In Search of the Black Fantastic: An Intimate Conversation with Akin Omotoso, Cinematic Griot
ABSTRACT:
In this intimate conversation with director/writer/producer, Akin Omotoso, Dr Zama Dube demonstrates a Black feminist African consideration of the ways in which African filmmakers such as Omotoso contend with gendered and racialized visual histories in order to produce subversive images of Blackness[i]. Omotoso was born to a Barbadian mother and a Nigerian father and had lived in both places before being uprooted to go to South Africa. Thus, I contend that the filmmaker embodies “the practice of diaspora”[ii] and collapses rigid understandings of ‘home,’ ‘place’ and ‘identity’ –– these themes can be traced throughout his extensive filmography. Whilst Omotoso has captured the interest of Hollywood by directing Disney’s 2022 film Rise and contributing to Beyonce’s visual musical Black is King, he seems to maintain the edge of a griot, storyteller, and ultimately a filmmaker of decolonial makings.
RESEARCHER BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Zama Dube is a South African broadcaster, voice artist, and media scholar based in Los Angeles. As the creator and host of ‘The Witch’s Flight,’ a radio show on dublab, Dr. Dube curates a monthly series of sonic experiments and dialogues that celebrate Afro-diasporic artistry through music and conversation. With a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Dr. Dube’s research focuses on Black feminist aesthetics, decolonial visual studies, and African diasporic cinema. Her work explores how Black women and queer image makers, and cultural producers imagine alternative worlds through visual art and the cinematic landscape. Beyond academia, Dr. Dube is an interdisciplinary digital creator and cultural curator, interweaving Amapiano, deep house, and poetic visuals in her sound performances, which have spanned museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Hammer Museum and the Fowler Museum. With an eye toward Black feminist media praxis and innovation, Dr. Dube envisions her work as a radical gesture towards the “elsewhere” and a means of transformation –– challenging norms, sparking meaningful dialogue, and creating spaces where art, scholarship, and storytelling intersect.
PRELUDE:
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of checking in with one of my favorite filmmakers Akin Omotoso. I call it a check-in because much has unfolded in the world since the outbreak of COVID-19, and also since I met Akin all those years ago. I met Akin in 2012 at the YFM[iii] studios in Johannesburg South Africa. At the time, I was the host of a mid-morning radio show and Akin was our station resident voiceover artist. I had invited him for an on-air conversation and in the middle of the interview, Akin seemed to notice a bell hooks text that I had lying next to my microphone. It was at that very moment, that we began an ongoing conversation on African film, Black feminisms, the practice of diaspora and the possibility of forging decolonial forms of knowledge-making. Grappling with the Fanonian framework that asserts that there can be no ontological resistance in spaces that are shaped for and by whiteness[iv], I further probed Akin on the burden of representation for African filmmakers who work within mainstream media institutions. Finally, we both rested on a Black feminist grammar that bell hooks had already provided us with, and that is: “the fundamental task of Black critical thinkers has been the struggle to break with the hegemonic modes of seeing, thinking and being that block our capacity to see ourselves oppositionally, to imagine, describe and invent ourselves in ways that are liberatory”[v]. It is with such in mind that I contend that if we are to consider the realm of film as a space that has been ‘westernized'[vi] and colonized through an intentional lack of attention to alternative possibilities, then it is an appropriate response to consider the ways in which African filmmakers such as Akin Omotoso contend with these gendered and racialized visual histories in order to produce subversive images of Blackness.
I unintentionally became what I now consider to be an Akin Omotoso scholar –– for I had insisted that in order to be able to truly have a meaningful conversation, I had to dig deeper and savor his entire filmic catalogue –– beginning with the first films he created in film school. Akin is a Scorpio, and so I knew that there is a depth to him that is probably reserved only for a few. However, to the well-trained eye, Omotoso’s very life story unfolds in all of his films. Both God is African (1999) and Gathering Our Scattered Cousins (2003) are films that relay a sense of profound vulnerability that compels the viewer to become a radical witness to the unfolding of Omotoso’s filmic imagination. I appreciate the vulnerability with which Akin connects to history. The love and respect that he has for the radio DJ is all over the story of God is African where the radio and DJ is positioned as the griot. Akin shares that the character of the radio DJ was in fact inspired by a campus radio DJ at his alma mater: the University of Cape Town. As a person whose storytelling roots initiate from a campus radio background, I felt an inexplicable sense of resonance and nostalgia in witnessing the youthful exuberance of young griots captured so well on screen: that sense of youthful optimism that marks the type of creative fellowship that takes place in a campus radio station.
