Lights Camera Africa!!! Film Festival 2017

Lights, Camera, Africa!!! showcases the brightest ideas in African cinema. The festival promotes the continent's filmmaking talent—and highlights work from Nigerian filmmakers.

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Company is another word for Trouble: A Review of Frontieres

Somewhere in the middle of Frontieres, a film that takes place mostly on the road and in several countries across western Africa, three women bond over the silent fart of a male traveller. The man is asleep and never gets a chance to defend himself.

The silence of the man is a reversal of cinema’s preoccupation with the male point of view. And that scene gives the impression of a comedy, but the film has bigger fish. It is about borders—both of countries and of persons. As anyone who has travelled by road across west African will attest, there are so many troubles on the way. Frontieres addresses them all, but subtly.

It is also about being woman in Africa and being a woman in love and being a woman in relation to other women. At some point a Nigerian character comes in and oppresses another character. As played by the poet Wana Udobang (credited as Unwana Udobang) with wondrous hair and a phony French, the character becomes a sort of centre for the band of women. They get into some misadventure together and help each other emotionally. The light handling by cinematographer Ali Lakrouf manages to both pay homage to Francophone African cinema aesthetics as well as update it.

Some of the themes are addressed on the nose, but this is enjoyable cinema that comes with a punch at the end.

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What You Have Is Not Yours: A Review of Akin Omotoso’s Vaya

Your parents, they fuck you up, wrote Philip Larkin. He could have been commenting on Akin Omotoso’s Vaya where a father manages to put two families in peril. And he isn’t even alive.

The film follows several stories. There is a boy seeking to return his dead father’s body to his mother. A girl looking for a better way to live. A young innocent man gets caught up in crime. Other characters have own journeys to make within these first three tales.

Omotoso’s film recalls such films as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Like the former film, Vaya explores the society it is based in. In this case, Johannesburg, a city where, as a character says, “we don't play”.

Little of what goes on in Vaya can be called play. The film occasionally appears to believe it is more special that it is and it would be for viewers who have not seen the aforementioned films. But its effect on the viewer still is earned. Over its last few minutes, there is a masterful unravelling and a stitching of the stories. If at the end the least innocent characters get what they might deserve, it is because Vaya is a morality tale with its complexity mostly at the level of plot. Nonetheless it is a rewarding piece of cinema that avoids sentimentalism.

The chief complaint with Vaya is same with all interconnected stories of this sort: For a film that works hard at realism the connections between the stories is too neat—as though nature comes with a map and somebody up there is having too much of a laugh. That person up there isn’t quite up there though. He is neither God nor god. He is the director. Or perhaps a parent.

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Memory isn’t Dumb: A Review of A Hotel Called Memory

By Oluwadamilare Dan

If we take Bela Tarr’s Dancing in the Pub as an exciting encounter with silence, then Akin Omotoso’s A Hotel Called Memory, however, does something less aesthetic—if not outrightly absurd—with the form.

Firstly, Mr. Omotoso tells us memory is synonymous with silence, and goes on to render memory dumb, cuts off a vital part of its nature like a quack doctor doing a surgery. But is memory actually dumb?

The first film I saw by Omotoso is Tell Me Sweet Something, a romantic-comedy shot in beautiful Johannesburg. It’s a story about two young pretty-faced male and female surmounting their petty challenges to find themselves, to reach happiness. They do find themselves and reach a jolly ending.

In HCM, Omotoso tries to outwit himself, tries his hand in a more critical film genre. The result is a colossal faux pas.  This sort of a sudden switch almost doesn’t happen. Most times it stems from trying to impersonate, engaging some sort a fraud. Does Omotoso escape with this loot? I'll say, no! His attempt to operate at that level of greatness clearly outweighs him. He sinks.

