Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (2000)

supposed to do slides as a rear projection behind the action. In the course of working on the play, we would sit on the verandas at the hotels in Nairobi, you know, drink beer, pass the time of day, and we would see all these German and Belgian film crews coming in to do documentaries—*Mutual of Omaha presents The Wild Kingdom” kind of thing. And it really, really freaked me out. I was totally amazed by all the stuff that was happening in Kenya, by all the diverse ethnic groups, and none of these crews paid any attention to the rich cultures there. The only people they ever depicted were the Masai because their lifestyle is so exotic. Because they fit the romantic image Europeans have of wild Africa? Right. So Ngugi said to me that it would be really good if I came back and we did a film together. I’m still working toward that. Is he still writing and living in Nairobi? No! He can’t. He had to go. The play we were working on was closed down by the government after the first few days. Thousands of people had been able to see it because it was in this large outdoor arena. The government got really scared. You see, there was little differentiation between cast and crew, or cast and audience. Everyone had worked together to make it happen. The whole thing was bulldozed by the government and immediately Ngugi went into hiding. He had already spent a whole year in prison without explanation, a political prisoner. He escaped the country and lives as an exile, teaching in the States. I can see how you were politicized by that experience. Did it influence you aesthetically? One thing that African peoples share—I mean there’s over 50 countries in Africa and who knows how many languages there are—is a visual language. Even though the actors may not speak a familiar language, the gestures, movement, expression ... there’s something about seeing a story told on a screen that can make you understand what is going on. For me, I am trying to create a visual language that is reflective of the African-American female experience, so I am very specifically trying to do projects which are based on the lives of women that I know. I am trying to not necessarily tell a story in strict narrative style, but to take some chances, take some risks in telling the story to get across the everyday experiences of black women’s lives. This is hard because our cinematic history, as black women, is in its infancy. I mean, Kathleen Collins was the first to do an independent feature film and that was in 1979 with Cruise Brothers and Miss Molloy. There are a number of black women making films now. Some names are becoming familiar like Julie Dash, Michelle Parkerson and Alile Sharon Larkin, but there are others: Camille Billops, Dareshi Kyi, O. Funmilayo Makarah, Angela Robinson, Jessie Maple, to mention a few. This is your seventh piece since the mid-’80s. That seems pretty productive. How do you continue to do your work? One, I’m crazy. Two, I’m hard-headed. Three, I put my own money into my projects, so I’m always broke! Really, it is difficult to be a media artist in this country. In the life of making a film, so much has to happen. It takes so much energy and so much money. You have to be so many different kinds of personalities: part hustler, part collaborator, part compromiser, part real persistence. You have to be able to talk to people in the public, business people. You have to convince people to believe in you, to trust your vision. Most women are taking care of children or a mate and just trying to survive, particularly in this country where there is so little government support for what we do as media artists. There is some, but compared to other countries, there’s nothing at all. Of course the other challenge for women is the intimidation factor. Meaning? You take a film or video class and find out there are a lot of people who want to make the process of making media very, very mysterious. They do not necessarily want to teach that any Joe Blow or Josephine Blow can pick up a camera and make a movie. They are intentionally closing the channels of expression and communication. Is that why teaching media is important to you? Yes. I spent $40,000 learning how to do this work. Just because I spent that much money does not mean I think you have to. For me, it is very important to be a woman and to be a black person and to teach Joe and Josephine how to use the equipment. | think it is very important for me as a black woman to teach the production aspects of filmmaking because I’m not supposed to know how to do it. If | have a camera, well, I must have stolen it from somewhere. I think it is very important for me as a black woman to teach the production aspects of filmmaking because I’m not supposed to know how to do it. You said that black filmmaking is in its infancy. What do you mean by that? We have the Johnson Brothers, we have Oscar Micheaux. We even have some women who were involved in the process. I believe Zora Neale Hurston was involved in filmmaking. I'd love to have the time to do the research to prove that. So there is a legacy, a history. But it is also limited by the economic factors of the United States. When there is a prosperous time, people are making films. When not, well, there haven’t been many black men and black women who have been able to make films consistently in order to work out aesthetics and means of production. We're really just starting to do this. We don’t have a welldeveloped black genre. VOLUME 4. NUMBERS 2&3 @ 5