AiM After Hours: African cinema off the tourist map
By Trevor Steele Taylor
I always knew there was another Africa. I always knew that film
aesthetics were profoundly housed in the archetypes of a culture. I
always knew that African film aesthetics were as vast and profound as
the continent that housed them.
For the European explorer, clad in a
pith helmet and climbing boots, the search for the aesthetic pile,
beyond the Mountains of the Moon, where the great Ayesha reigns is a
quest as fascinating as being locked into the vaults of Eurocine and
having the hours of the night to piece together the mysteries of
Alternative Versions.
This late-night, three programme season - aptly
called AiM After Hours - is not exhaustive. It is a small delicate
bite on a far bigger morsel. The films are primarily by South Africans
with one Nigerian exception. The quality is great and to those who
know neither Kaganof nor Stanley, this should be an eye opener.
I saw
my first Nigerian film in a little cinema in Brussels called
CineNova. I was sitting next to Richard Stanley (also a guest at this
festival). The film was End of the Wicked by Nigerian auteurs Teco
Benson and Helen Okpabio. I had never seen anything like it before. I
turned to Richard. He turned to me and said "My faith in cinema is
restored!" There you are - even when you think you know the dog, it
still has the ability to bite you.
The extraordinary symbiotic
relationship of fundamentalist Christian evangelism and exploitation
cinema with images which verge, and sometimes transcend the
pornographic is no more impressively realised than in the films of
Benson and Ukpabio.
Their American counterparts, the Ormonds, who moved with barely a bat
of the eyelid from the nudie film Mesa of Lost Women to the explicit
scare picture The Burning Hell, would have been impressed, as I was by
the Ukpabio/Benson masterpiece End of the Wicked. No holds barred
there - oh no - old Satan has his way in a surrealistic blood and sex
bath which includes a witch suddenly sprouting an enormous phallus. In
the last 20 minutes though, evangelist Ukpabio turns up, casts out
demons, sends old Satan packing and the excesses that went before are
exonerated.
This is the tried and true format and it is on the cards
again in Highway to the Grave
(screened as part of the AiM After Hours
series). Unfortunately the team ran foul of the Nigerian censors with
their reportedly divisive The Rapture and new censorship laws were
enforced, turning the transgressive nature of the prolific Nigerian
film industry into an equally prolific, but perhaps rather less daring
Nollywood.
Did you know that a certain William Akouffo in Ghana made a
block buster on no money called Diabolo about a man who turns himself
into a snake which enters by way of the genitalia of sleeping women
causing them to vomit money? Have you heard of Othello the Black
Commando and its prolific director Max H. Boulois? Have you ever
encountered The Slit - shot in Zimbabwe and almost ending in tragedy
for its German cast and crew? Have you heard
of Elvira Hoffman, prolific pornographer and director of Dust Raider
and South African Girls? None of these at this year's AiM but who
knows what the future holds?
What will be screened is the long awaited, mobile phone shot feature,
SMS Sugar Man, by the prolific
South African director Aryan Kaganof, in which a pimp cruises the
streets of Johannesburg, delivering white hookers to wealthy black
punters on Christmas Eve. Kaganof is also the scriptwriter of Akin
Omotoso's short film Jesus and the Giant
(screened with SMS Sugar Man)
in which a black woman Jesus takes on a serial rapist, the
Giant. Through a montage of digital still pictures, the editing
creates a rhythm of motion.
Then there is Richard Stanley, a luminary
figure amongst film directors with his unforgettable Dust Devil,
about
a shape shifter on the roads of a newly independent Namibia. Also in
the programme is his Voodoo documentary
The White Darkness during the
filming of which he, like Maya Deren before him, was also initiated
into the priesthood of Haitian magical mysteries. I will be
introducing the screenings as well as having an extended chat with
Richard Stanley on stage. I am going to enjoy it. I hope you will too!