In what comes out to be a failed experimental film, or pseudo-avant garde, Mr. Omotoso has made a film, sat down with it and deliberately (rather than give room for the narrative to influence his directorial actions) denies his character’s voice.  He cheaply edits out voices made, and in most of the scenes, simply refuses that his characters engage in any verbal interactions. It is most awkward in shots were the characters can be seen adlibbing, and where they gaze helplessly in moments only spoken words would make a sense of their actions.

The story is simple enough: a man and a woman weigh out possibilities after a strain in their marital relationship. The woman wants out, the man wants in. The narrative could have taken its rightful place among the berated Nollywood films if the director hadn't loosely experimented with sound in a deliberate attempt to make the narrative complex or new or both—new and complex. But complexity doesn’t necessarily translate to depth or relevance.

A disregard for natural phenomenon begins the film: In the very first scene, a lone horse, unbridled, stands docile well into water, backing the sea. An unusual sight that must have been staged. But for what purpose? We, the audience, would never know, not through the film at least.

This sort of unusualness plagues the entire film. There would be more horse scenes and landscape pictures having nothing to do with the narrative. A keen viewer, eager for lucidity, would want to metaphorically imbue the horse scenes with the story. But this would only be in futility, as the director never intends the scenes to add anything than just to be mere filler.

A man would lose his wife to her boyfriend on the dance floor and gets angry enough to just walk away; a woman would think she has lost her son to the sea and runs like a mad person along the shore without the privilege of calling her son's name; a man would seduce a woman, have a relationship with her and sleep with her in the same bed for several days without saying a word. Yes, the director is didactic like that.

The idea is to follow the protagonist’s mind, trace back the memory of her complicated love life. The human mind is complex, agreed, but does this film explore its complexity? No. It tries instead to exploit it. Who decides that worshipers at a beach be heard as against the actors? Who decides the soundtracks— which range from traditional sounds to American pop to classical sounds just to fill in barren scenes? Who decides that a conversation takes place, but be muffled within a noise proof glass because the camera is to remain there while the converse moves outside? Definitely not the protagonist’s memory, for the mind is not dumb.

My own mind tells me something loud and clear. It says I can only look in a different direction for answers: the director’s ardent didacticism.

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Scenes from Day 2

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Scenes from Day 1

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I'm a believer in storytelling.

Akin Omotoso

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Review: Women of the Civil War`

The documentary Afia Attack shows the efforts of women during the Nigerian Civil War. The narratives so far are centred around men, ignoring those who had to tend children and homes left behind by men.

While this is admirable in intent, the final film doesn’t quite get up to those of those lofty ideals.

For a film purporting to show women’s place in the war, women don’t exactly show up till later, even if Afia Attack--essentially, a rummaging behind enemy lines for commodities like salt and stockfish--was run by women from different homes. It is the peculiar nature of Nigerian that no figures are given about the number of women who crossed over to Nigeria to trade so they could take care of the families.

Ben Gbulie and Ikechukwu Ume-Udeh are the films first few respondents. Gbulie wrote an account of the war and is quite engaging, but the film belongs to Esther Ekweozor, a woman now in her 80s. Her account doesn’t quite spare Biafra soldiers, who, she says, were guilty of crimes against their own people. Some women were forced into affairs and some locked up. She is expressive like someone who has waited a long time to tell her tale.

Scenes are punctuated by the piercing voice of a woman, an inclusion that seems to be put in for gravitas and some length. These scenes alternate from kitsch to effective.

Yet for its flaws, the documentary Afia Attack does bring news to those who were unawares about women’s role in the war. It is a personal project by Ujuakwu Nwakalor-Akukwe that the public should hear.

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The Appeal of Akin Omotoso’s A Hotel Called Memory

By IfeOluwa Nihinlola

Events in Akin Omotosho’s new film A Hotel Called Memory are set off by a text message from Lola (played by Nse Ikpe Etim and her expressive bad-for-poker face) to her husband Wale (Akin Omotosho) requesting divorce. She’s at a beach in Lagos.

