alligator legs

we | resurrec (T) fred//avery r. jones

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 15:33:00 +0000

This.

My FESPACO Diary

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 03:41:00 +0000

A Filmmaker's Journey to Africa's Oscars: The Highs, Lows & Meeting Sissako by @AlligatorLegs http://t.co/X2auvzf2tZ pic.twitter.com/1cEsrLxrBU
— Shadow And Act (@shadowandact) March 13, 2015

After Afropolitan // CCADI

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 12:36:00 +0000

Wonderful time speaking at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute's After Afropolitan conference at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn. I screened my film, and was on a panel with Binyavanga Wainaina, Farai Gundan, and Zola Dube, moderated by Sean Jacobs of Africa Is a Country. An amazing experience! --AL.

Earlier today at #AfterAfropolitan at @Weeksville Heritage Center cc @AlligatorLegs @YoliZama @BinyavangaW pic.twitter.com/2fC9u8fDvE
— AFRICA IS A COUNTRY (@AfricasaCountry) February 21, 2015

The Interview, Sony's hacked emails, and Hollywood's culture problem

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:41:00 +0000

The recent Sony hacking debacle and release of The Interview has got me thinking a lot about the types of narratives coming out of Hollywood.

I went online Christmas Day to see what all the fuss was about. What I watched was more or less an endless stream of slapstick, male-, and sex-centered jokes rife with gratuitous nudity and misogyny. The film's attempt to rise above that to a commentary on freedom and democratic values was ultimately destroyed, in the end, by a hailstorm of gunfire and explosions.

On the American side, according to Gawker:

Emails sent from UK Sony Pictures exec Peter Taylor to president of Sony Pictures Releasing International Steven O'Dell are particularly harsh, describing the comedy as a 'misfire,' 'unfunny and repetitive,' with 'a level of realistic violence that would be shocking in a horror movie.'"

The South Korean execs said they were offended by the strange N. Korean accents in the film and the caricaturization of leader Kim Jong-un (played by Randall Park):

The Chinese execs said that they liked how the film used a song from a Chinese artist, but that it was drowned out by the extensive ode to Katy Perry--and a level of violence would get too high a rating to draw a large enough audience.

The Dutch thought the film spun violently out of control, while the French said Seth Rogen's humor didn't "translate" to their audiences.

That The Interview was the film to bring Sony down--or, at least, exec Amy Pascal--was the biggest joke of all given how generally bad it was, according to most critics.

Whether or not the hack was really N. Korea's fault, what emerges from these emails is a sad tale about a company trying and failing to create a funny, relevant film. (I encourage anyone who wants to know more to read Leaked Emails: Sony Execs Scared of "Desperately Unfunny" Interview on Gawker.)

Reading these emails and watching The Interview, I found a blatant, cultural tone deafness at Sony and perhaps in the entire American movie industry. When you think of filmmaking as an international ecosystem, films made in Hollywood's Men's Men's Men's World don't seem economically, politically, or culturally viable for global audiences.

Year after year, film execs keep churning out the same franchise films, starving out creative diversity, and putting out work that quite frankly isn't worth what we pay to see it. All the while, they complain about running out of stories to tell (read: stories that target the 18-34 white male demographic)--when they haven't scratched 1% of narratives by people of color and women that increasingly target far more people around the world and, in my opinion, are far more culturally relevant.

Whose world does The Interview represent? Whose humor? Whose society(ies)? Even as far as satires go, it lacked the subtle nuances to attain the level of "subversive" commentary to which it aspired (although the hacks, quite ironically, started these very discussions for all the wrong reasons).

Hollywood is facing the same kind of problem as the Republican party--while the American public becomes more diverse, its most entrenched institutions become increasingly culturally tone deaf.

Thank goodness for alternative platforms that make room for more diverse stories--which Sony was also grateful for when their awful, tasteless film broke the theatrical distribution chain. But I wish that the hack and surrounding publicity didn't just serve to drive sales, with The Interview becoming Sony's highest-grossing online release ever.

