ADIFF ’12: Re-Emerging—The Jews of Nigeria

They lack the official recognition of the Falasha Ethiopians, but a small group of Igbo Nigerians remain convinced they are part of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.  Small would be the word to emphasize.  In a country almost entirely divided between Christian and Muslim believers, Jewish Nigerians are a distinct minority.  Nonetheless, growing numbers of Igbos are embracing Judaism as part of their heritage.  Jeff L. Lieberman documents their lives and faith in Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

It is complicated, but many Igbo believe they are the modern day descendants of the Tribe of Gad.  It could certainly be possible, but it would have been one arduous trek.  One has to have a little faith.  Still, the Jewish Igbo point to striking ways their language and culture corresponds to Hebrew and Jewish religious practices.  Tragically, the Igbo experience during the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War also somewhat paralleled that of European Jewry during World War II, with an estimated three million Igbo killed due to the massacres and economic blockades perpetrated by the Muslim north.

Whether Eri, fifth son of Gad, really made it to Nigeria hardly matters to Rabbi Howard Gorin, who emerges in Re-Emerging as one of the most impassioned international advocates for the Jewish Igbos.  Like Rabbi Gorin, the Jewish scholars who have visited the Igbo community describe the experience for Lieberman as inspiring and even humbling.

Indeed, there are some surprisingly affecting moments in Re-Emerging.  Lieberman also supplies a good deal of helpful cultural-historical context without bogging down the film in anthropological minutia.  Nor does Lieberman turn a blind eye on the institutional corruption afflicting Nigeria at large.  Yet, he raises the intriguing question of what Igbo Judaism might mean for African-Americans, many of whom are descended from captured Igbo slaves, without fully exploring the implications.

 

Re-Emerging is an informative film that broadens one’s perspective on both the Jewish and African Diasporas.  Indeed, it is a laudably inclusive selection of this year’s ADIFF that ought to expand the festival’s audience.  Recommended for multicultural and multi-faith audiences, Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria screens next Monday (12/3) at the Columbia Teachers College Chapel as the 2012 ADIFF continues in venues throughout New York.

ADIFF ’12: Toussaint Louverture

Toussaint Louverture was a freed slave, an abolitionist, and a onetime slave-owning plantation master.  He led an epic life dramatized in all its messy glory throughout Philippe Niang’s two part French miniseries, Toussaint Louverture (trailer here), which screens in its entirety as the centerpiece selection of the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Told in flashbacks, viewers know right from the start Napoleon will eventually have his fill of Louverture, consigning him to prison, where his lackeys interrogate the Haitian general for the whereabouts of an apocryphal buried treasure.  In a way, Louverture was lucky to be there.  Having watched a cruel slaver murder his father, the young Louverture would have been next had Bayon, a more humane plantation holder, not interceded (evidently, this scene involves some dramatic license, but so be it).  Recognizing the boy’s talents, Bayon somewhat reluctantly teaches Louverture to read and even grants him his freedom as a young man.  The evolving, cliché-defying relationship between the two men is one of the strongest elements of the bio-drama.

Eventually, Louverture takes arms, but again it is complicated.  Serving as an officer first for the Spanish and then the French, Louverture fought against every European power in Haiti at one time or another.  Although he is an abolitionist, Louverture strives to maintain strategic ties to the colonial landlords.  The Louverture Niang shows the audience is not a class warrior.  He wants to keep their capital in Haiti—he just doesn’t want to be considered part of it.  However, this inevitably brings conflict with hotter heads intent on score-settling.

Indeed, the tragedy of Niang’s Louverture is the way cynical white, black, and mulatto Haitians exploit racial resentment to further their power games.  It is also fascinating to see how the chaos of the French Revolution shaped events a hemisphere away.  However, given Louverture’s reputation as one of history’s great revolutionaries, many viewers will be surprised there are no battle scenes in Niang’s production, just the anticipation and consequences of armed conflict.

Something of a throwback to the epic historical minis of the 1980’s, Louverture is sweeping, melodramatic, and ennobling in a very satisfying way.  As one might expect, Jimmy Jean-Louis’s dynamic lead performance is the key.  He is suitably intense, without allowing Louverture to degenerate into a fire-breathing revolutionary stereotype.  Likewise, Philippe Caroit genuinely humanizes the French old guard as the decidedly un-Legree-ish Bayon.

A French television veteran, Niang’s tele-movie Prohibited Love (which screened at the 2010 ADIFF) also dealt with racial themes pointedly, but without wallowing in didacticism.  Louverture is even better.  In fact, it should appeal to audiences across the ideology spectrum, aside from any odd remaining Bonapartists out there.  Appealingly old fashioned, Toussaint Louverture is a well produced period drama, recommended for history buffs and Francophone audiences when it screens next Saturday and Sunday (12/1 and 12/2) as the centerpiece of this year’s ADIFF.

