Nigerians had shown the way to reach the African audience, and that African film-makers should rethink their devotion to celluloid film and recognize that video was better suited to the vital task at hand" (McCall 96).

McCall, John C. “The Pan-Africanism we Have: Nollywood’s invention of Africa.” Film International. 5:4 (2007): 92-97.

And, so, my brothers and sisters, I stand vindicated for, in a recent paper, comparing the farcical portrayal of a neocolonial elite in Sembene's film Xala to the farcical portrayal of said elite in Kingsley Ogoro's Osuofia in London, (for those who have seen it think of the "mirror scene" in which the British-Nigerian lawyer begins to lose his accent). I rest my case....

"In Defence of the Films We Have Made" by Odia Ofeimun

When I'm writing a paper, I have such a hard time stopping myself from reading and actually starting to write. There is just so much to read, and I love feeling my mind growing and expanding--of learning--devouring knowledge. Today, I sat down on my couch while the snow fell outside and hand wrote an extended outline, so as to keep myself from turning on my computer and getting distracted, and then instead of turning on the computer and starting to write, I had to read one more thing.

The thing I chose to re-read (having first read it about a year and a half ago) was "In Defence of the Films we have made" the keynote address given by Odia Ofeimun at the 2nd National Film Festival in Lagos on 27 November 2003. Both celebratory and thoughtful, It is simply the best essay I have ever read on the Nigerian film industry, both placing it within a historical context and theorizing towards the future. I have been reading it from issue 8 of Chimurenga (2005), which some friends of mine in South Africa sent me, but when I searched for it online, I see that it has also been published by West Africa Review Issue 5 (2004), so I'll cut and paste a few passages from that.


"In Defence of the Films We Have Made"
by Odia Ofeimun

Excerpt 1:

"Needless to say, the home-video has become the hegemonic means of defining the Nigerian film sense. Whatever is said about any other way of making stories on screen, it is the video film that will necessarily for the foreseeable future dominate the Nigerian film festival. For every day of the year, three new video films are unloaded upon the Nigerian market. Every year in the past half decade, about 200,000 to 300,000 new hands have been lifted from the throes of unemployment and underemployment by the gloss and glitter of the small screen. Conjointly, they generate about five billion Naira annually. Stranded artists, areas boys and area fathers, authors, dramatists, actors and closet fabulists have found their niche in the pack. Actors who had run away from the penury that haunted the stage have been brought back to life! Though they were dead now they are a vibrant part of a community that literally bubbles. Devotees of the stage who had been reduced to breaching their talents, and living near derelict lives, wondering what kind of society leaves her artists to suffer in so many distracting sectors, have acquired the gravitas of an established community. No longer are they among the artists who are sneered at by other moneyed professionals who are no better than what used to be called agbero bourgeoisie because they merely load other people’s wagons. Now the home video artist is not lumped with other artists who are ritually blamed for not being business-oriented. Within the norm of the home video, it is enough to be a scriptwriter, actor, dramatist, cameraman, director or singer although professionalism is still far away.

If you look at our hunger-besotted slums and our beleaguered villages, you find that many, so many, are finding their feet because of a trade that removes the duller moments from the depression of our neglected, unmanaged and generally manager-less towns and cities. Authors displaced by the collapse of the publishing industry have made a detour from the usual haunts in favour of the home-video turf. One look at any home video film, and the gushy life that it carries, brings a sense of how much of our society was dead and dying without finding a time to bloom. As such, gratitude must well up in the hearts of those enamoured of artistes who had given so much to the arts and are only just being saved for a season of eternity in the company of a vibrant younger generation by the home video films. This is to say that what appeared in the beginning as merely making do has opened floodgates to the peculiar Nigerian genius for creativity and enterprise. The burst of social energy that it has unleashed has very few parallels in any other areas of our national life except perhaps in the parallel growth of Pentecostal churches which it has serviced in many cities and which in an uncanny way services it."

....

