Eyimofe (This is My Desire) 2020

Eyimofe at London Film Festival 2020 UK Première from 11 October

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Eyimofe Evaluation Reviews “Arie and Chuko Esiri’s lovely debut breaks out from the shadow of Nollywood with a restless and intimate portrait of two young Nigerian hustlers and strivers.”

Sight & Sound (104k twitter)

“...a patient, evocative and moving film where the city is just as much a character in the text as the people onscreen” AnOther Mag (278k twitter) placed Eyimofe in the top 10 films at the London Film Festival.

“...a moving and thought­provoking film, giving us an intimate glance into … the richness of Nigerian cinema.”

Close­up Culture

“Forget Nollywood, think Bicycle Thieves in this deeply moving slice of contemporary Lagos life..”

Dogandwolf.com

“Arie and Chuko Esiri‘s first feature is a uniquely elegant one. It signals the start, I hope, of two brilliant careers.”

Filmotomy

tpr media consultants – November 2020

Analytics Total News Reach

Eyimofe News

6/11/2020

Value

3.75m

101.85k

Eyimofe Top 20 Sources by Reach Source Name

Article Reach

Radio Times (Web)

456,919

Bfi (Web)

203,285

Another (Blog)

28,282

Flickering Myth (Web)

2,4703

Msn Uae (Web)

13,698

Invision Game Community (Web)

8,828

The Upcoming (Web)

7,494

The Fan Carpet (Blog)

6,769

The People's Movies (Web)

4,416

Movie Marker (Blog)

4,369

The Reviews Hub (Web)

3,731

The Voice Online (Web)

3,553

M2 (Web)

2,883

Digital Fix (Web)

2,773

Fab Uk Magazine (Web)

1,603

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Radio 10/10/2020 ­ Jude Akuwudike on Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4 with Rev Richard Coles ad Suzy Klein

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nbyz

tpr media consultants – November 2020

Features The feature below is by Chrystel Oloukoi who is on the BFI critics membership scheme and lives in Nigeria.

RUSHES

REPORT

NOTES FROM THE NIGERIAN NEW WAVE Nigerian films at the BFI London Film Festival and Film Africa highlight a thriving independent scene outside Nollywood

By Chrystel Oloukoï

Nollywood shuffled: Temiloluwa Ami-Williams in Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Eyimofe

Theirs is a plea for the right to exist outside Nollywood’s enduring grip on local and global images of Nigerian cinema Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Whether we call it ‘Off Nollywood’ (Didi Cheeka) or ‘Beyond Nollywood’ (Nadia Denton), the directors associated with this ‘renaissance’ of Nigerian cinema do not necessarily feel part of a movement or a shared aesthetic. Their backgrounds are diverse (though they are largely middle class and diasporic); so is their training – some started out working on film sets, some went to film schools such as Nigeria’s Jos National Film Institute, some are self-taught. If anything binds them, it is the minimal aim of ‘not being Nollywood’. Theirs is a plea for the right to exist outside Nollywood’s enduring grip on local and global images of Nigerian cinema.

Newer than new Nollywood emerged in the late 1980s amid a global economic crisis and a level of insecurity in public spaces in cities like Lagos that led to the closure of many cinemas. Self-taught

THREE RECENT NIGERIAN INDIE FILMS TO WATCH Eyimofe (2020, Arie Esiri & Chuko Esiri) A pair of Lagosians trying to get visas to go abroad get caught up in personal tragedies.

For Maria Ebun Pataki (2020, Damilola Orimogunje) Family drama about a mother suffering from postpartum depression.

A Cemetery of Doves (2019, Adé Sultan Sangodoyin) A queer teenager comes to terms with his sexuality in this moving short.

directors started making and distributing films cheaply on video, often filming in indigenous languages, inspired by a thriving local theatre culture. More recently Nollywood has become increasingly vulnerable to piracy and more segmented. Moving away from the quick, cheap, and massive production of home videos that were long the hallmark of the genre, New Nollywood films such as The Set Up or Bling Lagosians (both 2019) are English-language highbudget blockbusters, melodramas or romantic comedies, which are released theatrically and dominate streaming platforms such as Netflix.

Both New Nollywood and the burgeoning independent cinema scene reveal a Nigeria in a very different situation from the 1980s: there is now a proliferation of multiplex cinemas, an assertive middle class hungry for more diverse cinematic representations, a dynamic festival scene, with the Lagos-based Lights Camera Africa!!! and Africa International Film Festival, as well as a generation for whom, as Chuko Esiri tells me, “the idea of being a creative is no longer taboo. You have not disgraced your family, you have not wasted your life.”

Still, carving out a space outside Nollywood and New Nollywood is not easy. Public funding is scarce and focused on mainstream cinema.

