ZINA SARO-WIWAThis piece arose from Zina Saro-Wiwa's interest in Nollywood and the African emotional landscape. The close-up of crying face is a classic nollywood trope. A trademark of the genre. The sobbing female figure, a grieving widow, a repentant woman of the night, the dutiful but put-upon wife. Almost certainly inspired by soap opera, but popular because of it’s resonance with the Nigerian psyche, the performance of pain – close up – forms the emotional backbone of Nollywood film. For the video installation, Mourning Class, Zina Saro-Wiwa has filmed a selection of Nigerian actresses crying-on-cue. They are Golda John, Esosa Edosomwan, Ebbe Bassey and Nollywood superstars Kate Henshaw-Nuttal and Dakore Egbuson. Each actress was sat in front of the camera, bearing their shoulders and covering their heads and were asked to cry when prompted by the director. They needed to produce real tears and had to stare at the camera as much as possible during the process turning their emotions into a true performance as well as a test of endurance.
Nigerians are naturally very performative people. Everyday life and speech is like theatre and a delight to behold. How then does one act when in front of a camera? Mourning Class speaks to this dilemma. Nollywood’s hasty productions, improvised scripts and lack of psycholigcal realism make it hard for actors to work this out and ply their trade most effectively. Mourning Class represents the synthesis of realism and performance. The work explores the role of performance in expressing grief in Nigeria and Africa, drawing the viewer into the territory between the emotive and the emotional. The minimal, ghostly sound is almost an echo and leaves room for the viewer to engage with the physical performance of grief. The lack of narrative and context but direct engagement of the subject also draws out the viewer’s own personal narratives engineering a form of catharsis.
Zina Saro-Wiwa’s ‘Phyllis’
and the subversion of
Nollywood cinema
FEBRUARY 28, 2013 BY
Zina Saro-Wiwa’s “alt-Nollywood” short film, Phyllis, is one of the weirder fifteen minutes of film I’ve seen in some time. “Using Nollywood to subvert Nollywood,” it is an atmospheric, impressionistic, and haunting film, chronicling Phyllis’s emotional states as she takes the wigs that form such a huge part of her identity on and off.
A surname like Saro-Wiwa brings a certain set of expectations which Zina wisely avoids throughout her work. And while I originally thought she might be benefiting from her name, this is a unique and engaging film that’ll throw you for a loop as you watch. Experimental and unrelenting, it relies heavily on its soundtrack, juxtaposing empty space and powerful heartbeat thumps against popular songs from both the West and Nigeria. When Phyllis puts her wig on, everything is cool, and we’re eased into a more typically Nollywood film vibe. But when she takes her wigs off, her eyes roll back into her head, and as viewers, we’re reeling along with Phyllis as she descends into the emptiness of her wiglessness.
As Saro-Wiwa explained in an interview with Christian Niedan over at Camera in the Sun, there’s a “syntheticness of Nollywood that I’m appalled by, but also attracted to. I want to represent that, so I invented this character through which I could express my love and hate and fear and loathing of the syntheticness of Nigeria and this practice of wig-wearing… ultimately, Phyllis represents the gap between our true essence and the plasticity… she is ultimately doomed to a cycle of longing and short-term satisfaction. But people read all sorts of things into Phyllis, and she means different things to different people. I am totally open to interpretation of what this film means. I’m not even sure I know what the film fully means. And I made it…”
The film closes with a particularly unsettling gothic image that reaffirms the fact that this is not your typical Nollywood film — not by a long shot. And though Zina approaches Nollywood from the perspective of an insider-outsider, having lived in the UK and worked for the BBC, that’s a welcome development that more homegrown Nollywood filmmakers would do well to emulate.
The film was originally part of the “Sharon Stone in Abuja” exhibit that went up at Location One Gallery in Manhattan in November 2010. It is now being shown as part ofVideo Slink Uganda, an exhibition in New York City of a run of experimental films on video culture.
>via: http://africasacountry.com/2013/02/28/phyllis-and-the-subversion-of-nollywood...
__________________________
Film-maker and journalist Zina Saro-Wiwa’s documentary This is My Africa was broadcast on television sets across the US in February 2010. In it, Saro-Wiwa talks with more than 20 Africans and people interested in Africa to reveal their personal stories and experiences of African culture across the continent.Here, in an exclusive online interview with Billie McTernan, she talks about personal identity, activism and the future of African art and cinema.
The Africa Report: What is your most memorable experience about Africa?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: Pretty much any market place I have visited. Many miniature dramas and comedies are played out in these spaces, and it’s quite intoxicating to be in the middle of it all.
Growing up in the United Kingdom with Nigerian parents, did you ever have difficulties to identify yourself culturally?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: Growing up I did not really worry about it. I was just a Nigerian who happened to live in the UK. Every summer was spent in Nigeria, so that further cemented our Nigerianness. My father never allowed us to call ourselves British, and I never really sought to define myself in that way. It was only when I started travelling around the world by myself that telling people I was purely Nigerian led them to believe I had grown up there. The fact was and is that I am partly British, too, whether I liked it or not. But the identity struggle I had more recently around five years ago was with the idea of ‘black’.
Once I began to accept that I was unavoidably British I had to contend with this idea of what it meant to be ‘black British’. But I felt that black did not define me, Africa did. This is because black in the UK context often meant Caribbean British and it did not reflect my own personal Nigerian history. So for that reason I have now settled on British-Nigerian, as it is simply the most accurate description of what I am.
Given your background as the daughter of a extremely well-regarded political activist, the environmental campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa, have you ever felt politically inclined?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: I have always had my own ‘activism’ which is related to growing Africa’s capability to define herself and tell her own stories on her own terms.
What change would you like to see in Nigeria, and moreover Africa, in the next 20 years?
Zina Saro-Wiwa:I would like to see our natural resources prospected more cleanly and efficiently, and I would like to see the money from our primary resources lead to better transport, communications and education. Most of my hopes and dreams for Africa are extremely basic, despite my own personal focus on the cultural aspects of our development. But we cannot hope to have peace and development without a fairer distribution of resources and if people are not educated. It is when people feel they have enough and when they understand each other better because they have heard each others stories enough times, that wider problems like corruption can be tackled most effectively. Beyond this, I want to see African urban cultural industries become more powerful, plentiful and professional.
How has the reception been to your documentary This is My Africa?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: The reaction has nearly always been very positive and this goodwill has propelled the film, it seems. It seems to have a momentum of its own. I organised a screening at the Barbican Arts Centre in London in 2008 and since then the film has really sold itself. Film festivals, one by one, started requesting it and the same happened with [the US cable television channel] HBO. I have felt tremendously lucky, as my working life rarely pans out like this.
I reckon that people are ready to hear alternative African narratives. Also, the thing I always wanted to happen happened, whereby people have told me that they have been inspired to go out and buy the books, music and films talked about in the documentary. I wanted to offer people a variety of ways to connect with Africa and this seems to be happening. So, overall the reaction has been very positive.
What was the last book you read?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: The last great book I read was A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd. I wasn’t expecting to like it. Since I was young, I have always thought there is something quite provocative about the title and I wasn’t sure what I would find. But that provocation turns out to be a delightful, as well as profound, conceit. The idea of it really makes you think and laugh. A wonderful and surprising read. I laughed throughout but also cried at the very end.
What are your personal plans for the future?
Zina Saro-Wiwa: I am in development for two more This is My Africa films. I am also developing a contemporary art show, that will take place in Manhattan, that I am super excited about and that relates to African film culture. I will be making an experimental video for this show.
