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      July 1, 2019

      Feature

      How Senior Girls Navigate a Patriarchal Society; thoughts On Glamour Girls by Dika Ofoma

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      Written and Produced in 1994 by Kenneth Nnebue and directed by Chika Onukwufor, Glamour Girls tells the story of a group of independent and sophisticated women in their mid-lives who are powerful through their relations with older, rich and influential men. We meet Sandra (Jennifer Okere) who is introduced into the big leagues by Doris (Gloria Anozie), a friend from the university. In their first meeting after school, Doris inquires how life has been since graduation. Sandra responds, miserable, echoing the feelings of a number of independent women who have sought to make good use of their education and degree. She laments about the patriarchal society they live in that has made job hunting an avenue for men to exert and flex their muscles. She says, “Every man wants to sleep with you before they listen to you”. What is worse is that after a woman has committed to this injustice, the said job is not even guaranteed. About Marriage, Sandra cries that she’s no longer of marriageable age. In her stint with relationships, she’s played the role of the placating biblical virtuous woman who cooks and clean, only for the men to abandon her and settle with younger women. It is however paradoxical that after Doris has shared with Sandra, her secret of navigating this patriarchal world- bedding older men for the fiscal benefits, her response is, ” Who will marry you after all these?” Doris rebuffs her, “Marriage is no longer the prime issue in a woman’s life?” Reminding her that with wealth, even a husband is a commodity that can easily be purchased. Sandra becomes a ‘Senior Girl’ when she’s introduced to a certain Chief Esiri (Pete Bruno) whom through his influence and wealth finds her a good job and furnishes a duplex for her. But she soon finds love in a younger man, Dennis (Pat Attah), and in the way love makes people do foolish things, she jilts Chief Esiri and gives up her savings to help sponsor Dennis abroad, only to discover that she’s been swindled. With the women, it is all about appearances. Thelma, Ngozi Ezeonu’s character, validates this. She receives a salary, an allowance from a fiancé abroad and a father in-law to be who caters for her bills, yet she has older men on the side for back up. Life in Lagos is hard and there’s a standard of living expected of senior girls that her regular income and the other “stipends” she receives from fiancé and father in-law cannot afford. In fact, she refers to her foray with older men as a double assurance. It is her being prudent as she cannot vouch that her fiancé abroad would remain faithful to her. Why then lay all her eggs in a basket? Doris is the more experienced senior girl and she navigates patriarchy better: getting married to her boy-toy, Daniel ( Ernest Obi ) while still maintaining her relationships with the Alhaji and Chief who pay her bills. She flips the script on societal expectations of a married woman, being the breadwinner while her husband cooks and cleans. And it is indeed shocking and maybe pleasing that no comeuppance awaits her in the end. And so what her story serves is an eye-opener to the injustice in the institution of matrimony that insists that a woman stay submissive as the husband leads. And then there’s a subplot about a Helen ( Barbara Odoh), whose story as a professional sex worker who employs blackmail and lies to expand her trade does not connect to the central plot. I however find her to be the most interesting character as she carries herself and her job with the prestige and dignity it deserves. She insists on a condom and twice in the film, she makes a case for being called a harlot. Her story also brings to light, the dubiousness of misogyny. A certain Jake calls for her services and agrees to pay her 2000 naira for the night, only for him to attempt to waylay her by also sending in his friend, Bally (Keppy Ekpeyoung) in the middle of the night for him to also sleep with her. It turns out that this friend is indeed her brother. This is the furthest this story goes but what this shows is the way men only think that in matters of women, only family, mother and sister, are deserving of honour. We wrap up with the story of Jane (Liz Benson) who having lived a rough life ( appears to be frolicking with older men too) in the past, leading to the birth of a child out of wedlock, finds a man- Desmond (Sola Fusodo)- willing to marry her, despite this or for this. All is well until Desmond survives a fatal accident that leaves him bedridden and she meets a certain Alex with a phony British accent. She divorces Desmond for this Alex and he swindles her of her entire existence. When she becomes aware that she’s been duped, a lucky call leads to a tête-á-tête with him in a hotel room where she shoots him and is thus, arrested. It is interesting the way these women’s lives juxtapose each other. We see that with the women who insist and refuse to submit to the control of men and patriarchy, their lives go on as it were or even better. Doris for instance remains happily married to her “boy-toy’ husband who cooks and cleans for her. But for the gullible ones- Sandra and Jane, who let themselves be swooned by sweet talk and do not arm themselves against the meandering ways of men, they meet a waterloo. They are both left heartbroken and duped; one gets sent back to penury, the other is arrested for murder.  

