How do you gain independence? How do you balance sisterhood and ambition? What is the male gaze today? How do you find your own identity? And how do you deal with your power when you have it all? Four stories follow strong female characters emancipating themselves from patriarchy in Nigeria’s fast-moving society. Through different visual and narrative approaches, these four films take us beyond tales of emancipation on a ride exploring friendship, womanhood, and sisterhood.
In a small tribal village, certain men are on the lookout to drive young girls to the big city. Besida’s older brother steps in to make sure that it doesn’t happen to her.
Chuma Eze is an opinionated feminist journalist in the running for a prestigious women’s award. When her boss asks her to interview Iziegbe “Izi”, who is a contender for the same award, Chuma reluctantly takes on the job. She soon discovers that there is more to Izi than meets the eye.
This short film is based on «Hello, Moto», a short story by award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor. It is about three scientist witches, who through a combination of juju and technology create magical wigs that grant them untold supernatural powers. As always, power corrupts, and leader Rain finds herself in a confrontation with her friends, where she must stop them before they destroy the entire nation.
Although there is some controversy concerning the exact year Nigerian cinema was born, there isn’t a lot of debate about the year of its first major commercial success. The year was 1992, and the film was «Living in Bondage». The film’s themes – love, avarice, malevolent spirituality, Christian redemption – were all part of the Nigerian lexicon and would come to define much of what was produced in that decade. They remain familiar today: The media still report on young people dabbling in the diabolic for wealth; things pertaining to the spiritual still command fear and worship.
But if both fear and worship were the principal dictators of how Nigerian cinema pursued stories about spirituality, a useful word for today’s approach is irreverence, which, nevertheless, commingles with an ever-present engagement. Younger filmmakers may query the mystical beliefs of their cinematic forebears and their own parents, but they are not quite ready to dismiss or ignore their cultural pervasiveness. Whatever they might think of spirituality, they agree it is part of their inheritance.
Michael Omonua’s «Rehearsal» offers an irreverent look at that inheritance. The film follows a group of young people practising reactions to a faux spirit-filled pastor. It isn’t the type of story mainstream filmmakers of the 1990s would have told. Its methods are just as different. There is the naturalistic acting, a departure from the melodrama typical of mainstream Nollywood. There is the oblique criticism of a religion that, offscreen, commands ardent discipleship in a poor country, even as its leaders have erected massive edifices the unbelieving observer might call capitalist cathedrals.
«Rehearsal» is among the shorts by the Surreal 16, a filmmaking trio whose disavowal of how-it-is-and-was-done has made them the face of non-mainstream Nigerian cinema success. The group’s three-part «Juju Stories» addresses some of the most common superstitions of their 1990s childhood. All three stories tell of young Nigerians dealing with the unpredictable consequences of over-familiarizing themselves with the mystical.
Other filmmakers with projects outside the mainstream include Femi Johnson and Ayo Lawson, the duo behind «Nightmare on Broadstreet», in which a group of friends is traumatized – to death – at a popular outdoor venue on Lagos Island.
While that film wears its western influence in its title, others are more subtle in that respect. Sonia Irabor and Lakin Ogunbanwo, who have both earned degrees in the west, make films in the liminal spaces between cinema and art projects. Walé Oyéjidé, in turn, claims both Nigerian and US culture as formative influences.
For these filmmakers, some of whom have also made features, short films present an opportunity to try outré ideas away from a mainstream superstructure that may not be welcoming. This is arguably evidence of an ambition different from that of their 1990s forebears as well as a sign of a bravery. It takes a level of audacity – and maybe ignorance – to work outside a well-known space like Nollywood.
That bravery provides its own benefits. For example, Olive Nwosu’s «Egúngún (Masquerade)» tells a quasi-queer tale and may never find wide release in Nigeria for that reason. Knowing that beforehand gives a level of freedom to the filmmaker. Like for Nwosu, who doesn’t live in Nigeria, home is something to break away from for many young filmmakers. Today, some consider Nollywood a genre and insist that they do not make films in that mould. While the cinema of the 1990s catered to a local audience, today’s filmmakers have at least one eye on the west. While stories from the past were often set in villages, many young directors are concerned with their cities.
