Sierra Leonean Women of the Diaspora in Cinema, Visual Media and Screen Culture

 Sierra Leonean Women of the Diaspora in Cinema, Visual Media and Screen Culture

Several Sierra Leonean women in film, visual media and screen culture are making important contributions to African world cinema from their diasporic locations in North America and Europe.

Mahen Bonetti, perhaps the most widely known, is founder and director of the African Film Festival in New York (AFF). In 2011 the AFF launched the Sierra Leone Cultural Conservation Project (CCP), which has as main objective, to establish an on-going sustainable media arts program in the country.

UK-based Victoria Marcellina Thomas has a keen in interest in the comedy genre, and while she is interested in Africa, her work centres on people and experiences in the UK.

Sierra Leonean-Canadian Ngardy Conteh focuses her lens on stories of the African Diaspora as well as her ancestral home.

Professor/filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu, born and raised in the United States, draws from both U.S. and Sierra Leonean experiences in her films. Her eclectic body of work spans diverse genres with black women and girls as the point of departure.

Born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Sierra Leone, scholar/cultural producer Nadia Sasso directed the film Am I: Too African to be American or Too American to be African?

In Sierra Leone, one of the most prominent initiatives introduced to train young people to tell their own stories through the moving image, is the WeOwnTV Media Centre. It launched its first program in the country in 2009 by facilitating a month-long filmmaking workshop for eighteen young men and women on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown. Since the initial workshop, a cadre of young people continues to produce stories of their experiences and communities with the technical support, encouragement and continued training of the organizers. Moreover, a visible number of women are among the emerging filmmakers.

Articles featuring Sierra Leonean women in cinema, visual media and screen culture on the African Women in Cinema Blog

“Am I: Too African to be American or Too American to be African?” a film by Sierra Leonean American Nadia Sasso
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2015/09/am-i-too-african-to-be-american-or-too.html
World Premiere: “The Flying Stars” by Ngardy Conteh George (Sierra Leone-Canada) and Allan Tong – 14 November 2014
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2014/11/world-premiere-flying-stars-by-ngardy.html
A Conversation with Nikyatu Jusu
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2011/04/conversation-with-nikyatu-jusu.html
Mahen Bonetti: The New York African Film Festival
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2011/04/mahen-bonetti-new-york-african-film.html
Victoria Marcellina Thomas: A Portrait
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/10/victoria-marcellina-thomas-portrait.html

World Premiere: “The Flying Stars” by Ngardy Conteh George (Sierra Leone-Canada) and Allan Tong – 14 November 2014

World premiere of The Flying Stars by Ngardy Conteh George and Allan Tong at the Rencontres Internationales du documentaire de Montréal | Montreal International Film Festival. Screenings: 14 November and 16 November.

Synopsis

The Flying Stars is about amputee soccer in post-war Sierra Leone. Team captain Bornor Kargbo and midfielder Momahamed “Census” Jalloh are amputees who play organized soccer in Sierra Leone to cope with the horrors of war they suffered a decade ago. As they dream of playing internationally, they wrestle with nightmares that haunt their daily lives and threaten the very families they are trying to feed. Can Bornor and Census overcome their postwar trauma and score a victory for their children off the soccer pitch?

The Filmmakers

Ngardy Conteh George: Co-director/editor/producer

As a Sierra Leonean-Canadian, Ngardy always wants to tell stories of the African Diaspora. As a director she has achieved this with Soldiers for the Streets, a short documentary for the NFB, broadcast on CBC Television and Literature Alive, a documentary series featuring Caribbean- Canadian authors broadcast on Bravo!. She is also an accomplished video editor working on various documentaries and television shows including I Want to Be a Desi 2 (documentary short, Dir. Allan Tong), Something Beautiful (half-hour documentary on development in Kenya), Cypher for AUX TV, Arts & Minds for Bravo!, The Rhyming Chef Barbuda, Food & Drink TV and The Marilyn Denis Show for CTV. She is a former scholarship athlete and graduate of the University of New Orleans.

Allan Tong: co-director/writer/producer

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker who wrote and directed the comedy shorts Little Mao and I Want To Be a Desi, which Bravo aired after enjoying award-winning festival runs. His short drama, Grange Avenue (2008) also played festivals and was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Previously, Allan apprenticed as a documentary director and producer at the National Film Board of Canada. He has served as an office manager, post-production manager and associate producer at documentary production companies. His articles about cinema regularly appear in the IFP’s Filmmaker magazine, and he has programmed for several film festivals. Presently, Allan is writing scripted television drama after recently completing the WGC-Bell Media Diverse Screenwriters Program. 