God is African and Gathering Our Scattered Cousins are the works I would like to meditate on as I find both films to demonstrate Akin’s depth and breadth as griot, a storyteller, and ultimately a filmmaker of decolonial makings.
CONVERSATION (12.02.22):
Zama: I have been looking forward to having this conversation with you as I feel that you are one of those creatives and artists who embodies the experience of diaspora –– in the sense that your father is Nigerian, mother from Barbados and then you later migrate to South Africa.
Akin: Yes –– my dad is Nigerian, my late mom is from Barbados. So throughout my childhood there was movement –– we moved to South Africa when I was seventeen. So from the time I was born, this idea that there’s not one place. And so already, you’re introduced to the concept that there’s something more beyond what I’m looking at. And then my late mom’s parents, lived in London –– so they were part of the West Indian migration to London. So when we visited them, we visited them in London. So from about the age of three years old, in my consciousness was there’s this place called Nigeria. There’s this other place called London. And then there’s this other place called Barbados. There are these three places. And so you navigate your teenage years or the first part of your life knowing you have access to three different places. And then coming to South Africa when I was seventeen. We came here in 1992. I always tell people that we came here two weeks before the last “whites only” referendum –– when de Klerk was like “yes or no, do we end apartheid”. So we arrived two weeks before that referendum and many people don’t remember that referendum. But the referendum is key because what happens to the mind when you travel is two things happen, that I realize. So we left Nigeria in 1992 –– I then only went back to Nigeria in 2008. So in 2008, the Nigeria in my head is stuck in 1992. So something happens –– there’s a pause button. This is pre all the social medias. People were writing letters. They’re not necessarily seeing visual representation. I think it would be slightly different now, not emotionally but definitely viscerally because you can see. So what happens is that. The place you left, there’s a pause because you’ve frozen it in time. Your memory is stuck in 1992 so that when you go back in 2008, you’re playing a lot of catch up. Now the place you come to –– the minute you landed at that place, everything is heightened because it’s new. So the referendum is marked in my life because when we landed it was like, this referendum is two weeks away. And these people could vote to keep apartheid going. And so I remember giving my dad a hard time and saying well then what’s the point of us going to SA –– they’re racist so what’s the idea here? But he believed in what the nation was going to become. And also Nigeria became a place that was not particularly safe for him. He was a member of the second generation of Nigerian authors after Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe and so he had written a book about the history of Nigeria called; Just before Dawn. He had been threatened with lawsuits. Some military person said, “we’re not even gonna take him to court, we’ll shoot him outside.” So Nigeria was out for him and so he was looking for another place to take his family to. And for his generation, South Africa was seen as opening up. So what I always say about coming to this country is that I became a filmmaker because I came to this country. This country gave me that opportunity. So I always look at it like, I’ve grown with the country. I came in 1992. Democracy came in 1994. I watched the birth of Kwaito, the birth of the South African film industry.
Z: I like that you make mention of the fact that when you leave a place, it pauses in your mind because I now want to fast-forward to this theme that we constantly see in Hollywood films where Africa is engaged as this place to return back to. And some of the critiques are that other places move on –– so why is it that when we engage Africa visually, it’s always that place that we return to and extract from. I love the fact that you are unyielding and uncompromising in terms of the kind of stories that you know you want to tell. Because I was then going to ask, is it easy to fall into the trap, especially in place such as Hollywood, where they have their own ideas of what Africa looks like and maybe sometimes playing into those ideas can “help one.”
A: I always say that what we are really talking about is representation. So unfortunately, across the board in all kinds of things –– African representation, women representation. So what I realized as a storyteller is that you need to be clear about what your point of view is and what it is you want to see. You’ve got be intentional in those stories and be brave in those stories. I’m interested in the kaleidoscope of our experiences and what that entails is our trauma, our pain, our joy, our victories, our everything. And so what that tells you is that you cannot satisfy everybody and you have to be clear about what it is that you are trying to do. I was fortunate that early on, I was clear about what the lens was going to be. I looked at what had come before me and I looked at what was happening around me –– and asked myself: why are you filming?
Z: Rififi Pictures has produced some of the most exciting films to come out of Africa. Can you briefly touch on how the company was conceived and how you were able to finally distribute this work with global audiences?