One final difference involves the pipeline for newcomers. Informal apprenticeships and theatre departments once fed Nigerian cinema; today, foreign film schools have become a major source of behind-the-camera talent and training. And when foreign tutelage isn't accessible, watching and imbibing doctrines from western films will do.
And yet, the commercial and cultural dominance of 1990s Nigerian cinema has left a lingering aesthetic mark. In Immaculata Abba’s documentary «You Matter to Me», the old Nollywood aesthetic shows up in the film’s texture and its setting in a village in Eastern Nigeria. The short also discusses family, one of the main concerns of traditional Nollywood.
Eastern Nigeria is also the setting for Dika Ofoma’s «A Quiet Monday». It is the one short film in the selection to address a contentious political issue that is still making headlines, even if the problem’s origin is rooted in the 1960s. In the film, a young tailor promises to deliver on a Monday but is intercepted on her way to a client by two young men, both members of an armed group agitating for the release of their imprisoned leader. Violence ensues. Although the central characters in «A Quiet Monday» are fictional, the narrative’s political atmosphere is all too real for Eastern Nigeria’s residents. Ofoma’s tale relates what tragedies are possible when supposedly remote political issues turn up in intimate settings.
Tales of Emancipation
Four stories follow strong female characters emancipating themselves from patriarchy in Nigeria’s fast-moving society.
«Besida» – which is both the title and the name of the female protagonist in the first film – means «however fate chooses». The story is set in a tiny village in the middle of the forest in southern Nigeria, where destiny seems already written for the young people of the Itsekiri tribe. But Besida wants something else. Influenced by ethnographic film and film noir, the short film also plays with Nollywood’s classical drama codes to tell the story of a family in crisis and how crime can be a way out of poverty.
Set in Lagos, «Ixora» explores body shaming and the male gaze from two different points of view. Through their discussion, Chuma Eze and Iziegbe «Izi», the two lead female characters, challenge clichés about women’s bodies, redefine what it is to be a woman in Nigeria today, and reconsider identities in a subtle way.
Torn between her two identities, Salewa in «Egúngún» lives in London and returns to her home country Nigeria after her mother’s death. There, she finds her childhood friend, who is now married to a man. Salewa, too, is married – to a woman, in the United Kingdom. Their reunion invites us to imagine the gap between the destiny of two women who chose very different lives.
In the science fiction film «Hello, Rain», the three heroines all have supernatural powers. They rule the world, but «instead of giving, we took», says Rain. Their initial plan to change Nigeria for the better was corrupted by technology and greed. How do you deal with your power when you have it all? The open ending allows viewers to decide their own future and destiny.
Through different visual and narrative approaches, the four films take us beyond tales of emancipation on a ride exploring friendship, womanhood, and sisterhood.
A short film is not just a shorter film. Shorts are a distinct art form, which we showcase at our annual festival.
Short films come in all shapes and genres, and how long – or short – they are, varies quite a bit. Simpler production processes allow filmmakers to capture the zeitgeist and quickly respond to trends. Shorts can be entertaining or surprising, they can analyse society, take a political stance, or offer glimpses of worlds unknown to us.
We compile our short films into thematic programmes or specific sections, such as our competitions, paying close attention to the selection and sequence of films in each programme. All you need to enjoy short films is an open mind for new discoveries and surprises.
The Festival
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur is Switzerland’s major short film festival. For six days every November, we transform the city into a dynamic short film hub.
Kurzfilmtage offers discoveries for everyone: our thoughtfully compiled thematic programmes address current events or topics that our curators are passionate about. The competition programmes showcase the latest filmmaking from around the globe, while installations, performances, and other specials highlight the diversity of audiovisual forms. And a programme of special events including concerts, readings, and more enhance the festival experience.