      Feature

      Anuli; a tea with Camus and Okri by Olamide Adio

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        To leave or not to live? That is the question — the only one allowed to be asked by Chukwu Martin’s Anuli. When Anuli is assessed through that famous Shakespearean dictum “To be or not to be”, an unsettling revelation is uncovered: that there is only one answer, that the abiku child truly has never really been alive. Anuli is an Igbo movie with a multicultural flair — it skedaddles from the Igbo culture to Yoruba throughout the film. Simply put, it is Sleeping Beauty meets Albert Camus. There is a girl and a boy in love. The girl is fated to die aged sixteen and the day of reckoning has arrived. This leads us to the interesting note tha there are two ways to read Anuli; philosophically, through Camus’s thick Sisyphean lenses; and literarily, with Ben Okri’s “The Famished Road” as companion. Camus argues that the realisation of life’s monotony, the transcendence of the mundaneness life has to offer (go to work, eat, family, sleep, go to work, eat, family, sleep, go to work, eat, family, sleep) can only lead to the acceptance of a meaning outside this absurd suffering. And very few ever see beyond the sheen of life, the abiku is one of those enitites. Their persistent coming and going is not merely a mock of life but also of death itself and this is evident in the first scene where children, dressed in regular clothings are playing in life and the abiku entities who wear the finest clothings mirror this play in their realm. It is a quiet acknowledgement that there is something far beyond the pleasures of the living and beyond death. A secret place outside life, outside death, that only the Abiku knows about. Or if that won’t suffice, we may take the long famished road of Azaro, Ben Okri’s protagonist who has seen that secret plane of existence so many times and has finally refused to return because of the searing love he has found for his mother. Keyword, love. Anuli at its basest, is a coming of age love story. What with the passing of notes, the preamble for dates, the sneakings beneath the mother’s nose, the gentle stoning of glass windows, the delayed final kiss, these are all idealistic western romance tropes and the movie through Anuli mocks itself (too seriously) and sterns itself (again, too seriously). Pardon a deviation: we head to the home of the 21st century diviner who is learned in the ways of our ancestors and flawlessly quotes Camus like it is eerindinlogun. A man is a diviner. A man is powerful. A man is an erudite. A man has no name (of course). A man sees all — knows where Anuli is even more than the mother. A man is mysterious — here then, is another dictum; ‘to see but not to be seen’ because although the movie hints at the herbalist being more than he presents, we never get to know who he is for sure and that is one — and perhaps the only — flaw in its storytelling. We return back to Anuli the Abiku, the hybridised archetypal Camus/Okri character. A girl is troubled. A girl is naked. A girl is as she came into the world; without clothes, in a serene steady flow of water. A girl is at an all time spiritual low (familiar images and sounds that accompany familiar spirits play in the b.g: close up shots of a quiet walking cat, a hissing cat, a serene river, a haunting monologue by an ambiguous entity — and that silent, quasi Catholic tune backgrounding it all then the tune segues into a sonorous Yoruba eulogy). A girl is ready to return home. If the dead were never alive, can they be loved back to life? And a man; a herbalist, erudite, encountered by the power of love greater than even the ancestors’ demands to know its source and from this moment, I daresay the brilliance nosedives. I find the last two minutes of Anuli exceededingly complex and — I suspect — deliberately vague. A series of rhetorics and revealings that only the director and actors know of, which further complicates the herbalist’s character in an attempt to make him (and the boy) more mysterious and connected to the whole story? I may be wrong, but that is only due to the final ambiguities the story presents. In spite of these final ambiguities however, the enduring strength of the river remains; a girl returns to it, to her companions and lastly, that beautiful shot of a lady with blackened eyes, blackened lips and yawning headgear, that too, remains hanging like Anuli herself, in a place beyond beautiful, beyond haunting.