ADIFF ’12: T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness

Every six or eight months or so, one of the major jazz magazines runs a story about how difficult it is for jazz artists to come out of the closet.  The usual suspects are duly interviewed and everyone bemoans the lingering uber-machismo inherited from big band era.  Yet, many of the true pioneering women of the blues, almost all of whom have significant jazz crossover appeal, were evidently either bisexuals or lesbians.  Robert Philipson explores their largely unknown but not necessarily secret sexual identities in T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s (trailer here), which screens as a selection of the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith could be bawdy yet sophisticated performers.  They were also bisexual.  As one of Philipson’s interview subjects explains, as blues singers, they were automatically marginalized by the Church-centered mainstream African American society of time.  Ironically, this was somewhat liberating in an in-for-a-penny kind of way.  As a result, Rainey and Smith carried on rather openly with lovers of all varieties, while they maintained their careers and straight public images—for the most part.  The same was true for Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter, who were not really closeted or open lesbians, but something in between.  In contrast, patrons would have to be pretty dense to miss the significance of Gladys Bentley’s defiantly lesbian nightclub act.

If you adjust for inflation, Rainey, Smith, and Waters are among the biggest recording acts frankly ever.  It is quite extraordinary how such a significant aspect of their lives has been so widely overlooked. Yet, Philipson never overstates matters.  At one point Bizness’s narrator argues it was not their sexual identity that made Rainey and company such great artists, but it was an important part of who they were as people.

Philipson also makes some shrewd musical selections, ranging from “hmm, that’s an interesting double entendre” to “gee, how could anyone not pick up on that?”  However, viewers familiar with Waters’ long association with the Billy Graham Crusade in her later years will wonder how these two halves of her persona fit together.  Yet, Philipson never goes down this avenue.  Of course, there is only so much that can be addressed in Bizness’s thirty minute running time.

Philipson balances scandal and sensitivity quite well and features some great music.  Informative and briskly entertaining, T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness is highly recommended for jazz and blues fans.  It screens this coming Tuesday (11/27) as part of the Gay Theme Film Program at this year’s ADIFF.

ADIFF ’12: Hopeville

Hopeville is the sort of town that will drive you to drink.  It is probably not the place for a recovering alcoholic granted provisional custody of his estranged son, but Amos Manyoni does not have a lot of options in John Trengove’s Hopeville (trailer here), an original feature film adaptation of the popular South African miniseries, which screens as part of the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Pools play in important role in the life of Manyoni’s son Themba.  He was a champion swimmer, but his mother tragically died in an accident en route to one of his meets.  Clean and sober for over a year, Manyoni regains his parental rights, as long as he adheres to three conditions: stay away from alcohol, hold down a steady job, and provide Themba access to a pool.  Hopeville sounds perfect.  He has a gig lined up there with the municipal government and there is a pool, except not really.

Drained and in a state of disrepair, the pool now serves as a garbage dump.  The corrupt Mayor and his council cronies are planning to develop it into a booze drive through, but they are reluctant to tell Manyoni their plans forthrightly.  Instead, they do their best to secretly undermine his efforts to single-handedly fix up the pool.  Much to their frustration though, Manyoni’s work begins to inspire the depressed town.

Hopeville is the sort of film tailor-made for feel-good festival play.  There is redemption, family values, spirited old folks, and triumph over adversity.  Manyoni even develops a romance with Fikile, the mayor’s ice cream vendor mistress, but it is decidedly chaste—just an odd kiss and a bit of handholding.

Of course, you cannot spell “Hopeville” without “evil.”  That might be too strong a term, but Desmond Dube’s venal mayor is definitely a pointed portrayal of post-apartheid political opportunists.  Yet, by and large, Hopeville is about inclusion and multi-racial community.

Themba Ndada is painfully earnest but still reasonably down to earth and credible as Manyoni.  While there are all kinds of manipulation going on, viewers will still find themselves caring about his trials and tribulations.  While Dube plays the mayor like a caricature of graft, Hopeville boasts several appealingly colorful supporting turns, including Jonathan Pienaar as the Fred, the not as bad as he looks barkeep.

On one hand, Hopeville is competently produced, likable, and well-intentioned.  It is also predictable and sentimental.  Sometimes, that is all rather comforting.  Recommended for patrons in the mood for reassuringly inspirational cinema or interested in contemporary South African film, Hopeville screens this Saturday (11/24) and the following Thursday (12/6) as part of the ADIFF in New York.