Excerpt 2
"The avalanche of issues that films have covered bear testimony to unparalleled creativity which should make and have been making Hollywood buffs take notice. The sheer volume is unprecedented even if repetitious and not always obedient to the laws of professional decorum or excellence. For this reason, I would concede that the video films run the danger of merely supplying Hollywood with the raw materials to re-claim our shores in the not too distant future. But for now, in spite of a ritualistic slapdashness, there is so much energy and creativity that older motion picture industries have something to learn from. From boardroom struggles to political power play, military adventurism and godfatherism in politics, ritual murder, drug abuse and the rehabilitation of drug abusers, witchcraft and churchcraft, high living and low life, prostitution and AIDS, the home videos are brashly, even if self-consciously, seductive. They are turning out the Nigerian story in a no-holds-barred fashion which leaves no room for anybody to hide. In this, they recall the sass of junk journalism and, in a sense, what was called guerilla journalism under the military. Undeniably, they reveal an enormous lot about us and our society that is not beautiful. Not infrequently, they themselves are not beautiful or passable. But why judge an artistic culture by its commercial pulp rather than its outstanding performances. It is like the misbegotten booboo in literary criticism which takes the motley of self-published, poorly edited works, as basis for judging the vibrancy of Nigerian literature. In such situations, it is the judges who, inadvertently, are judging themselves."

To read the whole essay, see West Africa Review.

African Film Conference

Having just returned from an absolutely amazing conference on African film at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I thought I'd share a few photos. In addition to my academic heros, there were representative filmmakers from the continent. Among the academics I was excited to have a chance to talk with further: Abdalla Uba Adamu, Brian Larkin, Matthias Krings, Onookome Okome, Jonathan Haynes, Birgit Meyer, Kenneth Harrow, and many more. "Nollywood" reps: Joke Silva, Madu Chikwendu, Francis Onwochei, Ghanian filmmaker Socrate Safo, and Cameroonian filmmaker Joyce Ashuntantang. Photo 1: Onookome Okome and Abdalla Uba Adamu; Photo 2: Ghanian filmmaker Socrate Safo was passionate about his craft and was a delight to watch "in action" as he grounded the often flighty academic theorizing with practical examples of current issues of technology and practice in the Ghanian film industry; Photo 3: Brian Larkin and Abdalla Uba Adamu on a panel; 4) Socrate Safo presents clips from three of his films; 5) Cameroonian filmmaker and actress Joyce Ashuntantang shows a clip from her film, Potent Secrets, and speaks about her feminist motivations.

One of the best parts of the conference was getting to interact with the filmmakers from Nollywood, Ghana, and Cameroon. Hearing them speak in conjunction with the academic papers, I was particularly struck by their passion and their professionality--the absolutely brilliant business that Nigerian (and Ghanaian) filmmaking has become. But while there were still a few academics who echoed the cliched critiques of "Nollywood" filmmaking being "only about making money," Socrate Safo, Joke Silva, Madu Chikwendu, and Francis Onwochei emphasized (and embodied) the intentionality of the craft. These filmmakers are not greedy amateurs out to just make money (although money is certainly a very practical concern in an artform that is also a business--films cannot be made without money), but artists and performers who love and are passionate about what they do. I was particularly impressed with the few clips I saw of Safo's films--lighting, camera angles, mise en scene, and wonderful use of an original music score.

The main impression I came away from the conference with was that the dichotomy between "African cinema" and the "video film" is a false one, and that while various histories, funding, and technologies must be taken into consideration, films on celluloid and video can and should be put side by side in analysis of African film. This is why (even before this conference) I have been calling Nollywood and Kannywood productions "films" rather than "video films." As digital technology becomes prevalent even among filmmakers coming out of a celluloid training (Jean Pierre Bekolo's Les Saignantes, for example), the technical differentiation between "video" and "film" seems to be a rather useless one. At the conference, the prevalent terms used were "Fespaco films" and "video films;" however, much of the discussion centered around the need to complicate the framework that has so far divided analysis of one from the other.