Writer and producer Awa Farah: Somalinimo, Young, British and Somali at Cambridge

Writer and producer Awa Farah: Somalinimo, Young, British and Somali at Cambridge

See the film Somalinimo by Alice Aedy, produced and written by Awa Farah: 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2020/sep/02/somalinimo-somali-culture-blackness-and-islam-at-cambridge-university

Interview by Lindsay Poulton and Jess Gormley

"Somalinimo: young, gifted and Somali... and at Cambridge"

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/02/somalinimo-young-gifted-and-somali-and-at-cambridge-university-documentary

Writer and producer Awa Farah describes her collaboration with film-maker Alice Aedy to express her experiences as a British-Somali woman at Cambridge University in this new documentary

Image: The cast of Cambridge students on the set of Somalinimo. Photograph: Alice Aedy/Girls on Film

Zélie Asava : Book - Mixed Race Cinemas, Multiracial Dynamics in America and France | Livre « Cinémas mixtes, la dynamique multiraciale aux Etats-Unis et en France »

Mixed Race Cinemas, Multiracial Dynamics in America and France by/par Zélie Asava [traduction en français du titre: Cinémas mixtes, la dynamique multiraciale aux Etats-Unis et en France]

Book description

Using critical race theory and film studies to explore the interconnectedness between cinema and society, Zélie Asava traces the history of mixed-race representations in American and French filmmaking from early and silent cinema to the present day. Mixed Race Cinemas covers over a hundred years of filmmaking to chart the development of (black/white) mixed representations onscreen. With the 21st century being labelled the Mulatto Millennium, mixed bodies are more prevalent than ever in the public sphere, yet all too often they continue to be positioned as exotic, strange and otherworldly, according to 'tragic mulatto' tropes. This book evaluates the potential for moving beyond fixed racial binaries both onscreen and off by exploring actors and characters who embody the in-between. Through analyses of over 40 movies, and case studies of key films from the 1910s on, Mixed Race Cinemas illuminates landmark shifts in local and global cinema, exploring discourses of subjectivity, race, gender, sexuality and class. In doing so, it reveals the similarities and contrasts between American and French cinema in relation to recognising, visualising and constructing mixedness. Mixed Race Cinemas contextualizes and critiques raced and 'post-race' visual culture, using cinematic representations to illustrate changing definitions of mixed identity across different historical and geographical contexts.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mixed-race-cinemas-9781501312489/

Traduction en français par Beti Ellerson de la description du livre :

En utilisant la théorie critique de la race et les études cinématographiques pour examiner l'interconnexion entre le cinéma et la société, Zélie Asava retrace à partir du cinéma des premiers temps et du cinéma muet jusqu'à nos jours, l'histoire des représentations du métissage dans le cinéma américain et le cinéma français. Mixed Race Cinemas [Cinémas mixtes] couvre plus d'une centaine d'années de cinéma pour tracer le développement des représentations du métissage (noir / blanc) à l'écran. Le 21ème siècle étant appelé « Millénaire du Mulâtre », les corps métis sont plus visibles que jamais dans la sphère publique. Mais selon les tropes « mulâtres tragiques » ils sont trop souvent positionnés comme exotiques, étranges et hors du commun. Ce livre considère la capacité de dépasser la binarité raciale sur et au-delà de l'écran en examinant les acteurs et les personnages qui évoquent « l'entre-deux ». Grâce à des analyses de plus de 40 films et des études de cas de films clés à partir des années 1910, Cinémas mixtes met en évidence les changements décisifs dans le cinéma local et mondial, examinant des discours de subjectivité, de race, de genre, de sexualité et de classe. Dans ce cadre, il révèle les similitudes et les contrastes entre le cinéma américain et le cinéma français par rapport à la reconnaissance, la visualisation et la construction de la mixité. Cinémas mixtes contextualise et critique la culture visuelle racisée et post-raciale, en utilisant des représentations cinématographiques pour illustrer l'évolution des définitions de l'identité métisse dans différents contextes historiques et géographiques.

Other link of interest on the African Women in Cinema Blog:

Zélie Asava: mixed-race identities and representation in Irish, U.S. and French cinemas

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