Introducing his film Ninah’s Dowry to the Rotterdam audience, director Victor Viyuoh asked us a question: if we didn’t want to keep our tickets, would we leave them behind on the stage afterwards so he could take them back to Cameroon for the cast and crew? If we liked, he added, we could write a message on the back.
It was a lovely suggestion, thwarted in my case by Rotterdam’s swish electronic ticketing system. Yet there was also something desperate about it. In a cinema in Eu
rope, people gathered to hear a story from Africa, to experience another culture and share another point of view. And these scraps of paper with a tiger logo are proof that they were there. In a way, they are also evidence that the film exists at all, since at that point Ninah’s Dowry had not screened in Cameroon and most of the cast and crew hadn’t seen it. Just think: you made a movie and here is a ticket stub to prove it.
Watching a film is about sharing a point of view. Primarily that is the point of view of the people who made the film, but it also connects you to others who have seen it. For myself, seeking out African films in Europe, there is an important feeling of connection with the African audience. When I see Nairobi Half Life I’m not just hearing a Kenyan story but experiencing something that formed part of Kenya’s social and cultural life, if only for a short time. For Ninah’s Dowry, in Rotterdam in late January, that was missing.
Viyuoh also explained some of the problems which beset the production. Imported equipment was held hostage and damaged, the camera went missing in transit and fire destroyed the set while he was waiting for a replacement (you can read a full account here). Eventually he shot the film with a high-end home movie camera, a limitation which is evident on screen but which doesn’t damage the film as much as you might think. Camera movements are classic rather than self-consciously hand-held, and the flat, brittle images give the film a kind of harsh immediacy that suits the story.
Mbufung Seikeh as Ninah
(photo: IFFR)
Ninah lives with a tyrannical husband, Memfi, at an isolated farm in the hills, working hard to look after him and protect her three children from the worst excesses of his violence. When news comes that her father is dying she defies Memfi to go to his bedside, less out of compassion than to ask what she did to deserve being sold to such a terrible husband. The idea that it was simply to put a new roof on her father’s house makes no sense to her.
Having made the break she is in no hurry to return, although she longs to see her children again. She meets an old lover and she returns to work in a village bar. But then Memfi and two friends arrive to bring her home, by force if necessary. “What kind of man wants a woman who hates him?” asks one of the friends. “Every man!” Memfi replies.
Anurin Nwunembom as Memfi
(photo: http://www.ninahsdowry.com)
The resulting struggle between husband and wife effectively dramatises the issue of domestic violence and the powerlessness of women to negotiate how they live their lives. But saying that Ninah’s Dowry is a social issues film hardly does it justice. It has ideas and action, and is never derailed by the touch of melodrama that drives the narrative forward.
Viyuoh is also shrewd in his use of humour, adding it here and there to relieve the tension, but not attempting to joke about the principle subject matter. Instead it comes through as the men discuss their prehistoric lives (there’s a wonderful scene built around lighting a cigarette with flint and tinder) and kick around the subjects of the day. But the transitions are swift, in one case cutting short a humorous critique of development aid when Ninah makes another break for freedom. The point is made, and on with the plot.
One final thought. Viyuoh also described how his film benefited from a Kickstarter campaign, raising funds to help the final phase of post-production (the pitch page can still be found here). Rotterdam has also experimented with crowd funding, its Cinema Reloaded project generating lots of ideas but not so much money. In its wake there was some talk of the festival trying something similar with African film-makers, where there would be a greater sense of urgency to galvanise donors. The rest is silence, as they say, but Ninah’s Dowry suggests this may have been on the right track.
mundellian 