I hadn’t heard of Frank Speed until I started investigating an aside in a 1966 essay on Nigerian drama by John Pepper Clark. And now I have heard of this ethnological film maker — who sounds like an obscure English Jean Rouch — I wonder why he isn’t better known.
My starting point was Clark’s comment about filming a performance of the Ozidi saga, which takes place over seven days in a remote part of the Niger delta. Clark spent 1963-64 researching the saga, work which informed his 
1966 verse drama Ozidi. In the essay he also mentions plans to publish a transcript of the whole saga, in Ijaw and English, a project that was eventually realised in 1977.
Clark doesn’t say much more about the film in the essay. It was shot in Orua, and ‘possession’ among the performers (a term he uses, but disparages) caused constant delays in shooting. He ends by expressing the hope that the film will be seen outside Ijaw.
So is this an ethnological document, a fiction built from the performance or something else? If it is somehow authored by Clark, the film would be a relatively early example of creative Nigerian cinema.
Searching for further traces of the film led me to Frank Speed, who is credited as Clark’s collaborator in the project. Speed worked in Nigeria from the 1950s onwards, making medical documentaries and films recording rituals, dances and other performances. Although highly regarded, little detailed information is available about his life and work.
Scholars working with Clark’s texts of the Ozidi saga also reference the film. Isidore Okpewho, a professor at the State University of New York Binghampton who specialises in oral literature, often mentions it in passing but seems not to think it particularly significant. Neither Speed nor the film appear in the index of Blood on the Tides, his latest book on the saga.
Richard Dean Taylor, professor of English and comparative literature at Bayreuth University in Germany, is more interested. In his 1982 inaugural lecture he examines the various versions of the Ozidi saga overseen by Clark and the transition from oral to written literature. He concludes that the film is a valuable record of an authentic presentation.
“JP Clark made self-conscious decisions when arranging the scenario and commentary. However, the film does demonstrate the meaning the saga has for its natural audience,” he says. This is in contrast to the performance recorded, transcribed and eventually published by Clark, which took place in Ibadan before an invited audience of urban Ijaw speakers, Nigerians from other communities and ex-pats.
More importantly, however, the text of the lecture on Taylor’s website includes a link (live in December 2014) which allows the Ozidi film to be seen in its entirety. Entitled Tides of the Delta, the 30-minute film is dated 1969, and attributed equally to Clark and Speed.
The film begins with the striking image of an oil palm stump bobbing eerily in the river. “That strange figure reeling there in the tide is no fetish to some god of the sea demanding sacrifice. Nor is it a stray, baffled monster l
eft over by the wash of time. Tide, like time, carries all kinds, with countless unknown drifts…”
This is a more poetic commentary than might be expected from an academic ethnographic film or a commissioned travel short. And Clark’s delivery (assuming he is the narrator) is precise and poised.
He goes on to describe the region and the Ijaw, their trades and occupations. Then a more knowing tone appears, a reminder that Clark is talking about his own people. “One local export of the Ijaw, well-known behind doors and under desks all over the west coast of Africa, is the so-called illicit gin they distil from the wine of the raffia or […] palm in simple home-made apparatus, well away from the baleful eye of the law and it’s long, itching palm.”
He turns next to the river and its traffic, much of which passes the Ijaw by. And then a political note enters, for the first time disconnected from the images on screen. “Merchant adventurers from overseas, in towering seismic rigs and floating suburbias, drain the Delta dry of oil, now overflowing the place to enrich others outside.” This is followed by a comment on the way the region has been neglected by governments, both before and after independence.
This introduction lasts seven minutes, before the film finally turns to the Ozidi “festival”. Images of the performance and the audience follow, with Clark’s narration guiding the viewer through the story as it unfolds over a week, beginning in one village and concluding in another.
The lead performer is by turns a storyteller, taking on multiple roles, and the actor who plays the hero Ozidi. He is supported by a troupe of actors who act out the story. This concerns a young warrior who sets out to avenge his father’s death, helped by his grandmother, who is a powerful witch. After de
feating his father’s killers, there are other battles with people who try to trap Ozidi or challenge his supremacy. These opponents become increasingly fantastic, including an incestuous cannibal mother and son, and the Smallpox King who finally defeats Ozidi. The narrative is accompanied by singing, dancing and a series of rituals.
Constrained to remain in the crowd, Speed’s images are sometimes distant, but capture the drama and mobility of the performance, as well as the reactions and interactions of the crowd. They dovetail neatly with Clark’s commentary, and occasionally achieve a more formal beauty in their framing.
I wouldn’t want to claim too much for the film. It is only 30 minutes long and it was clearly shot during a flying visit rather than the result of a long immersion in the community. Yet it seems to me to occupy an interesting place between ethnography and a more personal essay film.
As far as the Ozidi festival is concerned, Clark appears to be a very close outsider, a guide and interpreter rather than an observer from a completely different culture. And in the introduction, which concerns the Ijaw of the Delta more broadly, he is commenting on a place and a people he knows well and might even be called his own.
When he talks of young boys swimming out to meet boats on the river (not something that appears on screen), is he thinking of himself or childhood friends? The tone of the commentary suggests he might be.
Having quickly run through the available evidence about the film, there are, of course, some loose ends. While most reliable sources talk of just one Ozidi film, there are inconsistencies that could point to others. Some sources date the film to the mid-1970s, which is likely to reflect its availability in the UK and USA. Others call it The Ozidi of Atazi, but there is little evidence to suggest this is a different film (Atazi, according to the film, was the first storyteller, two or three generations before the performance shown).
Some sources also credit Peggy Harper as co-director, which is not backed up by the present version. She was a choreographer who worked with Speed in the 1970s on a series of films dealing with Nigerian dances and masquerades. Initially I thought this was a simple error, but then I found a recent interview with Speed’s colleague Doig Simmonds, in which he describes the filming in some detail. He and Harper accompanied Speed and Clark, the party sleeping on a launch on the river during the shoot. His comments come between 7.14 and 10.40 in this recording by Jeremy Weate, who has also posted an image of Harper on location.
Finding this copy of Tides of the Delta answered my questions about the film mentioned in Clark’s essay, but it has 
also piqued my interest in Speed. When he died in 2006, The Guardian‘s obituary suggested that he remains a significant ethnographic filmmaker, but his legacy seems to be limited to academia. The Royal Anthropological Institute in London rents out some of his films to educational institutions and there are occasional screenings in academic settings, but there is nothing like the programme of DVD releases devoted to other ethnographic filmmakers. I would be fascinated to see more of his work.
text © Ian Mundell 2015
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