"Teza" Trailer
For Filmmaker, Ethiopia’s Struggle Is His Own
Mypheduh FilmsHaile Gerima's new film, “Teza,” stars the Ethiopian-American actor Aaron Arefe as a man from a small village who goes from idealistic student to political exile.
WASHINGTON — Among the courses Haile Gerima teaches at Howard University is one called “Film and Social Change.” But for Mr. Gerima, an Ethiopian director and screenwriter who has lived here since the 1970s in what he calls self-exile, that subject is not just an academic concern: it is also what motivates him to make films with African and African-American themes.
Brendan Smialowski for The New York TimesThe Ethiopian-born filmmaker Haile Gerima in Washington.
Brendan Smialowski for The New York TimesThe Sankofa bookstore and cafe, near Howard University in Washington, also houses Mr. Gerima's film company.
“Teza,” which opens Friday at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in Manhattan and means “Morning Dew” in the director’s native Amharic, may be Mr. Gerima’s most autobiographical movie yet. It traces the anguished course of an idealistic young intellectual named Anberber from his origins in a small village through his years as a medical student in Europe; his return to Ethiopia, where he ends up a casualty of the Marxist military revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974; and his exile to West Germany, where he becomes a victim of racism.
“I am from a generation that genuinely wanted a better society and to do something for poor and oppressed people, but which got blinded and lost and turned against its own humanity to become the opposite of what we wanted to be,” Mr. Gerima, 64, said in an interview at Sankofa, a Pan-African bookstore, cultural center and cafe that is across from the Howard campus and also houses his film company’s production offices. “For me, this film is really about displacement, which is a theme that really resonates within me.”
Sometimes that sense of dislocation is literal in his movies, and sometimes it is metaphorical. In “Sankofa” (1993) a black American fashion model on a shoot in Africa is transported back to the 18th century and slavery on a West Indian plantation, while in “Ashes and Embers” (1982) Mr. Gerima explored the disillusionment of African-American veterans returning from the Vietnam War to urban poverty and hopelessness.
Mr. Gerima first arrived in the United States in 1967 to study theater at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago; his Peace Corps teachers in Ethiopia, impressed by his talent, had arranged for his admission there. But he was not prepared for the politics of race in America, and initially felt estranged not just from the whites whose lawns and gardens he tended to support himself, but also from African-Americans.
“I had never been challenged the way African-Americans are in America, and encountering racism shocked me to the point that I had nosebleeds,” he said. “But I didn’t want to be black American, I didn’t want to identify with their situation — I felt they were slaves and I was not. I didn’t believe they came from Africa; I felt they were a different species sprouted from the plantation. The intellectual distance was too great.”
Unhappy with the acting roles he was offered — all the blacks “were just park benches and lamp posts” — Mr. Gerima transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he quickly won an acting award and developed ties to the Pan-African black-power movement. He switched to film after the shock of being exposed to Latin American directors like Glauber Rocha, Fernando Solanas and Miguel Littín made him realize, he said, that his story was “equally as important and valid” as those he was accustomed to seeing in Hollywood productions.
The filmmaker Charles Burnett, a classmate who went on to direct “Killer of Sheep” and “To Sleep With Anger” and remains a friend, recalls: “Even then he knew what he wanted to do and was very outspoken and engaged, with strong opinions and a deep identification with people of color and their struggle. He has his own code, he’s very energetic and kinetic, and you can feel his films the same way.”
Mr. Gerima first drew attention in the mid-1970s with “Harvest: 3000 Years,” about an Ethiopian peasant family struggling to survive under feudalism; it was filmed as Haile Selassie’s imperial rule was collapsing. “In a way,” Mr. Burnett said, “you can see the roots of ‘Teza’ there, the focus on village life and the concern with Ethiopian history.”
But that film also led to the start of Mr. Gerima’s troubles with the Derg, the Communist military junta that replaced Haile Selassie. The new regime declared his film “the property of the Ethiopian people” and would only allow him to make another movie in his homeland if he agreed to accept what they called their “jurisdiction” over his work.
