Bisi Goes to Nollywood : Queer Filmmaking in Nigeria

Bisi Alimi is a storyteller, activist, and the founder and Executive Director of the Bisi Alimi Foundation, now diving into the world of film production. Alimi’s Foundation works to accelerate social acceptance of LGBT people in Nigeria.

Like other public figures, were you forced to come out?

[I was the first person to] come out on national television in Nigeria. And that was still at the beginning of my acting career. But that also meant it was the end of my acting career in Nigeria… [A]fter that I never had the chance to go back on set, my character was killed off. I couldn’t get any scripts. I couldn’t get a commission for anything. And it was a very dark, difficult time. When you spend four years in a university perfecting your craft and that gets taken away from you, not because of any evil thing that you’ve done, but because you dare to be authentic. That was painful.

Are the prospects better in the US, with other successful people/projects such as RuPaul, Moonlight, and Pose?

In theatre, and in cinema, a lot of people watch RuPaul…and Moonlight [in Nigeria], even people who are not queer. Even going back, if we take race out of the question, I discuss with Nigerians who happen to be my age range and we’re talking about seeing Brokeback Mountain in Nigeria. That’s something that I love about cinema and theatre, the power to cut across biases, prejudice, and make people watch things, if they can let themselves be.

That’s why I set up my production company. I want to start creating authentic African stories that talk about not just the pain but the totality of being a queer person on the continent of Africa. What I just don’t like is… the sexualisation or commercialisation of our pains that sells to Western cinemas. West doesn’t want to see us fulfilled, the West doesn’t want to see us falling in love.

Black queer cinema talks about Black love and Black joy, [but] it’s not the ideal unless it’s about rejection, about adversity, about family pain, but that’s not who we were. I want to pull the cover up, and talk about their pride, their courage, their enthusiasm for the future. It’s not all about, “my parent rejects me, I’m kicked out of my home.” There is a market for it, a huge market for it, and that is the reason I have come into this setup. To tell the stories from the continent.

Do you feel that you’re safe? Or do you feel that your life is in danger while you’re in Nigeria?

Safe is a very relative word. When people ask me that question, I ask them, [do] they ask that question because they think that I’m safe here? People ask that question because they feel like the UK has some form of security for me. I’m not safe here, I’m a Black queer man, in a country that has antisemitism problems, racism, homophobia, xenophobia. I want to build a community around hope and not around the fear of, you know, “Oh my god if you go to Nigeria you’re going to get killed.” I can get killed here, I can get locked up here just for being Black, and I think that sometimes people miss that. So I make safety my desire, I desire to be free. It doesn’t mean that I am safe or I am free, I walk towards it, I build structures around me to be free and to be safe.

Do you feel art and activism go hand in hand?

Oh yes, they do, they do. I mean, tell me, what has changed abroad. A lot of revolutions start from outside the cinema. People will go to the cinema to watch a movie, and they get extremely inspired by what they’re seeing on screen, and start a revolution. So I don’t think there is a difference between our ability to sit down and watch a movie and our ability to get out in the streets and demand for change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrina George and Sara Edwards