Why Gov Amaechi is wrong.
In December of this year, the 1st African International Film Festival, the Miss Ecowas beauty pageant, Carniriv and a host of other government sponsored events will take place in Port Harcourt – River State Nigeria.
These events form, I think the bedrock of the state's (I will like to think Arts policy), but I understand tourism/ arts /culture programme.
I am perhaps biased in this piece, I live and work in Port Harcourt and I am a film maker.
I think that as a cultural practitioner in the broad sense and a Port Harcourt boy in the old and new sense, these initiatives – especially the African International Film Festival – is a piss poor use and waste of government money and that Governor Amaechi is wrong on this count.
Why would a film maker condemn a film festival – a supposed celebration of films and the craft of film making? The simple answer I think lies in the genesis of this festival. Last year the Ion Film Festival came into town, paid for by Government – a sordid freefest - that lasted three days. The usual retinue of freeloaders, Lagos and international , stormed our city. The organiser came with everything, if it were possible they would have come with the drinking water. The Government pulled all stops to ensure their security and their enjoyment. They stayed at our best hotels and showed us films - their version of who we are. They left. And then nothing happened.
Someone in Government please tell me what we gained – film makers or the wider arts community or more importantly Port Harcourt. Within our small enclave there is something we call the Lagos con. It works like this – our leaders are so enamoured with anything 'foreign' that they seem to fall over themselves to import all manners of ideas, an inherent fault line must be embedded in our complex – because it determines that local is rubbish.
We were told that the Ion film festival was a tourist event, that we needed to show the world that Port Harcourt was safe to visit. I will have you know that it takes a self flagellatory sado-masochist to come to Port Harcourt as a tourist. Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely place, the greatest thing about PH is her people, has always been. Beautiful, generous and urbane.
But this PH is a work in progress, a city attempting to reinvent itself, a city latterly traumatised and just finding her feet again.
Last year not one film of note was made in Port Harcourt, after the Ion Film Festival, not half a film of note was made here. We are now about to spend a king's ransom of a film festival that celebrates other people's work, Ion Film Festival Part II – new name AIFF, a couple of new faces – same phone number.
I need you to understand, the world needs another film festival, as we need more water in the creeks.
Visit withoutabox.com and see for yourself. The more successful film festivals are carved out of need – Cannes (holidays off season , mergence of Hollywood and European films) Edinburgh (old film festival, part of a wider arts festival) Tribeca, New York's reaction to 9l11, co founder Robert De Niro – New York boy through and through. As a film maker, you may ask others you know, while there is a certain excitement to going to film festivals the real buzz of our work is done and dusted way before you get to see the film. I am a great fan of film festivals– Sundance in out of the way Utah – cold and very cold – was founded by Robert Redford principally to showcase off-mainstream work and documentaries. It has since grown to become one of the best film festivals in the world and Utah has benefitted from that a lot. In all these festivals no one pays you to attend, puts you up in the best hotels, feed, lubricate and pamper you before sending back on your way.
In truth we have nothing to celebrate in PH, a film festival that will not show a single film made here. Imagine the Oscars with without a film made in Hollywood.
I am told that the launch of African International Film Festival took place in Lagos!. How so true.
Actors don't live here anymore, they can't really or they starve. Films are not made here. Port Harcourt if your memory is long enough was the arts capital of Nigeria. WE had the first Arts Council, and some of my best days were spend in a brick building by Creek road Port Harcourt, the Cultural Centre, halcyon days it seems. I read and later played in Isiburu, and I swear you could almost hear the heavy breathing of Isiburu as he strode in from Aluu – and Jimmy Johnson as Isiburu (yes same one) was a sight to behold. Mona Lisa Chinda, Tam Fiofori, Basorge...name any number of actors, late JT Tom West, Gentle Jack, they have all left. Sam Dede is here though, he lectures at Uniport.
Before those in Government start to fume in self righteous indignation, I am not suggesting for a minute that they should hand money over to Film makers to make films, no far from it. What I instead would have you ask is (I have to use this very tired cliché) how can government create an enabling environment for the arts.
