African Diasporas. TV5Monde. Mariannes Noires: Mame-Fatou Niang, Kaytie Nielsen - Femmes noires et flamboyantes (Podcast)

TV5Monde. Mariannes Noires:

Mame-Fatou Niang, Kaytie Nielsen

 Femmes noires et flamboyantes - Podcast ci-après

Mariannes Noires - 2017 - 77min - Diaspora

Source: film-documentaire.fr

Recent violence and growing nationalism in France have brought fierce debates about the country’s identity to the forefront. In Mariannes noires, seven different French-born women of African descent confront their own unique identities and challenge the expectations of French society. In this documentary, they take us through their battles and retrace their most grueling paths in order to understand the social confines that have affected them professionally, psychologically, and emotionally. They share their ideas and solutions to France’s most daunting issues at the heavy intersection of racism and misogyny, and they bravely lead the way forward.

Elles sont artistes, entrepreneures, intellectuelles, et nous parlent de leur quotidien, de leurs aspirations et de leurs combats. Une chose ressort de ces entretiens : elles sont françaises. Naturellement. Sans questions. Pourtant, leur francité baigne, naît et s’épanouit dans des différences culturelles et esthétiques que la France a encore du mal à intégrer. Mariannes noires, ce sont sept récits qui s’enlacent et se font écho afin de lever le voile sur une histoire, celle d’une France multiculturelle qui n’est plus à imaginer, une France qui doute, hoquette et s’épanouit dans la vie de jeunes femmes aux parcours à la fois atypiques et ordinaires.

Diasporas : Mariannes Noires

  

Also see: Femmes noires et flamboyantes | Un podcast à soi (7) - ARTE Radio Podcast

A Conversation with Branwen Okpako

Photo by Ines Johnson Spain, Cotonou, April 2009

Branwen Okpako is currently Associate Professor in the College of Letters and Science; Department of Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California-Davis. Below is the October 2010 interview from the African Women in Cinema Archives.

 

Branwen, could you first talk a bit about yourself, your background, how you developed the desire to make films?

My name is Branwen Okpako and I was born in Lagos, Nigeria to a Nigerian (Uhrobo) pharmacologist father and a Welsh librarian mother. My younger brother and I had a happy childhood on the beautiful campus of the University of Ibadan.

I later attended Atlantic College in Wales where I completed my International Baccalaureate, before going to University of Bristol where I studied politics. After that I came to Berlin to study at the DFFB (German Film and Television Academy), here I met Tsitsi Dangarembga, Wanjiru Kinyanjui and Auma Obama.

I have stayed in Berlin where I continue to make films and raise my children.

The decision to study film came from a desire to combine all my passions: painting, telling stories and directing actors, all of which I had enjoyed doing since I was very young. Storytelling runs in our family. My father‘s brother Kpeha was a famous poet of Udje. Film seemed to synthesize these loves and has brought an added element that I didn't know about before—montage (which is the poetry of film).

You are Afro-Welsh, living and working in Germany. What have been your experiences both on a personal and professional level?

My experiences have been the experiences of a Diaspora person settling into a new environment finding her place and defending her ideas, trying to serve a useful function and at the same time educate herself. 

Last year I had the most rewarding experience of teaching courses at the Humbolt University and the University of Art here in Berlin. With the students, we examined my films and their themes using literature and academic texts. We discussed the medium of film and the way images are used to manipulate perception. Teaching is one of the most fun ways to learn because you get to read and think about things deeply.

Much of your work has focused on Afro-European identities, a theme that several European women of African descent have addressed in their films. Could you give some reflections on this subject as it relates to your own work and as it relates to the broader issue of how Europe is dealing with its identity in an evolving multicultural, multiethnic continent? And also, there is an increasingly visible Afro-German community and of course, several of your films have focused on Germans of African descent. How do you locate yourself as an Afro-European?

I focus on experiences that resonate with me. Filmmaking is hard work and spiritually demanding work too. So for me it is key that I get some new understanding out of it for my own personal growth. I am not making films one to one about my situation. But I know what it means to feel "other", I felt that growing up in Nigeria too, so when I came to Germany and started to get to know the culture and the people, I was fascinated by the culture of the Afro-Germans and how they were working towards building an identity for themselves in an uncharted territory. The courage and resilience was inspirational and I found many universal themes to talk about that resonated with me. Now, I have Afro-German children so my involvement has deepened.