ADIFF ’12: Times Like Deese

The looming liquidation of Hostess Brands represents 185,000 jobs likely lost.  That is a whole lot of blues in the Obama era.  Ever mindful of the significance of an African American president in the White House, Marteen Schmidt & Thomas Doebele take a Lomaxian journey into deep southern blues country to find out how blue the traditional bluesmen’s blues still are in Times Like Deese: You Can’t Keep a Man Down Always (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Rarely is heard a discouraging word about the 44^th president, but L.C. Ulmer’s first blues is dedicated to James Meredith, the civil rights pioneer who integrated Ole Miss and later became a high profile staffer for Sen. Jesse Helms.  His lyrics end before that point, making it exactly the sort of song Schmidt and Doebele were hoping to record.  “Blind Mississippi” Morris Cummings seems the readiest to oblige with political material directly addressing current controversies.  Less topical but still on-point for the Dutch filmmakers, musicians like Josh “Razorblade” Stewart, Chester “Memphis Gold” Chandler, and Charlie Sayles often sing blues about their experiences serving in Viet Nam.

Times Like Deese (a problematically condescending attempt at approximating rural Southern vernacular) has some deeply felt music, but its economic analysis is rather shallow.  Regardless, it is nice to see the blues is alive and well as a form of musical statement.  Perhaps Stewart has the most memorable performance, with a decidedly ribald take on “Trouble in Mind,” but most of the old school bluesmen acquit themselves in style.  However, the occasional nods to hip hop are consistently underwhelming.

It might shock New Yorkers to learn B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis actually books blues artists, unlike the 42^nd Street club that largely presents vaguely blues-influenced rock bands.  Indeed, it is quite cool to see Cummings play a set there.  Co-director-co-editors Schmidt and Doebele make storied Blues capitals like Clarksdale appear almost completely untouched by time or economic development.  Granted, profound change might well be due there, but there also seems to be a bit of the blues collectors’ notorious poverty fetishism going on as well.

Arguably, the blues gets less financial love and support than even jazz, so any blues doc treating the music with respect earns a recommendation for fans.  TLD would have served the music better if it were not so desperate to make political points, but Schmidt and Doebele are sure to impress plenty of festival programmers that way.  Recommended for traditional blues devotees, Times Like Deese has its American premiere this Saturday (11/24) at the Columbia Teacher’s College Chapel as part of the 2012 ADIFF in New York.

ADIFF ’12: Tango Macbeth

It is like the Bewitched version of the “Scottish Play.”  Two identifiably different actors will play the murderous general, due to complicated circumstances.  It is all part of the backstage drama brought to the fore in Nadine M. Patterson’s meta-postmodern-experimental-musical-docudrama Tango Macbeth (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 AfricanDiaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Unconventional in many ways, this Macbeth will be choreographed.  Yes, there will be tango, as well as some vaguely Fosse-esque steps, but that is the least of Patterson’s gamesmanship.  While the play itself is shot in stylized music video-style black-and-white, the ostensive behind-the-scenes rehearsal will be filmed in Wiseman-like color.  There will be nearly as much fireworks going on amidst the cast and crew as in the presumptive play within the film.

Hopefully, it is all a bit of meta-meta fun, or else Macbeth #1 will be in for some indigestion when he finally screens Tango.  Yet, the Shakespeare is still in there and the cast is often quite good bringing out the flavor and dynamics of Shakespeare’s most perilous tragedy.  In fact, Brian Anthony Wilson is absolutely fantastic as Macduff (and himself as Macduff), blowing the doors off the Thane of Fife’s big scenes.  Based on his work in Tango, most viewers will probably be up for watching him tackle the title role in a more traditional production.

Alexandra Bailey also has some powerful scenes as Lady Macbeth, apparently developing some nice chemistry with both Macbeths.  If Carlo Campbell, Macbeth #1, always appears in character[s], than it is a really fearless performance.  Ironically though, Eric Suter’s best scene comes not as Macbeth #2, but when he was still a swing player, appearing as Lady Macbeth’s assassin.

It might seem hypocritical to criticize Anna Karenina for Joe Wright’s stylistic excesses, but praise Patterson’s explicitly avant-garde approach.  Yet, they are coming from two very different places.  While Wright is just tossing in a distracting bit of hipster pretension, Patterson is fundamentally deconstructing both Shakespeare and traditional notions of stage drama.

The talented ensemble makes quite a mark in Tango, yet it is likely to disappoint anyone hoping to see actors in classical costume, dancing about with roses in their teeth (perhaps bitterly so).  However, for the aesthetically adventurous it is a fascinating production.  Recommended for frequent patrons of the Anthology Film Archives, it screens Saturday (11/24) and Sunday (11/25) as part of this year’s ADIFF.