      Feature

      A Letter To The Progressives: Working within Restrictions by Isaac Ayodeji

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        New filmmakers, even before transitioning from shorts to features, are advised to utilize minimal locations for financial reasons. In an interview with Scott Meyers, Chris Sparling, the screenwriter of the 2010 film Buried, when asked why he decided the shoot the film entirely in a coffin, refusing flashbacks, cuts aways or the introduction of new characters, simply said that it was the cheapest way to make the movie. Chris wasn’t new, like most of us, or desperate, he was actually established, but he just embraced the difficulties such restriction would bring. He felt it could stimulate his creative being and it did; Buried was met with critical acclaim upon release and Chris went on to be a sought-out commodity in the film industry. Alfred Hitchcock, arguably the most influential director in film history, is described by Indiewire as having “a sort of masochistic creative proclivity for putting his productions into extra challenging situations”. A distinct example is his fifth movie, Lifeboat, released in 1944, shot entirely within the confines of a lifeboat. Much later, Hitchcock, upon the release of the iconic movie, Rear Window, a movie famed for the restrictions in varied forms, was reported to have said that he made the movie at the most creative stage in his career, akin to the proverbial lightbulb moment. Thanks to huge financial limitations and the sometimes chaotic climate that riddles the industry, producers are wont to prefer stories with limited cast, minimal locations, majorly interior scenes and simple production values. For most writers, this is seen as an encumbrance, a reason to complain about how the industry refuses to fulfill our long-held fantasies of crafting action flicks, thrillers with gun-toting villains, blood pumping car-chase scenes and other Hollywood staples we enjoy. But should it really be seen as such? The hunger to try out new, much daring things is valid. Our film industry is truly in desperate need of diversification. But there are truths we must accept. The millions, billions and trillions posted on social on media as box office returns shouldn’t paint a false reality of the industry’s financial viability. It is tough for producers and more often than not, the way to make sure substantial profits (that will, invariably, be pumped into the next production) are made is by reducing production costs to the bare minimum. The reality is what it is and while things remain this way and the hope for a better tomorrow remains the North Star that drives us, the big question should be how to tell good stories within these restrictions. Indeed, it is possible to tell good stories in single/limited location movies. Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Hitchcock’s Rope, Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, Maoz’s Lebanon, Fincher’s Panic Room, Malle’s My Dinner with Andre are examples from a repertoire of films that made the most of the restrictions to achieve both critical and commercial acclaim. The aforementioned films share consistent qualities that writers looking to plot single/minimal location and cast movies should follow. After all, it’s common knowledge that screenwriters looking to work on projects must dig into the annals of history to see how similar projects, already produced, were executed. The qualities writers should look to infuse into their scripts are: STRENGTH OF SCENARIO: The best single/minimal location movies ever produced thrived because the scenario, the seed that would birth the tree that is the complete screenplay, already stood out as original, peculiar and interesting. Interesting scenarios are like lush fruits writers can bite into without fears of hitting the rind too quickly. They provide multiple possibilities and avenues the writer can wriggle in and out of, beat to shape and mold with the vision, genre and theme as contexts. With respect to the readers or viewers, interesting scenarios are bound to raise interest and attract attention. As a writer, the first step to making your single location idea less of a chore is to think up interesting scenarios. Reservoir Dogs, 12 Angry Men, Rope, Locke and Buried are examples of movies with unusual scenarios that served as the substrates upon which brilliance was built. Ordinary scenarios can come out well too, but most times, they have to be adorned with an X-Factor, as the likelihood of falling into the cliché trap is high. STRENGTH OF CHARACTERS: Film reviewer Glenn Kenny was full of praise for Tom Hardy’s performance as the titular character in Locke, a movie shot predominantly in a moving vehicle. She praised the unusually complex character, going on to describe Locke as “a being conveying the weightless pressure and the suffocating freedom that can only be felt simultaneously by a man who’s divesting himself of his entire way of life.” Some character, that. The restriction in locations mean extra time will be spent with the characters as they will become the central focus of the script. There are no spectacles to provide escape routes; it’s you, your characters and enclosed spaces. It’s the job of the writer to enrich the characters, make them distinguishable from one another so readers/viewers will be sucked into the world their interactions have created rather than worry about the limitations in location. Underdeveloped or clichéd characters will fall into the trap of exposition and no reader/viewer is going to sit down for that. DIALOGUE: The art of dialogue is famed for its dubiousness. Say too little and the reader/viewer is confused, say too much and the reader/viewers gets sucked into you’re a pool of meaningless, boring exposition. The key to writing great dialogue is to let the words, with all the pauses, inflections and cadences, flow from strong characters. Any attempt to squeeze out words from undercooked characters runs the risk of sounding contrived or forced. So yes, it’s important to have the ear for dialogue, to read good dialogue and practice painstakingly, but the one sure way to make sure dialogue sounds fresh is to first create good characters. This is especially important for scripts/movies that will be situated in limited locations; a lot of

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