A: I met Robbie Thorpe and he was a producer at Curious Pictures at the time. They were looking for new directors for Soul City and I had just finished making God is African and I was one of the people they invited to come and pitch to be a director for four episodes of Soul City. And so when I met Robbie, it was like love at first sight. I felt like I had met someone who shared the same passion and shared the same ideals as I did. He then introduced me to Kgomotso Motsonyane and so we all decided to form a company called TOM Pictures. And I think that there is something to be said about friendship as you create. I realized when I met Robbie that it didn’t matter to me what I did in life creatively but I wanted this guy by my side. We came together at a time when there was a call for Black affirmation projects and we were able to answer that call. We later dissolved TOM Pictures but Robbie and I continued to work together and that evolved into Rafifi Pictures.
Z: During the course of one of our most recent conversations, you mentioned Wole Soyinka’s call for the African artist to be unburdened and be given space for radical and creative play. What still keeps you playful as a creative? And what does it mean to allow the African filmmaker space to play?
A: I like that you refer to it as play because this is key. If you hear a story that you like, you know what it is that you like about the story. I would say that the play then in this regard is linked to the constant quest.
Z: Why do the stakes of representation often feel so high insofar as Blackness and Africa is concerned?
A: In reflecting on our conversation about the stakes of representation, I would say that because we have been narratively mistreated for so long –– as African filmmakers, we often have to come in “guns blazing”. But my thing is that it shouldn’t have to be. What tends to happen is that everyone feels the need to do counter images –– which I fully understand. But for me there’s something far more interesting in sharing our lived experiences and our joy of our telling to expand everybody’s imagination. In doing that we can see what type of narratives then start to emerge. And I guess I’m all for; it can all exist because it is the kaleidoscope of our experiences. So, I’m not going to penalize the person who wants to tell a certain story because I believe we should tell them all (the stories) –– because we’ve got plenty to say. It’s clear that we’ve got plenty to say because we are all storytellers. With books of literature for days and cinematic possibilities that haven’t even been scratched for centuries. And if one is paying attention, then they would be able to make all kinds of links and recognize movements as oppose to assuming that we are just starting. For me the narrative that assumes that we are just starting is what sometimes doesn’t allow the conversation to evolve to a place of real excitement.
Z: What you are describing sounds like a Black feminist sensibility –– the idea that you are part of a lineage and this is always with the understanding that your individual history stands on top of many other histories. And when we track these lineages in African storytelling then we would understand that we are not so starved of exciting and dynamic representations that contribute to complex and nuanced understandings of what it means to be Black in the diaspora. I see that it also comes through in all your films that you are a filmmaker that has been touched , raised and inspired by incredible filmmakers and writers.
Z: Tell me about the inspiration behind the radio DJ as griot in the film God is African.
A: The film is a result of the unconventional nature of my journey into storytelling because it was during the time that I was in drama school that I realized that I wanted to become a filmmaker. It was in 1995 when I first picked up a camera and the first place I took the camera to was basketball practice. So I came into film with the idea of: “what is this medium and how do I harness and understand the medium?”
Z: I have envisioned this project as a search for the Black Fantastic. What is your definition of the Black fantastic?
A: You tell me because I am a disciple of the movement of the Black Fantastic.
Z: I think that the fantastic to me is trying to understand what happens when Blackness is in a state of boundlessness. Nigerian-British filmmaker Jenn Nkiru once made mention that she thinks of Blackness as a state of boundlessness. In watching your films, one is able to tell that you are a student of the LA Rebellion, Spike Lee and even Sarah Maldoror. Can you elaborate further on your filmic influences?
A: It is no secret that Spike-Lee and Julie Dash are my first points of references. And then after that, I’m inspired by anyone who makes something that makes me go: “wow”. Spike-Lee for a long time was breaking down doors in an industry that wanted to keep him excluded. However, he continued to show different possibilities of what Black film could do. Julie Dash presented something that was an alternative to what could be expected from African-American film. You had all these filmmakers from across the African diaspora who continued to show alternatives to the Hollywood standard of filmmaking.
Z: Tell me about the inspiration behind the three short films done before God is African?
A: At the time, I thought that I wanted to be a writer and my father gave me the advice that I should write what I know. So all those films are in some way related to my life story.
Z: It appears that patriarchal violence is the running motif in all the short films –– what is your approach and process towards the visual depiction of violence?
A: I think I try as much as I can to portray experiences that are a result of living in a multicultural world. And to have these experiences resonate universally. So violence is an experience that is not just unique to one part of the world. Furthermore, a lot of the time for me, the films themselves are also me just working through stuff like: “how do I understand violence and how do I negotiate this space?”