“When they said that, I couldn’t wait to take the plane out, because I knew my freedom was gone,” Mr. Gerima said. “I would have died. I don’t fit well in dogma of any kind, even the dogma I create myself, because the next day I get up betraying it.”
Mr. Gerima describes “Teza,” which includes an evocative jazz-based soundtrack by Vijay Iyer and Jorga Mesfin, as an impassioned but “imperfect” film. Because financing was difficult to obtain, it took him more than a decade to complete, and the scenes shot in rural Ethiopia, many of them with illiterate peasants in the cast, with a mainly Western crew, posed one logistical challenge after another.
“Even to bring equipment to the locations was difficult and unforgettable,” said Mr. Gerima’s sister Salome, who helps produce his films. “The electricity came from the village generator, which sometimes would be turned off as we were filming, and so we had to negotiate. More than money, patience was required.”
Aaron Arefe, a 29-year-old Ethiopian-American who plays Anberber, described the shoot as “a rite of passage and a life-changing experience.” Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Arefe moved to Addis Ababa as a child and returned to California for college. But nothing prepared him for scenes shot in an area of caves in northwest Ethiopia.
“The people in the surrounding community came to watch us and asked what we were doing,” Mr. Arefe recalled. “When we said, ‘Making a movie,’ they asked, ‘What is a movie?’ When we said, ‘Like the stories you see on television,’ they asked, ‘What is television?’ Only when we said, ‘The visual version of what you hear on a radio,’ were some of them able to understand.”
Over the last year or so, “Teza” has been plying the festival circuit in Europe and Africa, winning awards in places like Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Venice; Carthage, Tunisia; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Françoise Pfaff, a Howard University colleague and the author of the book “Twenty-Five Black African Filmmakers” (1988), noted that Mr. Gerima was the first Ethiopian director to win the top prize at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, a considerable achievement, she explained, given that “Teza” was filmed in neither English nor French, the two dominant languages in African cinema.
“He’s very much respected both for his militancy, the honesty of his political involvement, and his talent and body of work,” she said of Mr. Gerima. “In ‘Teza,’ he really was able to capture light and shade, the full majesty of the African landscape, which gives the film a tremendous strength and beauty.”
“It’s no longer starving Ethiopia,” she added. “It’s a story of displacement and loss that resonates universally, and that also is a relief.”
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Haile Gerima- Using film to voice the story-teza
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One On One With Haile Gerima
Back in May, after just finding out that his latest film, Teza, had just won The Golden Stallion of Yennenga at FESPACO, (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou, I wrote here about Haile Gerima, the uncompromising Ethiopian director and story teller, a member of the 1960s UCLA movement, The Los Angeles School of Black Film Makers, a collective that also included contemporaries the likes of Charles Burnett (To Sleep with Anger, Killer of Sheep) and whose second wave included Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust). Gerima, a self described third world independent filmmaker, is a professor of film at Howard University.
The following videos, from Al Jazeera English’s Riz Khan’s One on One, which takes an intimate look into the lives and philosophies of newsmakers and celebrities, were aired in February of this year and spotlight Gerima’ inspirations, influences, and steadfast independent views on film.
Following Tambay’s recent podcast earlier this week, featuring two contemporary independent African-American filmmakers, Dennis Dorch (A Good Day To Be Black And Sexy) and Barry Jenkins (Medicine For Melancholy), whose films were successfully picked up by distributors at Sundance last year and went on to get limited theatrical release, but who still await that meeting or telephone call that will bring the jackpot Hollywood big bucks, the career of someone like Gerima is one worth contemplating for its persistence, tenacity, and uncompromising integrity.
Gerima says he makes his films, essentially, for himself, but adds:
“If I’m hungered of some subject matter, I find a common, collective population that equally is hungered for the story I tell.”
