In Any Good Movie, the Camera Should Tell the Story - Femi Shaka


Vanguard (Lagos)


INTERVIEW
23 September 2007
Posted to the web 24 September 2007

By Ezechi Onyerionwu


Dr. Femi Shaka of the University of Port Harcourt has all it takes to teach and talk about film studies. In this concluding part of the highly condensed interview, he spoke about this not very popular academic discipline in Nigerian universities. The first part was published last week. Excerpts:

I HAVE had all kinds of temptations, you know two-thirds of my publications are abroad, and you also know that scholarship is based on peer review. So, who is going to review me here? For many years, Ekwuazi was at the Film Corporation, Okome is abroad, only Enahoro. So, I try as much as possible to publish there so that people within my trade will see me still discussing at their own taste, on their own turf. That's why, when I wanted to publish my book (entitled Modernity and African Cinema), I went straight to the U.S.


What do you think has been the contribution of the film genre to the art world from its modest inception in the 1890s?

Writers are able to create all kinds of landscapes and dream worlds through imagination. But, film transfers that imagination, imaginary world into a world of the living. That imaginary world is invoked and populated by human beings in flesh and blood like you and me. Their dreams and aspirations are put there before you and you see them. Very often, you get tied to them, they begin to mould you.

That was why I told you that, in the 1970s, when we had become sufficiently attracted to Chinese kung-fu films, we started becoming karateers, judokers, etc, because of the power of the screen. Film, from its starting points in America, France and other advanced film cultures, has opened up a different way of imagining the world.

People who have written plays and novels have had them adapted to film. Film is related to literature, but, it physicalizes the dream world of the writer. It translates it into a liveable world that you can see and feel. It takes you into the physical realms of the dream world and makes you want to emulate the star because films are built around stars and those stars help to replicate our desires.

When you see John Waynes fight, you put yourself in his place because he's your star. When most people see R.M.D, for instance, in any role, they want to do whatever he does, they want to emulate him. That's why many movie stars are choosy about the kind of the role they play. Film is a very powerful medium. And, here in Nigeria, we are very fortunate to come into film at the time we did. Our coming into it was a product of circumstances. We came into it during the period of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

There was a problem of how do we survive as professionals as this programme had hit all the major film producers like Ola Balogun, hard, financially speaking. They could no longer raise money to hire equipment and bring in production crew from overseas. But they had to stay afloat somehow. This was why attention shifted to the video camera, which was not even a popular medium of shooting films. Video camera was invented for home movies.

When your child wants to celebrate birthday, you use it to cover it. When we could not meet up with demands of using celluloid, we started using video camera to cover, initially, stage performances and put them in video cassettes and sell them, usually at the National Theatre. From that point, we have got to a point where we are today. That's why I say that the film industry is a product of circumstances. Somehow, we have been able to move very close to the advanced film cultures of the world.

Do you see literary criticism influencing film criticism and scholarship?

We have a lot of affiliation with literary critical methods. Just as you have critical methods such as structuralism, post-structuralism, Jungian archetypes, Freudian theory in literature, we also have them in film. But even though the terms tend to be the same, the language of discourse is slightly different. Because, as a film scholar applying psycho-analytic methodology to the study of film, my language is slightly different from that of a literary scholar. We may be using the same critical methods, but the mode of application is different. You know, film is a new medium and we can't help but borrow. But, when we borrow, we borrow on our own terms.

What do you think can be done to improve the health of film scholarship and criticism in Nigeria?

What can be done is what I already told you about. You cannot start a new discipline without having a crop of personnel trained in that area. When people like Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan came back from further studies abroad, they helped to set up departments of Theatre Arts across the country.

Now, most of these universities have department of theatre arts because we have people who have been trained at Ibadan, both at the masters and Ph.D levels, and they have gone from there to other universities to found departments of theatre arts. Others like Professor Nwabueze and Pat Idoye trained in the U.S. but came back to help found departments of theatre arts.

The video film industry (I like qualifying it that way because it is shot in the video format) started on a very modest note, but, today, it has grown into a multi-billion naira industry. It has provided a source of livelihood for many Nigerians - scriptwriters, costumiers, video rental operators, etc. The industry has gone so far that you find out that it has even established a star system because it is the star that people, most of the time, want to watch and not the story.

The story, of course, is moulded around the star. So, film scholarship, theory and criticism are akin to drama scholarship, theory and criticism. Just as drama theory and critical methods are used to elucidate the works of Soyinka and Osofisan, for instance, so are film critical methods used in the elucidations of films. It will help to explicate the narrative techniques of films and highlight what things like the star system means. There is also film history which will help highlight the contributions of pioneers. Film criticism will help to clarify issues, formulate policies.

Bringing scholarship into the business produces a lot of experts who will talk competently about the industry. You cannot appreciate what El Rufai is doing except you are knowledgeable in the field; you cannot appreciate what Adesanya is doing in the Film Corporation except you are knowledgeable in the field.

The other day, Adesanya was taking the Nigerian Army to task because the Army has not fulfilled its own part of the bargain to partner the Nigerian film. They failed to realize that the Nigerian film can be used to valorize the Nigerian Army.

The Nigerian film can be used to project a positive image for Nigeria - it is already doing that. Most of the respect Yar'Adua gets when he travels abroad is because of our film stars.

The international audience are usually excited that this man is coming from the same country as Osuofia, for instance. They know all these movie stars, the way we used to know Bruce Lee in those days. They are our greatest ambassadors. So, the industry will drastically improve if more knowledgeable people manage it. People in the industry must work hand-in-hand with those who are in the academy. For instance, if one of my students who has gone for training at Oxford in film production comes back, he will help to train others in that area.

Production is an aspect of film studies. Take another instance, Chika Onu, one of the key directors in the Nigerian film, is my Ph.D student. Assuming he finishes and we snap him up, you can only imagine the kind of trainers we shall have in our fold. So, we are doing a lot of work here silently and we are not making any noise about it.

Do you think that the African film has got to that stage where it will now formulate aesthetics for its criticism?

Well, the fundamentals are what we are mapping out now. You can look at a discipline by understanding the theories that sustain that discipline, the methods of discourse and the yardsticks of critical discussion. So, what we are doing now is laying that foundation. I've just told you that some of my students are interested in the star system.

Others are interested infeminism and psycho-analysis. There are books in these areas because all of them have received interest in other parts of the world. So, what we can do is what we are doing now. A new crop of film scholars will emerge; we are just starting. In 10-15 years time, these Ph.D students will help start departments of film in other universities. For instance, Amanze Akpuda produced you, I am the one that produced him, and you are going to produce other people. So, that's how it's going to explode. It is a gradual thing. It took more than two decades for drama to become a full-fledged discipline in Nigeria, such that there is a reservoir of trained scholars in that area. If Okome and Ukadike, among others, were around Nigeria, it would have been faster to do the same thing in relation to film.

Now, on a final note, do you think there are prospects for people who train as film scholars?

A lot of prospects. If you want to come out and work in the industry, you can go to the Film Corporation to work; the national film institute is there. But the greatest area where you make an impact is training Nigerian youths in this field. Even though I don't have all the equipment, I encourage them; I encourage the tradition of hands-on training.

The way I train them, my students leave here and go to anywhere and fit in perfectly. I think, for any scholar, the greatest accomplishment is to produce experts who can talk competently about his field, who are like him. I have trained people in various areas for the film industry - costume designers, location managers, production designers, lightmen etc. If one can train people like that, he would have produced competent hands who will make great impact in the industry and help extend the frontiers of the industry.


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