A black-and-white Nigerian arthouse movie that received a Sundance award is quietly gaining an viewers in a rustic higher recognized for its glitzy Nollywood blockbusters.
Written and directed by Nigerian CJ Obasi and now in cinemas throughout the nation, “Mami Wata” is a dreamlike dive right into a West African village “frozen in time”, on the Atlantic coast.
Within the village of Iyi, the inhabitants worship the ocean goddess “Mami Wata”, by their priestess Mama Efe and her two daughters, who convey prosperity and well being.
No want for faculties, hospitals or police, “when we’ve Mami Wata”, says the priestess.
However as Mama Efe loses its therapeutic powers, residents, torn between a want for modernity and the preservation of traditions, start to query their beliefs.
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The sudden arrival on their seaside of a mysterious stranger modifications the destiny of the village endlessly.
The movie seems like a murals: actors’ faces marked by spots of white paint, hairstyles enhanced with ivory-colored shells, patterns printed on the loincloths and the moon mirrored on the uneven waves of the Atlantic, every thing has been constructed “in service”. in black and white,” the director advised AFP.
“This folks story” is “an intoxicating visible expertise”, famous the jury of the celebrated Sundance impartial movie competition in america, which awarded it the prize for greatest pictures in January 2023.
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The movie additionally received three awards at Fespaco in Ouagadougou, the biggest African movie competition.
Greater than a supernatural movie, or a revenge thriller, “Mami Wata” addresses a fancy topic, questioning “who’s African”? » mentioned Obasi.
To be African is to oppose every thing that’s progressive, to be progressive is to utterly deny one’s traditions, or is there a steadiness?
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“The primary factor is steadiness, it’s to spotlight that neither the left nor the appropriate is ideal, black and white shouldn’t be excellent, the previous and the current will not be excellent, the target ought to be about discovering a steadiness,” he mentioned.
The self-taught director in his thirties rose to prominence in 2014 when his debut movie “Ojuju”, made on a really low price range, received the perfect movie award at AFRIFF, the nation’s predominant movie competition. Nigeria.
Nearly unprecedented for an arthouse movie in Nigeria, “Mami Wata” was distributed in round thirty cinemas in Africa’s most populous nation.
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And its distribution has begun to achieve screens in america and Europe.
Nevertheless, championing such a movie within the nation of Nollywood – the extremely commercialized Nigerian movie trade that floods the African market with romantic comedies and melodramatic blockbusters – was a “critical battle”, Obasi mentioned.
With “Mami Wata”, the theme is way from the love sagas and household intrigues of the Nigerian elite offered for a decade on the screens in all doable and unimaginable mixtures.
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“Nobody was giving us a blessing right here,” the director mentioned.
“Lots of people confirmed curiosity, as quickly as we mentioned we’d do it in black and white, they might simply say ‘no’.”
As for the topic, Mami Wata, the West African voodoo goddess, she is the flagship of the movie.
In Nigeria, a religiously conservative nation made up of Christians and Muslims, native conventional religions are sometimes frowned upon and generally practiced in secret.
This led to some resistance to the movie.
“You understand how non secular Nigeria is, individuals suppose we delve into the occult or the demonic,” Obasi mentioned.
He and his producer turned overseas to first develop their challenge, notably in Burkina Faso, earlier than lastly succeeding in having it distributed in Nigerian cinemas regardless of the reluctance of most of the people.
On social media and blogs, Nigerian moviegoers hailed it as a “large,” “magical” movie and a “visible expertise,” at the same time as they criticized its daytime-only screening.
Whereas mainstream Nigerian media retailers extensively lined the Sundance awards in January, virtually nobody wrote concerning the movie as soon as it hit theaters.
Movie critic Daniel Okechukwu, in a column for on-line media outlet Okayafrica, mentioned what ought to have been a triumphant return dwelling become disappointment because the debut of “Mami Wata” was marred by a scarcity of of promoting.
“It’s a critical struggle,” Obasi mentioned.
“Audiences need to see different kinds of movies, they really feel that there’s a construction or an influence that claims ‘no Nigerian viewers likes these sorts of movies’,” he mentioned.
However Obasi mentioned he was happy that his movie and a brand new technology of Nigerian administrators may now present a brand new path.
“I see a brand new sort of African cinema the place there’s extra collaboration, to create new kinds of tales but additionally new methods of telling our tales.”
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