Source: http://www.flyingstarsdoc.com

Mahen Bonetti: The New York African Film Festival

The New York-based African Film Festival (NYAFF) has become a staple of the city's cinematic landscape thanks to its founder and executive director, Sierra Leonean Mahen Bonetti. Founded with the support of her husband and important players on the New York City culture scene, NYAFF has become an institution in itself and is a groundbreaking network for the promotion, exhibition, and distribution of African cinema in the United States. As the NYAFF motto indicates "it is more than just a festival".

NYAFF as an idea emerged in the 1980s from Mahen's desire to show positive, diverse and realistic visual representation of Africa in the United States, in contrast to the dominant media images of misery and strife. While the festival concept had not yet formulated, she had already begun to look for a way to make a contribution towards correcting these misconceptions about Africa. As the film festival took shape in the 1990s its main objective was to use the medium of cinema to promote awareness about Africa and educate both Americans and Africans living in the United States. At the same time, it has always been committed to the development of an international audience for African films. The scope and scale of NYAFF expands to reflect the ever-changing realities of Africa and the African Diaspora, as well as new developments in African cinema practices.

And while in cinema one often finds a dominance of men, within NYAFF there is a high visibility of women in all spheres. Women have always played an integral role--from the very top of the small organization to the board of directors and advisory board, in the selection of films, and the articles and interviews in the impressive Through African Eyes publication series.

Mahen had this to say to my question during our interview: "As a woman, do you feel that you have a sensibility towards African women's works? Could you talk about the visual image of African women and the representation of African women in the film industry and also share your impressions on films by African women, the sensibility, themes, tendencies?" (From Sisters of the Screen: Women of African on Film, Video and Television, Beti Ellerson, 2000).

I think Africa is a woman and everything that is working in Africa is because women are behind it.  They also have a sensitivity and the rhythm.  Women are more three-dimensional, they are deeper, and in Africa, that complexity comes from a woman. I find that the subjects that the African women deal with are different from those of African-American women's films, much less Hollywood.  Here in the States, one doesn't expect to see things like polygamy, female genital mutilation, or women in Tanzania crushing stone.  You feel their passion, you feel their confusion, you share it with them. Safi Faye's film Mossane is a beautiful film; there you have three generations of women. I also felt lucky; she let me show it this year.  I love the relationship between the grandmother and the granddaughter.

No aspect of African cinema is more miraculous than the most unbidden emergence of female filmmakers on the continent.  What makes film the most immediate, the most direct of all art forms is its ability to transport, to place one instantaneously in someone else's situation.  Their films sometimes focus on the challenges of adjustment and this is why audiences can identify.  Whether they are depicting upheavals or celebrating life, they show "little people" trying to "do the right thing."
I believe the female African filmmaker has a defined perception of her world and because of this her films translate.  It can move from one language into others.  They have tenacity, resourcefulness, and buoyancy.  Their situation requires all these qualities.

I also believe that, in using the cinematic medium, we find that in their films, women are best able to recapture, help define the true essence of African culture and African people.  They address issues in a sense that are taken away from imposed colonial values or colonial distortions and point of view.

Link: African Film Festival, Inc.

Victoria Thomas: A Portrait

Victoria Thomas: A Portrait

Victoria Adeola Thomas

(biography and photo from republicofstory.com)

Victoria is a filmmaker, researcher, and educator of entrepreneurship in the film value chain.

She has worked on a variety of film and TV projects across shorts, features and television in both the factual and fiction space, as a Producer/Director, on narratives that explore the experiences of people of African descent, most recently as a Factual Producer/Director on the Queen Cleopatra series on Netflix.

She is interested in economic equity in the film business as it relates to the Diaspora communities across Europe. She is a Course Director and lecturer in the entertainment value chain and law across the value chain on the MA International Film Business at London Film School, a lecturer in Producing at South Bank University and an External Examiner on the MA Producing at Aberystwyth University.

She has also delivered talks and workshops on the film value chain, moderated panels for a variety of organisations to include but not limited to Sunnyside Of The Doc, Africa No Filter, British Council, Sarajevo Film Festival, We Are UK Film at Cannes Film Festival and Women in Film & TV International.

She is on jury for the BIFA’s and the Athena List and sits on the board of Film Africa and the steering committee for ARTEF (The Anti-Racism Taskforce for European Film). She is an alumnus of Filmonomics, Jihlava’s Emerging Producers Program, Berlinale Talents, EAVE, IFP, The AttaGirl Lab and the UK’s National Film and Television School. She is a voting member of the European Film Academy, BAFTA Scotland and BAFTA UK.

Updates of Victoria Adeola Thomas filmography

A Birthday Party

The close relationship between twin sisters is shattered irrevocably when one insists on upholding tradition through the circumcision of her daughter.