This hungered population he speaks of would include not just Africans but also African-Americans, populations whose stories, he feels, and many here might agree, the Hollywood machinery holds hostage to paternalism, thereby compromising the objective of breaking down barriers through filmmaking. Seeing as, like me, Gerima believes that storytelling is the key to filmmaking, the implication, obviously, is that, with the key all too often taken away from filmmakers (and writers) of colour, the doors to creative expression and the opportunity to contribute to a shared human experience through film remain somewhat closed to people of colour.
As someone who comes from a family of storytellers and lived what he calls an “amplified life” in Ethiopia, he describes his arrival in the US in 1968, aged 21, like suddenly having his humanity negated, and says that his own racial confrontations, though nothing in comparison to the African-American experience, were enough to actually make him doubt his quality as human being. The making of his best known film, Sankofa (1993), which took nine years to make, and which, because it engaged the subject of slavery and racism, some thought would torpedo his opportunity to be a good filmmaker, was something he felt he had to do to overcome his own struggle, as an Ethiopian knowing nothing of slavery and African-American history prior to arriving in America, with understanding African-Americans.
Having thought everything would be a piece of cake after finally finishing Sankofa, it took almost 14 years to finish Teza, about the displacement of African intellectuals, and proved even more problematic to raise money to make than Sankofa.
His advice to his young filmmakers is simple:
“Not to look at cinema as a telegram to send to somebody, whether it’s moral or entertainment.
…Find who you are – your voice will be unique, but if you imitate already existing voices, you pre-empt yourself.
…Find your voice as you tell the story.”
Gerima, now in his 60s, still writing scripts continuously and says he would like to be remembered as a symbol of resistance in a society that wants to destroy individual quality, even though he feels he’d be an imperfect example.
One on One: Haile Gerima - Part I
AlJazeeraEnglish — February 07, 2009 — This week on One on One meet the Ethiopian director, story-teller and philosopher.
One on One: Haile Gerima - Part II
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Gerima/Teza – Golden Stallion of African Film
About a month ago, a friend asked if I’d heard of Haile Gerima or seen any of his films, in particular, Teza, his latest. I had, indeed, heard of Haile Gerima and had also seen one of his films, many moons ago (early 90s) called Sankofa, an evocative, ethereal tale that looks at slavery through the eyes of a 20th century African-American model who visits Ghana and sees into the past. I told my friend I’d keep my eyes peeled for any screenings of Teza, saying I wouldn’t hold my breath as I expect any such events to be few and far between…
But what I didn’t know at the time is that Teza had just won The Golden Stallion of Yennenga at FESPACO, (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou, or The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougo for tho of us who don’t parlez le francais). FESPACO is the largest and most globally renowned African film festival, was created in 1969 in Burkino Faso, and The Golden Stallion is its top prize. Gerima’s Teza has screened at film festivals world-wide and won a slew of other accolades including the Golden OSELLA for Best Screenplay and Special Jury Prizeat the 65th Venice Film Festival, and the Dioraphte, at Rotterdam Film Festival.
I’m hoping that this will make the film that little bit more available. Of course, I’m not expecting multiplexes or anything so accessible, but at least the odd screening here and there would be nice and, with the film’s global success, should be more likely.
Teza was 14 years in the making and is set in Ethiopia during the marxist regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu, who was in power in Ethiopia from 1974 until 1991. It tells the story of Anberber, a young medical doctor who returns home to his country after training in Germany, to find it completely devastated by the authoritarian regime.
However, despite its political context, in an interview with the Daily Motion website, Gerima concedes that the film is not focused on politics issues. Gerima say the film is “more about a generation. It’s a group of African intellectuals at this historical moment, being very exiled from home or abroad. So it’s a displacement of African intellectuals”.
Himself a native of Ethiopia, Haile Gerima migrated to the US in 1968 and studied film at UCLA in the 70s, where he became a member of the Los Angeles School of Black Film Makers, a collective that also included the likes of Charles Burnett (To Sleep with Anger, Killer of Sheep) and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust). Gerima is a professor of film at Howard University, Washington DC.