These are the times when global audiences really need to demand better or, year after year, we'll be forced to watch more of the same s*it. Any company or industry that does this should, by the laws of Darwin, fail. And those of us telling more relevant stories should be ready to take up the charge. --AL.

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Selma and the American-ness of the Academy

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:24:00 +0000

Check out my new Gawker essay! I submitted it on a whim, and am super excited they published it. Please comment, share, and spread the word! --AL.

"Last week, I attended a screening of Ava DuVernay's Selma about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1965 voting rights marches of Alabama.

Desperate for inspiration, fresh off my second rejection from Sundance Screenwriters Labs—this time, unlike last year's form letter, a lovely e-mail from the program director praising my "empathy" towards the story's characters—I took the subway uptown to the Academy Theater in Manhattan.

A light rain fell as I pushed my way into a modern building at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, the East Coast home of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the lobby, a lone security guard manned the front desk while a mousy-haired woman handed attendees tickets to the post-screening dinner."

-- Iquo B. Essien, Selma and the American-ness of the Academy

audre & gloria & angela & bell

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:54:00 +0000

I saw one of my friends wearing this Thugz Maison T-shirt and almost fell over. Love. :)

elizabeth's daughter tumblr

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:47:00 +0000

I'm trying out a new theme on my Elizabeth's Daughter blog. I still don't understand Tumblr, but signed up some months ago due to my friend's persistent badgering that Blogger was outdated and didn't allow ideas to circulate. I still love it here though, and I find that Tumblr is more about recirculating other people's ideas, but it's cool to have another space. Let me know what you think. --AL.

are you moving back?

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:32:00 +0000

In Lagos, at the end of each conversation comes the question: So you've moved back?
No, I reply. I'm just here for a few weeks (or months, or through Christmas).
Oh, I see, they reply, eyes glazing over.

Then the conversation stops as though there is nothing really left to say, no reason, as I will not be there long enough to make the saying relevant, the connection meaningful. I am not here and not there, but rather in a purgatory that is not really a place. I would like to be able to say, yes, I have moved back, or no, I will not, but cannot say either with any conviction. Instead, I respond, I am thinking about it, with the close-lipped, tense smile of someone who is stuck.

I have not really lived in New York for years. I am here physically, yes, but not alive. I am working and going to the gym and buying groceries and hanging out. After spending several years storing my belongings and living out of suitcases (to save money, I think), I now live in my own apartment with a giant closet in which I hang the most beautiful clothes. I have a lovely living room and kitchen in which I sometimes entertain friends. There is always music and laughter and joy.

Yet it is often with great reluctance that I return here from Lagos or most anywhere else I visit. Places where people do not live such regimented lives, packing themselves into crowded subways and yet trying not to see or speak to one another. I am aware that I do not have many of the things I would like to have in my life--like stable employment and a family. I do not know if New York has anything to do with that, or if it is just me. Sometimes I cry when I get back here, although I do not know exactly why. Maybe the tears come from feeling like a ghost--here in flesh, yet somewhere (anywhere?) else in spirit. Or maybe I am just lost.

But it is Brooklyn for now. I have been back over a week and still my suitcases lie on the floor, clothes spilling out like vomit. I do not know whether to hang them up or to simply stare, as I do, wondering if I should zip the bags up again and leave. I think if I did New York would not miss me at all. It is a quandary. --AL.

Growing Up Fearful in Nigeria // Ukamaka Olisakwe

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:46:00 +0000

You must must read this beautifully touching, poignant piece, "Growing Up Fearful in Nigeria," by Ukamaka Olisakwe in the New York Times. Her debut novel, Eyes of a Goddess, was published in 2012.

"I left Kano to live with my husband in Aba, a southeastern city near where my father grew up. The air here, I discovered, bubbles with the people’s unrestrained, stomach-clenching laughter, and for the first weeks it made me jittery. I couldn’t put my finger on why. It was not just the southerners’ boisterous talk, or the shocking Western way the women dressed. Here, girls could wear skirts so short they dared not bend over; their makeup stood out like street signs. And when they talked to boys, they stared them straight in the eyes...I realized then what had made me feel unmoored: the absence of fear. I had learned to live with fear in the north. It had become a second skin, and losing it had dazed me. I missed it and the boundaries it set." -- Ukamaka Olisakwe, "Growing Up Fearful in Nigeria"

I have heard stories about how beautiful northern Nigeria was before all the violence set in. It must be heartbreaking to give it up and watch it reduced to bits, piece by piece. Powerful reading. --AL.

