Documentary as an ideological mode of narrative

By Bunmi Ajiboye

(234next January 29, 2011)


Was it a coincidence that the panel on the 3rd day of the iRep Documentary Film Festival comprised academics? Little wonder then that the discussion at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, went in the direction of an academic discourse of sorts with useful examples which still bordered on the theoretical.

An instance was Onookome Okome's theory that Nollywood is popular art. Okome, a lecturer at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, is also a specialist in Nollywood films and is currently on sabbatical at the Pan African University.

Sola Olorunyomi, a lecturer at the University of Ibadan; Awam Amkpa, professor and director of African Studies at New York University; and Tunde Babawale, director general of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), were also on the panel. They discussed ‘Motifs of Black Consciousness in African Documentary films'.


Reification of savagery

"Documentary is an ideological mode of narrative as far as I am concerned," noted Olorunyomi, who argued that documentaries are really powerful.

But Okome raised a series of questions about documentary films and black consciousness. "If the documentary film is made by an outsider, will that be investing in black consciousness?" he asked.

He then gave the example of documentaries about Nollywood which were made by outsiders. He cited a particular documentary adding that, "when it came out, it wasn't my consciousness at all. I wrote a brief review saying that the documentary reads to me like a reification of the idea of the savagery of the people making the film," Okome continued.

"I have seen at least eight documentary films on Nollywood made by outsiders. And they just hammer on the very grotesque, on the idea of fetish practices," he said.

Political medium

"There is an assumption that films do contribute to our sense of selves. Nigeria is in a very prime stage. We have a highly visually-literate population, no thanks to Nollywood," Amkpa began.

"The challenge of the filmmaker, therefore, is to diversify from fiction to documentary. There are other people begging for their consciousness to be touched. There is a world out there challenging filmmakers to reach out to different publics. Nigeria has a big opportunity," he added.

Amkpa also acknowledged the fact that the documentary genre is a political medium and that it came to Nigeria through colonial filmmaking.

Olorunyomi argued that "Africaness and black consciousness are terms that are in constant mutation." His argument was aided by an earlier screening of South African, Zola Maseko's ‘The Manuscripts of Timbuktu'.

He expressed interest in how sights of canonization like the pyramids are represented.

"From our encounter with the West, the whole issue of what represents Africa has been shifting. Nollywood is informed by all kinds of persuasion. For example, there is the Pentecostal persuasion that shows that all things pre-Christian are evil," he said.

Olorunyomi maintained that documentaries need to move in the direction of earlier cultural production.

Films and interpretation

According to Okome, Nollywood is not located on any ideological premise. "African film scholars have a set idea of what African film is. They fail to see Nollywood as popular art. Popular art does not lead to any ideological premise," he argued.

"Films are incomplete. They just offer a framework. Our interpretation is what gives them relevance," he said, adding that documentaries provide historical archive.

The panel took a break during which the Festac 77 film was aired so that the audience, many of whom had not been born at the time, could get a glimpse of the historic event. After the screening, Babawale entertained questions regarding the festival, and also revealed that there were other tapes of activities that took place during the festival in custody of CBAAC.

As the panel regrouped, many questions regarding the topic continued to come up; should black consciousness be dynamic or retrospective? Why should black consciousness be reactionary? The discussion, though inconclusive, ended on this note, ‘A Tiger does not declare its Tigritude, it pounces."




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