From there, Lola takes off to Zanzibar, another coastal city, where she is shown attempting to “live-her-best-life”. Here, we’re introduced to Harrison (Abdi Hussein), DJ and fellow traveller in Zanzibar, who is seen meeting and teasing Lola. From here, what is a tale of finding happiness after divorce becomes a love triangle when Wale travels to Zanzibar to see his wife, ring on finger, heart still pining after his lost wife. The tale is rounded up in Cape town, also by waters, where we’re introduced to Harrison’s girlfriend Ayana (Mmabatho Montsho).

The entire film is shot in close-ups with shallow depth of field restricting the viewer’s gaze to each actor’s point of view. Emotions are translated first and exclusively from the faces of the characters as they receive messages translated to viewers through text on screen. The primary conceit of the film, of course, is that these text messages are the only words used in the film.

“Most of the moments in the film are interstitial; the story is conjured and suggested rather than shown, and the emotions are evoked and induced rather than performed,” wrote critic Anthony Lane about Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder. Everything about that sentence is true of Omotosho’s A Hotel Called Memory. Omotosho adopts suggestion rather than narration to tell a story of love and loss.

Omotosho, like Malick, isn’t overly concerned with plot. Dialogue is discarded, linearity toyed with, and the viewer is expected to, in a way, complete the film by filing in gaps. But whereas Malick is often interested in the past, Omotosho’s film is present, both in time and setting. Malick uses voiceovers to nudge viewers towards understanding, Omotosho uses text messages.

Now, the mere possibility of a technique isn’t enough justification for its use. Anyone who has fallen out of or into love knows the agony of living in the present with memories sweeping unbidden into consciousness to either justify a return to a former lover or pursuit of one supposedly out of reach. The mind isolates memories that match specific desires: a kiss on the beach, a hug underwater, a walk through paved streets of an idyllic town. And memories, more often than not, come like films with separate audio and visual files waiting to be mastered.

At the start of the film, there’s a fairly linear structure. Effect follows cause. And not until we’re shown an image of two horses wrestling on a beach, close to the start of the film’s third act, is the full effect of memory unshackled to time brought into full effect. The linearity of the first act and the text messages feel like considerations for an audience used to plot. But even these concessions don’t – and won’t – prevent some members of the audience from leaving. It is akin to making them endure 45 minutes of staring at an impressionistic painting.

“The film is a succession of art touches. …but I didn’t admire it, I didn’t enjoy it, and I don’t like it,” wrote Pauline Kael about Terrence Malick’s debut film Badlands. Again, these criticisms, if lobbed at Akin Omotosho’s film, will find their mark, but they are by no means the only ways to judge the film’s ambitions. A lack of ambition, after all, is one of many reasons Nigeria still awaits her first Oscar.

A Hotel Called Memory stays in the mind, indeed, like the fragments of a memorable night. It is what makes it possible, for instance, to imagine what would have happened if we saw Lola’s actions in Zanzibar without the motivations of Lagos.

Like a giant jigsaw puzzle, it is possible to move parts of the movie around in the mind and imagine its possibilities. Good art is often the kind that makes place for the existence of these possibilities. Unlike movies with just one way to be seen, this puzzle called memory holds its appeal even when its pieces don’t fit right.

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We all share the world's trauma...

Ugoma Adegoke

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In shadeism, there's an anti-black, anti-indigenous sentiment...

Nayani Thiyagarajah, director of Shadeism

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The 2017 Programme

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Showing at LCA 2017: Bariga Sugar

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A Word from our Director

Stay informed by visiting our website. And please follow us on twitter and instagram. Our handle is @lcafilmfest.

We look forward to sharing our 7th annual film festival with Lagos state residents and visitors. Last year was a triumph and we look forward to continually making history with you this year.

Expect the very best of African and independent cinema curated for your viewing pleasure.

Our team and our partners are hard at work getting the screenings and events programme together and we should be able to update you soon on this so stay tuned.

Kindest Regards, Ugoma Adegoke 

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We’d Like to Thank...