Witnessing the self

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 04:37:00 +0000

I watched a film this week, Still Alice, about the slow deterioration of a 50-year-old woman named Alice, played by Julianne Moore, who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

At a point she records a video journal to herself, to be watched in the inevitable event that she can no longer answer a series of questions: What is the name of your oldest daughter? When is your birthday? What street do you live on?

They are innocuous bits of information that most of us take for granted until life robs us of the ability. But to someone trying to hold on to memory, they are everything. The video journal urged Alice, once she could no longer answer, to kill herself--a morbid thought, but understandable, given the circumstances.

Having watched my own mother's slow deterioration and death from cancer, the film stuck with me. (At a point, Alice even says, "I'd rather have cancer." People wear ribbons and feel sorry for you, not embarrassed that you can't remember a name or form a thought.)

Though I have spent many years exorcising the trauma--penning a memoir, Elizabeth's Daughter, about losing her and finding myself through writing--my mother's death left an indelible imprint on my psyche that remains. It is interesting to me that I chose writing, and have spent weeks and months over the past 10 (11? 12?) years in solitude trying to figure out exactly how I felt and feel about it.

It is the kind of rigorous self-analysis that begets an isolation that can be both a blessing and a curse.

To sit with sadness and write, alone, is difficult work. I find that what's missing for me, until the book is out, is a witness. Someone to hear and see what I have felt and feel. It is the thing I have wanted most out of my life that has been the most elusive, largely why I write and make films and generally try to express myself: I want to be heard.

And there is a curious silence in solitude that feels like invisibility. It is an unbearable thing. All my thoughts and ideas lying unseen on the page. Even the words I write here will hardly be seen by 10 or 20 or 30 human beings. And I imagine this is why I want to publish a book: to make a real thing. Something people can take home and flip through and ponder over, making my thoughts--and me, by extension--more real.

But I acknowledge, deep down, what I really want is for the people closest to me in my life, the people who love and care about me, to see and hear me. I suppose it is the fear of losing this that makes living on, for Alice, so unbearable. I hope that, when the book is finished, people will understand me, know my story. It is a kind of obsession now, to do what my mother could not in the time she was given.

But the point of this blog, what I really wanted to say, was that tonight, while thousands were marching for Eric Garner and bearing witness to injustice, I made a video journal. Not anything like the video blogs I have been trying (and failing) to make over the past few months (having recorded several that I ultimately deleted). I spoke to myself to witness this moment now, to honor the past, the pain, and hope for the future.

I realize now the problem with the video blog, why I have been failing, is that I am trying to make pretty what is a difficult process: writing a book and making a feature film. It is often lonely and ugly and filled with piles of rejection letters. There is no glory. And what little you might expect will inevitably fade. People may think you brilliant for a time until they move on to someone more brilliant. Or they will tell you your story is not that interesting and nobody will buy your book or pay money to sit in a theatre and watch your movie.

There are days I lie in bed and can't get up (most notably, after a pitch to an agent last year). There are days I don't have the courage or self esteem to write another word or make another phone call. There are the days when I wonder if I can apply for that most prestigious screenwriting lab another year and face the inevitable rejection. And the days when I am irrationally afraid of opening my laptop and greeting the pile of work ahead of me.

And yet you go on.

So tonight, my message is that we all must have the courage to witness ourselves--to stand in our truth and language our lives. Yes, we must witness each other's struggles, but we can and should start first with our own. Years after my mother's death, but still before the harvest, it is the only thing that has kept me sane. --AL.