I locate myself where I am geographically and spiritually. My films are my witness to life as I see it. It is a great honour to be able to make films so I use every opportunity seriously. It takes so long to gather and order experience and then to translate what one has learned into a piece of work to share with others, it takes years.

If my films about Afro-German experiences help to enhance the visibility of Afro-German experiences, that is useful. One of my short films that was shown at the Berlin film festival in 2007 is called Landing it is about a black woman who wakes up in Berlin to find herself invisible. It's a horrible experience being invisible. But nevertheless being visible does not automatically mean being seen. So the process is still ongoing.

Your films are very intense and very specific, in the sense that they on a very emotional level, deal with the psychological, social and political gut of the society. How do you choose the topics of your films?

Maybe I have answered this question already, but I would just add that the subjects for all the films I have made, including the one I am currently finishing, came to me. I was asked to do them sort of by circumstance, by people’s expressed wish sometimes. Certainly with Dreckfresser, a friend came over to my house with a newspaper article and said " you need to make a film about this brother", so from a sense of obligation, from a feeling that not just I want to know more about what is happening but others do too. And I just start from that impulse.

Do you continue to work in Britain and connect with the British culture in terms of your work?

Wales is my ancestral home as is Nigeria but I never lived in Wales as an adult, the two years spent there were in boarding school.

But I got my first commission from Britain while I was still in film school. It was a short for Channel Four about my Welsh roots. The film, Searching for Taid, is available to watch on the British Film Institute website. That is the beginning of my journey as a filmmaker. My brother is the protagonist and the film is really lovely and people get something out of it.

Since then I have not had the chance to make another film in Wales but I have a story. If it wants to be made it will come and get me.

Do you have contacts, connections with Nigeria? Have you had film projects that you would like to do in Nigeria?

My parents are there as I said, so I visit with my children whenever I can afford it. I have also made a film there in 2007 called "The Pilot and the Passenger" it is yet to be fully completed (it is self funded) because my current project (a commission) interrupted it, but I will be finishing it soon. It is about the poet Christopher Okigbo.

Some reflections on future projects, interests?      

For the past two years I have been shooting a highly demanding documentary in Kenya, Germany, Britain and the USA it is nearly finished so I hope to share it with people soon.

My interests are painting and teaching, as well.

Interview with Branwen Okapako by Beti Ellerson, August 2010

Evolving Identities of African Women in Cinema

Here I expand on the 16 April 2009 post “Negotiating Racialized Identities in African Women’s Films” to explore how African women tease out their evolving identities in their work or develop the characters in their films as conduits for this process.

Drawing from theories and approaches of Postcoloniality and Identity Studies I consider the multiple identities that women have as filmmakers and how these identities inform their work. Postcoloniality as a theoretical framework examines the social, political, cultural and economic context of former colonial subjects, locations, and structures. In so doing it disrupts and decenters the colonial-as-center paradigm. The Gaze of the “colonized” becomes the center of focus at the revisited site of colonialism. Identity is intricately linked to this project as deculturation and assimilation were important strategies of colonization. But perhaps the geo-politics of identities within a post-colonial and also post-modern context is what is most compelling as it is an intricate part of African women’s cinemas. Traveling, sojourning and relocating across the globe have required shifting or ultimately expanding their identity and thus, their cinema.

Some women approach their filmmaking from the context of immigration, linking the identity of their cinema with her own identity, which may be "one and multiple, and sometimes fragmented." 

Some, who have lived a large part of their lives outside of Africa, embrace African-related film projects, thus providing them with a connection to Africa.

Others, experiences many places that are very much part of their identity, not necessarily experiencing home in only one location and hence refuse to recognise designated geographical borders. They prefer to have the trans-African, cross-Diaspora situation play out powerfully in their work.

Still others express the desire to go beyond ethnicity and race which risks racial essentialism.

Using the lens as a vehicle to show their vision of the world, many African women transcend geographies, their imaginaire informed by the evolving identities that go beyond these boundaries as well. And thus, these identities frame their cinematic narratives as they embrace evolving locations and experiences.

Report by Beti Ellerson.
Update in March 2018 excludes specific names with quotes, but rather reflects general experiences.