The Lights Camera Africa!!! Film Festival appreciate the past partnerships of a committed group of donors and friends of the festival including the Ford Foundation, Union Bank, Federal Palace Hotel, The Wheatbaker, Zircon Marine, Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institut, Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) and Film House Cinemas….and in 2017 look forward to new and equally committed support from culture loving institutions and individuals.

We also celebrate our alliances with scholars, directors, artists and personalities like Tunde Kelani, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, John Akomfrah OBE, Manthia Diawara, Uwem Akpa, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, Pascal Ott, Ego Boyo, Kunle Afolayan, Tam Fiofori, Odia Ofeimun, Victor Ehikhamenor, Emeka Ed Keazor, Femi Odugbemi, Chika Anadu, Remi Vaughan-Richards, Kene Mkparu, Shaibu Husseini, Mildred Okwo, Nadia Denton, Adebola Williams, Lala Akindoju and Jahman Anikulapo.

We remain excited at the opportunities for cultural exchanges with our friends of the French, German, Italian, Austrian and Dutch diplomatic missions, long-time enablers of cinema and culture in Africa - in particular we celebrate the support of the German, French and Italian Consul-Generals.

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Why Reset?

The imagined world order that predicted a safe and stable world appears to be experiencing fraught times. And despite the progress of humankind in all fields of endeavour, age-old fault lines in communities across the globe are becoming exposed.

Recognising the clashing civilisations, overturned norms, and emerging trends, the Lights Camera Africa!!! festival brings to its audiences a selection of films it hopes will encourage a contemplation of opportunities for a RESET of the weakening world order. These reflections are even more relevant in the festival’s home Nigeria which is again fighting a recurrent sectionalism.

This year’s festival presents a series of film works and conversations that examine these issues in various spheres – including politics, science and the arts. The programme not only provides a forum for discourse, it also provides entertainment for all of the family over its three-day run.

We hope you are as excited as we are about bringing the people of Lagos a wonderful screening programme dedicated to the best of independent and African film, as well as our family and industry-engaging offerings through discussions, talks and family-friendly programming.

Our very popular Festival Marketplace returns again this year as does our inter-disciplinary showcases of literature, visual art and live music during the 3-day cultural fiesta.

The Lights Camera Africa!!! Film Festival brings to audiences a strong programme for its 2017 edition, and is proud to continue what has become an enduring partnership with the African Film Festival New York . This partnership has at its core a mission to expose African and global audiences to good quality independent African cinema with a view to stimulating discourse on issues and experiences rooted in the African experience.

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Lights Camera Africa!!! Film Festival is returning in 29 September 2017 with the theme “RESET”

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Film Review: Olive

Deeper than Fruit

By Olisa Nwokedi

Looking at the title of the short film, Olive, one would automatically assume that the movie revolves around the tasty fruit but it is much deeper than that.

The movie follows two struggling couples trying their best to make their relationship work. Inspired by William Shakespeare ‘s song “O Mistress Mine” and performed by Caleb Eberhardt of the hip hop/jazz duo Quincy Vidal, Olive hopes to use its unique method of storytelling to explore the themes of betrayal, infidelity, heartbreak and chance encounters.

The most striking element of the movie is its visual style. The movie solely relies on using Black and White as its primary colours. The film also boasts great cinematography from Eric Branco as we get great shots of the city of Philadelphia and various rooms that serve as a backdrop for the troubled relationships.

The film’s minimalist approach works extremely well. The movie utilizes a soothing and emotionally powerful rendition of Shakespeare’s song ‘O Mistress Mine’ performed by Caleb Eberhardt. The song helps drive the story and effectively highlights the themes the movie focuses on. The actors effectively convey raw emotion on the screen as the movie has limited dialogue and focuses on the characters’ expressions and their actions to tell the tale.

Although there were moments when the movie stutters, Olive is a fascinating short film backed by a stellar performance from its cast; impressive visual style and great music.

First published by Ezenkiri