P.S. Read about how Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice and turned it into a New York Times bestseller.

africa in your earbuds // dj spoko

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:27:00 +0000

This is everything. --AL.

preserving african (and women's) cinema

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 17:03:00 +0000

Director Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007)

As a third year film student at NYU Grad Film, I designed an independent study course in African Cinema. My syllabus comprised readings and films, a long list of directors from Ousmane Sembene to Djibril Diop Mambety and Mahamet Saleh Haroun. (View my African Cinema syllabus.)

Thankfully, women's empowerment has long been a staple theme in the work of renowned African directors (and other proponents of Third World cinema) which meant I did not have to compromise my core African feminist values in order to complete the course.

I can remember vividly scrawling the names of the African women directors into my notebook, determined to watch (and know and love and critique) their work. Safi Faye. Tsitsi Dangarembga. Claire Denis. Although I was not yet familiar with their film work, I imagined I'd discover kindred spirits, long lost sisters in whose path I was destined to follow.

Yes, in the course of my studies that happened. But it was a long, circuitous path getting there. What happened first was an unforeseen obstacle, that many of the films by African directors were not available on DVD or at all, and those that were still in distribution were largely on VHS tape. This created the dilemma, as a student, of having to watch them on site at the campus library (specifically, the Avery Fisher Media Center) in one of those ancient viewing carrels with faulty headphones and irresponsive control buttons that rewound or fast forwarded at a snail's pace. (And believe me, watching a VHS of Haroun's Bye, Bye Africa is a sign of true love.)

In some cases, the tapes didn't work at all or cut off at a certain point, the image disintegrating into staticky noise. Then, of course, AFC decided to move all the VHS tapes that hadn't been watched in awhile to an offsite storage facility, which meant that most of these African directors' works could not be viewed "instantaneously," but rather after a lengthy request process involving forms, departments, and interlibrary mail.

What occurred to me then was that these works needed to be digitized and catalogued in an easily accessible way that made a shred of sense to a lay person.

But what also occurred to me was that the African women film directors faced a specific problem of disappearing into the ether, as it were, given that their works were less likely to be requested. This means their tapes will not be kept onsite and, if it happens, nobody knows when a tape goes missing. If a tape goes bad, nobody knows either. And the only (yes, only) copy available for circulation to one of the topmost film universities in the world would cease to exist, the director's name stricken from the available records, and the story untold.

Given that many of these films are no longer in distribution, the odds of obtaining another copy were next to zero. And even if the tape did exist, and worked, the percentage of folks willing to fill out the form, wait for the request to be filled, and return to the library when the tape arrived was very low.

If we can move past the issue of films not being accessible, the African films available at NYU more heavily represent Francophone African directors whose work has reached critically acclaimed global acceptance. Nollywood is not well represented at all (ie, there isn't a single Kunle Afolayan feature film available in the entire AFC catalog), nor (as already stated) African women directors across the board. The latter was a deep personal failure of mine, that I could not scrounge up more women directors' films to watch and critique and write about in my final paper. Even worse that I had read about so many of them in books, but simply could not watch their work.

I don't really know how to explain any of these things. I don't know what is the process for a film being included in a university library. I definitely had the thought that Kino International, California Newsreel, and other foreign language film distributors need to take this issue up (perhaps iROKOtv, that distributes a steady diet of contemporary films can make room for the classics?).

But then I had to ask myself where the directors themselves are on the issue of making sure their works continue to be preserved and seen by academics and audiences alike. I suppose the latter is often our main concern--festivals, a theatrical release, DVD or VOD distribution. We do not often think of libraries. I do not know why it matters so much to me except to say it is one's inclusion in these catalogues that ensures your work will never die.

And as a writer (prose and films alike) and director, I aspire to immortality.

I do hope that the newer distribution platforms that are emerging will help to eliminate this problem for the younger crop of African (and women) film directors who are coming up, but something must be done for the ones who paved the way. I had a long conversation with a festival programmer about FESPACO, in which I learnt of the accidental destruction of 1500 reels following a series of floods in Burkina Faso.

It is the kind of thing we practitioners might lament at the cocktail bar at a film opening, but it is really one of those dire problems that we need to address. A real and very serious problem that affects African women and male directors alike and, as a matter of historical record, humanity. --AL.