The arts in Port Harcourt is literally on its knees. Take away the theatre arts department of University of PH and there will be no one left, perhaps except our studios in Mbonu Street and an anaemic cultural centre in town. It is that bad.
My suspicious is that there must be a document somewhere in the laughable Ministry of Culture or in Government house headed Arts policy, there must be, because this thing that parades as an arts programme must be the harebrained scheme of proposal pushers.
The buck stops at Governor Amaechi desk. It is no one's fault if he surrounds himself with a coterie of yes men, neither if it mine that he sees that arts in simple grandiose terms. Events like these may work within a vibrant landscape- where they are a culmination of activities. You should not have a harvest if you don't have a farm . The Oscars cannot exist without Hollywood, Cannes is the bridge head of Hollywood and Europe. Berlin probably does more for Nigerian film making that Ion in their new avatar ever would. Successful film festivals are by their very nature organic and grow because film makers are the heart of it; here I suspect that we are witnessing a parade of minnows led by PR and proposal pushers, peddlers of convenience as it were!
I see nothing wrong with a fraction of the money spent in these love-ins, to be spent funding directly or through grants and soft loans, repertory/touring theatres, visual arts, and yes film making.
There is nothing worse or more disheartening to see a state erode or better still disenfranchise herself, lose her voice and narrow her relevance because it more expedient and glamourous to host these love-ins. It is myopic.
In the non descript brick building I spoke of earlier, the cultural centre of yore, on any given day, you could take in a play by Ola Rotimi, or J P Clarke, or Athol Fugard, and a whole host of new writers. You could hear some of the best drumming and if you are lucky breathtaking choreography. That was years ago, before the rape of the arts by politicians and their acolytes.
In a room recently I was with fellow practitioners and they were all clamouring to be members of the LOC (Local organising committees) these events are not even organised by ourselves. I saw a roomful of fine artists and actors, sculptors, designers and directors – away from the stage or the film set or the drawing board – chasing the crumbs from the acolyte's table.
To an extent I understand the attraction of these grandiose events, Politicians get to hobnob with stars – Daryl Hannah et al, - seas of red carpets and the champagne, a stage to make promises and all those cameras..all those lurvies. It certainly beats funding touring theatres, or keeping some sweaty, bearded sculptor at work – genius or no genius. But here is the rub, you cannot have one without the other.
If none exists then the government must evolve an arts policy that has at its heart practitioners of the arts. That our voices (culture) and stories, our raison d'être, our mores and our languages, the cadence of our very existence must be the bedrock of our arts policy.
The Market Theatre in Johannesburg was the cradle of hope, was some will say the heart of Joburg. Housed in an abandoned market, it became the focal point of theatre of resistance against apartheid. Tourists defied the authorities and went to watch plays there . Black people and white people sat in that space and shared the experience of their collective stories being told. In lore and forever names like Athol Fugard and John Kani will remain. In PH we performed Sizwe Banzi is Dead and the Island by Athol Fugard – as they did in the Market theatre in Joburg – not out of sympathy but because it was ours, our shared heritage.
It is people stupid, not the brick and mortar, that make theatres, it is people that make films, it is the people that maketh a city. The sooner we begin to develop the human capital, only then will the great writers and artistes emerge, the successors to Erekosima, and Ola Rotimi, and Clarke and Okara and E Amadi . They cannot be found in a proposal or birthed by these kidnappers of the arts.
PH needs films to be made here, good ones, plays to be performed and sculptors to etch our dreams in stone, painters and artistes to remind us of our selves and writers to chronicle our existence .
We cannot celebrate film when we are literally pissing in the wind, neither can we have a voice when our choristers are asunder.
I did not attend the Ion Film Festival (last Dec) – as I saw no honesty in the process that led to it, it was a damp squid. Perhaps there is a flaw in my character, but I derive no joy from watching the applause of paid clappers.
That is all this African International Film Festival is – an audience for rent, a road show that will head for the next freefest as the last glass of champagne is emptied.
On a final note, at least something is happening in Port Harcourt.
Enjoy.
May the last person please turn off the lights.
Deinbofa Ere
Sofaya Film Co
Port Harcourt.
