Responses to Fellini, Godard and Training Nollywood
Connor Ryan, a U.S.-based Nollywood scholar doing his PhD at Michigan State University, said he liked that I brought “Godard and Fellini into the discussion” but that “I don’t know if I agree with your characterization that they are self-indulgent or inaccessible. I think any given viewer will access something in a film, and if […]
Connor Ryan, a U.S.-based Nollywood scholar doing his PhD at Michigan State University, said he liked that I brought “Godard and Fellini into the discussion” but that “I don’t know if I agree with your characterization that they are self-indulgent or inaccessible. I think any given viewer will access something in a film, and if what they get a hold of is not what they ‘should’ have, that isn’t a shortcoming, of the film or the viewer. […] I met a handful of filmmaker in Lagos who wanted, and had the skills, to make a film that breaks all the conventions set by Nollywood so far. But these folks don’t get to make those films. Ultimately, I wonder if the horizon of expectations doesn’t keep these conventions in place. Marketers fund films that fulfill the expectations consumers have for films. As Africa Magic picks up and expands, I wonder how much that will end up setting the horizon of expectations a film must meet, something more like television programming. And I think a big reason we accept a commonsensical separation of the filmmaking of Godard, Fellini, Solanas and Getino, Sembene and that of Nollywood is that we don’t recognize that we already have expectations for their work before we hit play.”
Filmmaker Emil B. Garuba, of Rated E Productions, who himself leads training workshops, wrote that although “it’s always nice to learn the “proper formats” (it’s like riding a bike),” he too is “wary of those peddling the right way to do things when it clashes with your creative vision.” He points out that “independent pioneers of yesteryear have become the veterans of Hollywood today (Lucas, Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola) […] I see the next crop of Nollywood filmmakers taking it to the next level with more innovative filmmaking techniques and exciting stories not learned in classes and workshops, but through creative collaboration, instinct, and a little bit of luck.”
The longest response I received was from Benjamin Tarachi, a writer and cinematographer who is a part-time lecturer of English Language at the Army Education Corps. I hand over the rest of my column today to him. –Carmen
On Fellini, Godard…
I have always felt that the best film critics are filmmakers themselves. When I read a movie review of a Nigerian film it is either written by a zealot who has lost his way into the country or by someone who was a victim of serial pessimism as a child. Both groups usually don’t know the first rule of film, which is why I have decided to respond to My Thoughts Exactly dated 21 April 2012.
It is gratifying to read from someone who has (finally) watched 8 ½. On the comparison between French New Wave and guerrilla tactics used in the North and in the South – that is, the so-called Kannywood and Nollywood—may I differ with you a bit. A film is not about techniques alone; there are many components which make a good film beg for revisit, and one of them is lines. Nigerian films are yet to have characters deliver punchy dialogue, the one thing which makes a character memorable. Our scriptwriters still do not understand the oneiric theory of film, which compares the entrance and close of a film as the start and awakening from a dream. Which may explain why they have characters rendering lines at 30 fps. Ironically, our home videos are not only shot at that frame rate, they have actors rendering dialogue as they would in a documentary, leaving no room for that special escapist mise-en-scene which film delivers. Film mise-en-scene, also known as the setting of the story (or what appears in the frame of the film), should feel like something out of Alice in Wonderland – you relate with the elements of the setting but agree, in principle, to yourself, that all this is make-believe.
The second thing about a good film is philosophy. The films you mentioned can be studied on two fronts: the fabula, or raw story, and the subtext. The last part is something I am yet to observe in a Nigerian film. The character Quint’s haunting monologue in the film Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, is, in part, a solid horror tale. But what is more horrifying is the subtext of the monologue. Quint’s lines were, in fact, Spielberg’s critique of the Vietnam War. Quint narrates how in 1945 he was a young sailor on the USS Indianapolis with a secret mission to deliver the Hiroshima bomb. After the sortie, the ship was hit by the Japanese torpedo, forcing all on deck into sea. Days lead to weeks as each man waits his turn to be eaten by the passing sharks. Quint ends his monologue with a toast, ‘…Anyway, we delivered the bomb’. The onion being that no matter the cost the American government would carry out actions it deemed were just.
Quentin Tarantino’s hard-boiled heist movie Reservoir Dogs opened the gate to indie film makers by shooting at a budget of a splinter of the usual Hollywood kitty, and yet delivered punchy dialogue, heart-racing action, intrigue and a parade of references to earlier movies such as Hong Kong actioner The Killer and City on Fire. On top of that it delivered at the box office, proving that low-budget did not mean a thin plot and sparse cast. And beneath the gunfights and swearing? Reservoir Dogs is a critique of what America has become, a rainbow nation (all gangsters named after colours) fuelled by crime. And the Mexican standoff at the end…? A metaphor for the clash of cultures and purposes at the heart of the rainbow nation.
As a trained cinematographer, I have not yet met a colleague who had interests in painting or the arts. To my mind, this is important, as it arms the visual storyteller with tools to tell his story. Film is not just a series of images run to produce the illusion of movement; it is visual text that the audience will decode to better understand the plot. Fellini sought inspiration from Caravaggio’s paintings which use strong contrast to highlight skin tones and (thus background moods) for the lighting design of his surrealist film 8 ½. This helped convey the dream-like feel of the film as well as the moods of the lead character, Guido. I also haven’t met a director whose opening shot impressed me as much as that of The Shining. (Kubrick tacitly introduced the film’s subject of duality with a shot of two mountains reflected in a lake). Our young film makers are still watching films like we did as schoolboys: watch, imitate, paste, replace names and locales with indigenous ones. Simple. I am a champion of indie film making. It helps you make auteur films without the producer or marketer breathing down your neck in the editing room. So, beyond long takes and jump cuts, our film makers – those who wish to tell stories and make art films, that is – should read novels, study art, and have a philosophy. If three people watch your film and come to the same conclusion then you have made a napkin.
As for the training from New York Film Academy, my experience shows me that the art of film making (that is, to stand out in the nest) is usually best learned from personal experience. The iconic Star Child image at the close of 2001: A Space Odyssey came to Stanley Kubrick as he read a line from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s drama Prometheus Unbound. Film schools only teach you academics and help you make friends.