To Change The World, Change Your Illusions // Minna Salami

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:53:00 +0000

Ms. Afropolitan blog founder Minna Salami has a new talk online from TEDxBrixton. We were virtual friends for a long time before I finally met her, last year, at a mutual writer friend's house party in Lagos.

She is every bit as engaging in person as in print, and even more critically insightful in this talk. I am proud to know her and to be a fellow African feminist. It is the best F-word in the dictionary. --AL.

"I continued to see representations of African women that did not reflect the reality of the women in my family or my friends or my colleagues. It became clear to me that rather than the complex reality of what it means to be an African woman, the media was saturated with one-dimensional portrayals of African womanhood. And I identified three major stereotypes--which I call the struggler, the survivor, and the stereotype empowered African woman." -- Minna Salami, Ms. Afropolitan

aissa's story wins at afriff

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 13:21:00 +0000

AISSA'S STORY won Best Student Short at AFRIFF! I was so overwhelmed, I literally cried on stage and everyone kept coming up to me afterwards saying that it got them choked up, too. I will post my speech when my good friend Ntare Mwine puts it up online. His glorious short MISSING screened too, and he was on the feature film jury. I had a wonderful time in Calabar. Will post more pics soon. --AL.

lay our burdens down // denitia odigie

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 14:35:00 +0000

Afripop Sessions, at MoCADA museum in Brooklyn last night, put me on to an amazing soul/folk/electronic singer-guitarist, Denitia Odigie. I have a new music crush. Check out this little vid I shot of "Lay Our Burdens Down," made even more poignant by its juxtaposition to the Katrina-inspired performance video art, by Tameka Norris, playing on the back wall.

Denitia Odigie performs at Afripop Sessions from iquomma on Vimeo.

Check out her band Denitia and Sene, on a U.S. tour through December 11. And read an interview of Denitia and Sene in Interview Magazine.

Also check out the a/wake in the water exhibit at MoCADA, curated by Erin Christovale, on display until November 30. Artists include my film colleague Danielle Lessovitz, whose short film The Earthquake deals with the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on an immigrant family in New York City; Wanuri Kahiu's Kenyan sci-fi thriller Pumzi; and the post-global warming apocalyptic drama White. Watch a PBS interview online with White director A. Sayeeda Clarke. --AL.

One Shot // Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 12:59:00 +0000

Last night, I saw Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE dance company's performance, One Shot, at BRIC Arts Media Center in downtown Brooklyn.

Inspired by the life and work of noted photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris, who documented black life in Pittsburgh from 1936 to 1975, the piece incorporated video projections and Brown's classic West African, Afro-Cuban, and modern dance vocabulary.

They were luminous. I've been a fan of his for over a decade now and it's so beautiful watching the company change over time, and my favorite dancers come and go and come back again--like Keon Thoulouis, whose solos were phenomenal.

If you're in New York you must, must, must see it. Tickets and more info at BRIC Arts Media. --AL.

afriff 2014

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:27:00 +0000

My short film Aissa's Story will be screening at 3:00PM on November 11 at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in Calabar, Nigeria.

Back in 2010, I attended the first AFRIFF as a patron, when it was just a modest gathering of film lovers and practitioners in that dusty, would-be-great-if-it-weren't-so-dry-and-congested town of Port Harcourt.

I could never have imagined then the heights the festival would grow to now, calling Tinapa Film Village in Calabar, Cross River State, home. Last year I met more Nollywood stars there than I could count (or even name), met many of my director idols (Balufu Bakupu-Kanyinda, Kunle Afolayan, and Michelle Bello among them), saw a World Cup qualifying football match, and was generally so impressed that I decided to submit my work this year.

I must also add, and it can't be understated, that Calabar is my favorite place in the world. My granny lived there most of her life until she passed away last year. Much of what made it my favorite place was sitting with her on the porch and eating fresh sugarcane from her farm, so the loss has dislocated me in a deep way that cannot be healed. But there is also something special about AFRIFF, gathering a group of truly astounding storytellers in a magical place, that is helping me make wonderful new Calabar memories and friends.