Z: To a degree I also do think that every Black person has to negotiate their understandings of violence in terms of how antagonistic the world has been towards Black people. Its almost as though one can never walk through the world without encountering that violence. This then brings me to the idea of monstrous intimacies and your own monstrous intimacy with a place like South Africa. A place that you both love but also one that has been marked by xenophobic violence.
A: This is something that I try to address in the films God is African and Man on Ground. God is African is about a Nigerian student in a new place –– that is my story. So the protagonist has to negotiate both remembering where he comes from and also settling and adjusting to a new place that is foreign. I finally reach the resolution that both things can exist in that we don’t have to sacrifice memory even though we may forget ourselves in a moment.
Z: Do you still remember what your emotional landscape was after completing your first feature film?
A: I remember clearly because God is African was the blue-print of everything I’ve done since because making that film was like film school.
Z: I keep returning to God is African because the film makes so many important cultural and historical references. You feature so many people who were an important part of shaping culture in South Africa. Can you talk about the scene performed by Tony Kgoroge and the Afro-diasporic call and response he makes as he mentions many important cultural figures of the Black Atlantic.
A: That scene was inspired by the idea of a roll-call such as the one performed by Samuel L Jackson in Do the Right Thing(Spike Lee). In that scene he starts listing all these Afro diasporic cultural figures who have contributed significantly to sociopolitical culture in the Black diaspora. Similarly, in Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash) the final scene has a roll call and so I wanted to make my own version of this citational practice.
Z: Finally, lets talk about the making of Gathering the Scattered Cousins. I would say that this film is perhaps your most profound display of vulnerability. As a viewer, I felt called to bear intimate witness and again I find this to be such a Black feminist sensibility.
A: Going into that film, I knew that it would probably be the only time that I would be as vulnerable because my late mother was the one who had said that I needed to do a film about my grandparents so as to find out more about that lineage and to acknowledge both sides of my heritage. In the process of interviewing my grandparents for the film, my mom died. And so, the documentary takes on a different form so as to mourn that passing. So, for me the documentary is more of a tribute to her and of a time in which I was able to mourn her by making this film for her.
Z: What is your relationship to death and those that have passed on or transitioned and how does your mom continue to carry you through this process of being a storyteller?
A: My mother passed on nineteen years ago yet she remains to be very present to me every day. I also do make a separation between the ideas of the work and life. Although these things are intertwined since I’m living life, there’s also the idea that there is a difference between the Akin who is living life and the Akin who is creating.
Z: I think that the film is such an important reference for conversations on transnational solidarity and at times diasporic tensions. Would you agree?
A: Yes, in making the film I was trying to understand the source of the tensions that existed between the Caribbean and Nigerian sides of my family and how to make sense of both these histories. Growing up, I believed that we were all equal in society however I soon began to see these tensions which are a result of us being starved of imagery.
Z: Your family seems to play an important role in a lot of your projects. How is the experience of collaborating with family?
A: Its great because they are all smarter than I am. They are my first audience. My brother, my sister, and my dad are all important collaborators of mine. Even, my mom who would read all my scripts whilst she was alive. So they all have always been my first audience.
Z: Based on the nature of the relationship that you have had with your mother, would you say that this has influenced how you are able to portray the interiority of Black women characters in your films?
A: I hope so. I grew up amongst women in my family who were all very complex in different ways. And so what I try to honor in the films is that complexity and the kaleidoscope of experiences that all these women embody.
NOTES:
[i] The title In Search of the Black Fantastic: An Intimate Conversation with Akin Omotoso, Cinematic Griot is a nod to the work of Caribbean scholar, Richard Iton (2008). I find Iton’s provocations on diaspora and emancipation particularly generative. Thus, my quest for ‘the Black Fantastic’ is a nudge for us to move beyond the confines of political emancipation and instead understand freedom as a project that further requires and involves self-naming/self-definition and the radical expression of an imagination that is not burdened by the white gaze.
[ii] See: Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard University Press, 2003).
[iii] YFM is the largest Youth radio station in Johannesburg, South Africa. The station has played an integral role in impacting Black youth culture as it was established in 1997, a period whereby the country had just transitioned into a democracy. Thus, as a media entity primarily targeted at Black youth audiences, YFM’s impact on South Africa’s sociopolitical landscape cannot be ignored.
[iv] See: Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. (1952).
[v] bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992) 2.
[vi] I deploy the term ‘westernized’ here as a placement order for hegemonic ideology.
[vii] According to astrology, Scorpio is a zodiac sign that derives their strength from the psychic and emotional realm.