Released: 2022

Born in New York, Raised in Paris

Born In New York, Raised In Paris, chronicles the role of hip hop, in empowering disenfranchised black and Arab youths, in France, to highlight and protest police brutality.

2020 - Status: Post Production

Street Food

After escaping her traffickers in Italy, a refugee from West Africa sets up a food truck selling traditional African food at a popular Street Food market because whilst Italians are increasingly anxious about the influx of refugees, they are notoriously passionate about food.

Status: In development.

A Film From Africa, That Is Not About Poverty, War or Aids

(fiction) a satire in development with the support of the Scottish Film Talent Network. 

The Catch

(fiction) explores survival and unresolved trauma in post-conflict societies against the backdrop of the increasing use of the West Coast of Africa as a transit route for drugs by Cartels from South America.

In development

Conversation with Victoria Thomas and Beti Ellerson (October 2010)

Victoria, you are from Sierra Leone, raised in the UK where you live and work. Could you elaborate some on your background, your plural identities?

I consider myself a citizen of the world because I have moved around so much. But I have spent the most time in Sierra Leone where I was born and Britain where I live, but I also lived in The Gambia and Kenya at some point. Africans ask where I am from as do the British and answering became complicated as they also need explanations for my name and accent which is neither here nor there so a few years ago, I stopped answering or said the first country that came to my mind.

Before completing your MFA in film at the Screen Academy Scotland you pursued areas that have been useful in your present career. How did you become interested in the moving image?

I am an only child and my dad's idea of babysitting was ensuring I knew how to switch on the TV and VCR from an early age with a never ending supply of British comedies and James Bond movies. But I did enjoy them and acted them out in the comfort of my bedroom. I was always Bond. It was something that always fascinated me once I figured out that the people were not in the TV set. I never really thought I could make films because I never saw anyone who looked like me in them. So I studied accounting and then went to law school. But somewhere along the line I discovered Spike Lee and

Waiting to Exhale and it seemed within reach.

You have a few films that have been visible in the international film festival circuit, such as Ladies Who Lunch and Santa Trap, both nominated for the best short film at the Birmingham Black International Film Festival. What has been the reception of the films?

The reception was a lot better than expected. I do comedy films and they can be tricky because it is all down to sharing a similar sense of humour with the audience. They both premiered at Cannes this year and the room was full of people from different countries largely in Europe and there were no subtitles but they all laughed at the time they were supposed to laugh so that was a relief.

I am especially fascinated by your interest in comedy. What inspired your interest in this genre?

I am a pessimist and a cynic so it helps that I have a sense of humour otherwise I will be depressed. I don't do slapstick but I am fascinated with the humour that comes from the many contradictions in our existence and I don't think that you have to be gloomy and preachy about life to make a point.

Your production company The Polkadot Factory…what are some of your current projects?

We are currently working on a comedy feature film that is set in Nigeria as I want to make films in Sub-Saharan African but I am determined not to make a film about poverty or social issues in Africa. I am not trying to gloss over the challenges that exist but I am also certain that Africa has more than sob stories to offer. I am also developing two of my short films The Brides Ball into a feature film with support from Scottish Screen and The Santa Trap as feature for cinema.

There is an active cinema culture in Britain and there are several film festivals that focus on people of African descent, such as the Birmingham Black International Film Festival and also specifically on Black women in cinema.

Britain does have a rich cinema culture though I am not aware of that many festivals that focus on people of African descent. From what I have noticed, the focus is on films which feature people of African descent regardless of who makes them and I am not sure that if you are of African descent and you make films you only have a perspective on Africans especially as so many people who are not Africans have a perspective on us.

When one thinks about African cinema, Sierra Leone is not very visible. What are your connections to Sierra Leone and is there an emergence of a Sierra Leone cinema? Are there others in the Sierra Leonean Diaspora with whom you work or connect?

I collaborate a lot with a friend of mine who is an actress and producer whose origin is also from Sierra Leone. I have not been to Sierra Leone in fourteen years so I don't know much about Sierra Leonean cinema or if there is one but I have never seen a film made about Sierra Leone by anyone who has anything remotely to do with the country or in some cases even bothered to go there before writing their script. I would like to make a film there someday. I am not sure what it will be about but it will be funny and not about diamonds, civil war or amputees.

Future projects and goals?

Hopefully I can continue to make films whether they are my own ideas or collaborate with other filmmakers to bring stories to the screen that I am genuinely intrigued or amused by.

Conversation with Victoria Marcellina Thomas and Beti Ellerson

October 2010

The Republic of Story: The Polka Dot Factory https://www.republicofstory.com/