Come check it out if you plan to be there and don't forget to say hello! More info on the (truly spectacular, from a design perspective) AFRIFF website. --AL.

2014 LagosPhoto Festival

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 14:57:00 +0000

"Cocktail," by Namsa Leuba

The 2014 LagosPhoto Festival kicked off this past weekend. Every year since its inaugural, it's been one of my favorite things.

I can remember, back in 2010, taking a cab to the Civic Center on Victoria Island where I toured one small room with a handful of photos fixed to the walls and a smattering of vendors on hand selling jewelry, books and crafts. There were a few localebrities on hand, like Ade Bantu, but not much fuss apart from that.

Fast forward to 2014 and LagosPhoto has grown in size, scope and international influence. This year the festival runs from October 25 - November 26 and includes exhibitions, workshops, artist presentations, discussions, and "large scale outdoor prints displayed throughout the city with the aim of reclaiming public spaces and engaging the general public with multifaceted stories of Africa."

I look forward to checking it out. Visit LagosPhoto on Facebook for more info and view Okayplayer's Top 10 LagosPhotos. --AL.

turning the glass around // pia wilson

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:57:00 +0000

I saw a really interesting play last night called Turning the Glass Around, by playwright Pia Wilson. About the play:

Turning the Glass Around is the story of a first generation Korean-American man, Philip Lee, who is struggling to cope with his father’s death — and an ensuing identity crisis. Who is he in the wake of his father’s death: Korean or American, a good son or loving husband, an American success story or a foreigner in his own country?

Philip's mother laments having followed her husband to America to live a dream that never became a reality. She returns to Korea after his death and tries unsuccessfully to convince her son, who believes he's being haunted by his father's ghost, to go with her. She disapproves of Dana Lee, Philip's African-American wife, a trust fund baby nearly swept off her feet by a rich, white Harvard alum, William Eaton, who promises a better life than her husband can offer.

I've never seen a play deal with so many -isms at once. To name a few: racism, sexism, classism, immigration, assimilation, interracial marriage, poverty, superstition, and citizenship. Stories that capture the paradox of how differences are both welcomed and ostracized in the U.S. are difficult to consume, pulling the viewer in while also making her aware of being pushed out. It's far easier to tell stories that fit into neat boxes that reinforce how alike and part of the whole we all are.

Though few of the issues were resolved, if the playwright's goal was to get the audience asking questions, she succeeded. --AL.

hey // king

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:51:00 +0000

I've been a huge fan of future-soul trio King ever since they played at the Soul of Brooklyn Festival in the summer. Here's an acoustic of "Hey," recorded live for OkayPlayer. And watch this cellphone vid I shot at the King Soul of Brooklyn show! All love. --AL.

Katori Hall // Hurt Village

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 22:16:00 +0000

Shadow and Act scooped playwright Katori Hall's feature film directorial debut--Hurt Village, an adaptation of her play about life and change in a Memphis housing project that she workshopped at Sundance Screenwriters Lab in 2011.

I'm always a bit nervous about playwrights turned screenwriters. Their first films are usually a disaster, although to be fair learning something new always takes trial and error. As someone who writes--books and screenplays--as well as directs, I can attest that switching between forms is really challenging. Being one thing is easy. Being a hyphen--like a writer-dancer-director--can be tricky. The hardest part is turning your senses on and off.

Films are about what you see and hear; plays are more or less about what people say and how they interact with each other; while books are about all the five senses--or six, if you like--making it the hardest form. I once heard Nervous Conditions author Tsitsi Dangarembga say, in an interview, that she had stopped writing prose to figure out how to properly make films:

They were just completely different. The skills I had learned for prose didn’t work in film. Those telling details, they’re completely different. Or the fact of these inner monologues in which you can write a whole book. Whereas prose is teasing out, film is stripping down, concentrating and compacting. I found I could not learn the one while doing the other. So it was a big struggle, actually. It took me years.

I hear her, but am too stubborn to give anything up.

Perhaps it is dancing that helps the most. I have learned to be at home and present in my body to access the senses I need to move, to think, to write, to direct. I've been told that my prose is very visual, and I find that after the first draft I often have to go back and add in the other senses plus intuition, which has no place in a film or play. I have sketched out a couple of plays over the years, but none ever materialized. I find the form a bit too literal. In a film, there is always some distance between what is said and what is felt--what directors call the subtext. Plays tend to minimize that distance, making them feel sightly more predictable. And the actors are often shouting at each other, which makes no sense if they're sitting at a kitchen table.

At any rate, I'm excited to see how the Hurt Village film turns out since everything Katori does turns to gold. A few years ago, I saw her play Hoodoo Love and became an instant fan. It was the first time I'd ever seen a play with a rape scene and her fearlessness stuck with me. --AL.

Talk Stories // Jamaica Kincaid

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 02:48:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, at Jazzhole, I bought a copy of Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid--a collection of her original writing for the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town," composed from 1978 to 1983 when she first came to the United States from Antigua. It was the only copy for sale, weatherbeaten with a tag inside from the now defunct Glendora Books that used to be at the now defunct Falomo Shopping Centre in Ikoyi.

I'm only moderately familiar with Jamaica Kincaid's work. In our first year of film school, when we were given the task of adapting a short story, I chose her prose poem Girl--in which a mother educates her young daughter about the proper bearing of a lady.

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions.

The film I came up with, How to Make Afang Soup, is about a girl who learns to make soup from her mother and eventually succeeds her as the woman of the house. (If you do get a chance to watch it on YouTube, please notice the comments from people complaining that it is not a recipe for making the soup. My favorite, spelled as is: the video is good but the tittle does'nt reflect it. i clicked on your video because i wanted the recipe but do you thimk that i'm satysfied after watching it. answer yourself iquo essien.)

It is a class project, of course, but something that always reminds me of how my mother taught me to make so many things in that same big red pot. It's been twelve years now since she died and still I can't believe she's gone. But I digress...that really isn't the point of this blog.

What I meant to say was how unique and fresh and funny and insightful Kincaid's early writing is. My favorite quote:

"That I was born thirty years ago doesn't seem to matter to anyone except my mother, my father, their families, and their friends. When I say to someone, 'Thirty years ago, I was born,' I can almost hear this running through their minds: 'Yes. Yes. So you were born.'"

It makes me realize that even then, with all that talent, Jamaica Kincaid was not yet Jamaica Kincaid and still she was, and it was good, it was maybe even amazing. I am trying to put my own existence at 33 into perspective and to appreciate this moment of not-yet being. As a wise friend said to me, it is the very path which is my career taking shape. It is not something that will happen, it is in fact happening now--as my being is also becoming itself.

What I also want to say is that this little blog, every word and thought and idea is important. Some day, when our descendants try and understand these times they will look for a book, a film, a play, a word. Just as one of my writing teachers described a journal as a historical document, I think a blog is too. I need only look back at my old writing to understand the truth in it.

So yes, I will be writing my own "Talk of the Town" that lies somewhere between New York and Lagos and eternity, in a place that exists only in me. Hope you enjoy. --AL.

Christal Brown // The Opulence of Integrity

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 02:31:00 +0000

I had the wonderful opportunity to film The Opulence of Integrity, a four-movement evening-length work inspired by the life of Muhammad Ali presented by Christal Brown/INSPIRIT. The filming came together rather organically, after I attended Christal's movement workshop at Cumbe Dance Center on my birthday. It had been years since I'd taken one of her workshops, and I was long overdue for the jumps, falls, and ground work.

I used to live by Christal's "Write to Dance" summer intensives at the 92nd Street YMCA, exploring how text can influence movement and vice versa. One summer of note, on my way to a new job as an executive assistant, faced with the decision of missing the workshop I realized that I only wanted to write and dance--so I walked off the subway. As dramatic as it was, looking back, it was the right call.

Christal has since moved on from Urban Bush Women and INSPIRIT, her company of female dancers, to teach at Middlebury College. She is a force and her work is phenomenal. Watch a clip of The Opulence of Integrity. And donate to Christal's Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a national tour! --AL.

Difret // Zeresenay Berhane Merhani

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 04:41:00 +0000

I saw Difret at Urbanworld Film Festival's community screening at Restoration Plaza in Brooklyn. It's the directorial debut feature of Zeresenay Berhane Merhani and, all around, one of the best films I've seen all year--highlighting the critical issue of child abduction and marriage in Ethiopia. Check out an excerpt below and read more on the film's Sundance page and website. --AL.

waiting for 33

noreply@blogger.com (alligator legs) — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 14:52:00 +0000

I turn 33 tomorrow. It sounds so old when I put it like that--33--not as breezy as 30 or 31, or even 32.

It reminds me of one of the opening scenes from Waiting to Exhale when Savannah, played by Whitney Houston, says to her meddling mother: "I am sick of you telling me how to live, who you think I should love and marry! I'm 33 years old and I live alone and I may have to accept the fact that I may live alone for the rest of my life!"

I remember watching the film when I was just a teenager, back when 33 sounded like a pitstop between adolescence and death. I couldn't imagine life in my thirties, could not see myself as a grown woman in Savannah's shoulder-padded power suit, talking on a phone in my own office, working as a producer at some obscure television network. (I wanted to become a doctor then, would not have imagined myself as a writer or filmmaker.)

Aging was a black hole into which I would reluctantly disappear, too murky to envision myself as a middle-aged woman married with kids, although there was a vague image of myself as a Maya Angelou-type grandmother serving up home-cooked soup and advice to anyone who passed by. It irked me that I couldn't imagine the intermittent years, between youth and old age, when I was no longer young and foolish, but not quite wise and established--a time for growing up and learning difficult life lessons.

Losing my mother at 20 was hard--thrust into premature adulthood, coping with end of life issues decades before most of my peers. And losing her within days of my birthday and hers (we were born two days apart) has made each birthday since feel like a wound reopened and examined. Am I who she would want me to be? Am I who I would like to be? Am I happy? Is this the life I want for myself?

The only blessing in losing her has been an opportunity to ask myself these questions at least once a year.

It has meant not making certain choices, like marriage, to people I only passably liked, to give myself an opportunity to live my best life. I have not acquiesced to the societal and cultural traditions that so confined my mother. As much as she loved being mine, I am aware that she left many other dreams unfulfilled, which is why I have consciously tried to pursue my own. I likely come across as one of those outspoken, passionate, willful women who cannot be caged. I do not believe in patriarchy or authority, am not in the least bit male-identified.

And deep down, I'm not so unlike my mother after all. Despite having raised a family, her greatest fear was that she would die alone. But in the end, my sisters and I stood around her bed holding hands, watching her take the last breath. Her eyes passed over us, taking in our faces, and with a great exhale she was gone.

It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, one it has taken many years to fully understand. And as I get older, I am starting to outgrow the old knee jerk reaction I had to marriage and motherhood, accompanied with a visceral reaction similar to retching. I can see what a blessing it is to mother, to plant seeds that blossom long after you leave the earth. I can see myself wanting a family and life partner, even entering an institution, like marriage, that has always seemed so antiquated to me.

And having watched Waiting to Exhale several times in the nearly twenty years since its release, tomorrow will be the first time I can also say: I am 33 years old and I live alone.

I was forced into it when my sister moved away earlier this year, after which I sat on the couch and cried, realizing I did not like being alone. Having grown up with a big family and plenty of friends, I am quite good at camouflaging it. But independence is something I have had to fully experience in order to make a real choice about it.

I think that every woman should be able to stand on her two feet, pay her own bills, buy herself flowers if she wants to. As my mother always said, you cannot expect a man (if you're so sexually inclined) to do anything. I go home to Nigeria and see the ways in which more limited economic, political and social opportunities for women translate into a kind of childlike dependency on men that cannot be good for personal or societal development. I am grateful for having escaped that insidious trap.

But I also think companionship is important, making a genuine connection with another human being. I understand that the kinds of life lessons learned through compromise and communication cannot be learned on your own. It is a balancing act. I am aware that I'm entering another phase of my life simply because this is not something I understood ten years ago.

I am grateful for reaching 33 in good health. Onward. --AL.