Producers assume that Nigerian audiences are not ready for a kind of cinema that takes risks, does not offer neat moral lessons and strays away from conventional narrative forms. For Adé Sultan Sangodoyin, whose short A Cemetery of Doves (2019) focuses on a queer teenager and plays with the codes of silent cinema, these funding challenges are symptomatic of how “producers regularly underestimate African audiences”. As Arie Esiri affirms, “The average Nigerian watchers have a diverse palate, they watch a load of things: Korean TV shows are huge, Filipino soaps are huge, and then you have the big blockbusters…” If there was ever a perfect space for experimentation, a country of more than 200 million souls and

10 | Sight&Sound | December 2020

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ILLUSTRATION BY LUCINDA ROGERS. SZUMOWSKA PORTRAIT BRIGITTE LACOMBE

For many people, Nigerian cinema is synonymous with Nollywood, the second-largest film industry in the world after Bollywood.

But for the Nigerian filmmaker Arie Esiri, Nollywood is “a mainstream cinema, with a repetitive construct, mode, style and moral stance on good versus evil”. He is among a new generation of Nigerian filmmakers challenging Nollywood hegemony. Eyimofe (This Is My Desire), the stunning feature debut by Esiri and his twin brother Chuko, which screened at the BFI London Film Festival last month, is a prime example of a new wave of Nigerian independent cinema emerging from under the shadow of Nollywood. Eyimofe, along with a number of films showing in the ‘Beyond Nollywood’ programme at the festival Film Africa, shows this new wave to be bold, and unafraid of proposing new cinematic languages and thoughtful aesthetics while engaging with complex social issues.

A tale of restless mobility across Lagos and broken dreams of migration, Eyimofe opens on a chaos of red, yellow, green and black electric cables that echoes the currents of desire animating the film. Shooting on 16mm film, the Esiri brothers and director of photography Arseni Khachaturan powerfully redefine visual representations of Lagos, giving it a timeless feel rather like Edward Yang’s immortalisation of another megalopolis in Taipei Story (1985). In contrast to the distanced, high-angle, drone’s-eye perspectives of the city in contemporary Nollywood films, Eyimofe offers a sense of proximity and intimacy, capturing something of Lagos’s everyday hopes.

Film Africa’s Beyond Nollywood strand demonstrates the breadth of contemporary independent filmmaking in Nigeria. It encompasses the experimental films of the artist Onyeka Igwe, whose short Specialised Technique (2018) interrogates the colonial gaze behind archive footage of Black dancers, and the recent feature film For Maria Ebun Pataki, which explores postpartum depression with quiet restraint. The director, Damilola Orimogunje, decided to cast well-known Nollywood actors such as Meg Otanwa (Ojuju, 2014; Payday, 2018) and Tina Mba (Nigerian Prince, 2018; Gold Statue, 2019), but the film has none of the over-acting that according to Nadia Denton, curator of the Beyond Nollywood programme, characterises Nollywood. She calls Otanwa’s performance career-defining: “The movements, engagement and speech were subtle, emotive and sincere…”

Yet this new wave is not, in fact, that new. For more than a decade, talented filmmakers have been trying to define a language for themselves, inspired by and in conversation with Third Cinema, New Taiwanese Cinema and Italian neorealism, as well as – LFF programmer Keith Shiri points out – oral traditions and literary classics by authors such as Ben Okri, Wole

DREAM PALACES CINEMA KIEV, KRAKOW Director Malgorzata Szumowska recalls the magic of the big screen during Covid, via her memories of cinemagoing under communism

ILLUSTRATION BY LUCINDA ROGERS. SZUMOWSKA PORTRAIT BRIGITTE LACOMBE

Meg Otanwa in For Maria Ebun Pataki

a large diaspora may be it. For the time being, movies ‘off’ or ‘beyond’ Nollywood are mostly funded through networks of kin and friends, as well as loans and brand sponsorships.

As the first film supported by a new Lagosbased production company, GDN Studios, Eyimofe is a notable exception. “Hopefully, this example will proliferate,” Arie Esiri says.

However, the endless recycling of terms such as ‘renaissance’, ‘emergence’ and ‘embryonic state’ is a worrying symptom of structural forgetfulness. Most Nigerian independent cinema is not properly archived, its existence precarious and fleeting. While aficionados repeat religiously the names of a few revered pioneers of independent cinema from the 70s and 80s – Ola Balogun (A Deusa Negra, 1979; Cry Freedom!, 1981), Eddie Ugbomah (The Mask, 1979; Oil Doom, 1981), Francis Oladele (Kongi’s Harvest, 1970; Things Fall Apart, 1971) – the public has barely heard of them, let alone seen their movies. To remedy this, the filmmaker and archivist Didi Cheeka (Lonely Is the Night, 2007; Memory Also Die, 2020) founded the Lagos Film Society. He says: “Because there is no awareness of history, people don’t know what has been happening in Nigerian cinema. We have been doing something else than Nollywood for quite some time.”

The ‘emerging’ syndrome signals a cinematic space that remains colonial, as previous films remain inaccessible to new generations of filmmakers, bound to endlessly position themselves as hot new commodities. For all its faults, Nollywood centred languages besides English and moved away from colonial pathways of distribution, in which movies are released abroad first before maybe making their way back to the continent. To avoid another round of induced amnesia, contemporary Nigerian independent cinema needs to face such issues head on.

I was born and grew up in Krakow in the 1970s and 80s; when I was a teenager Poland was still communist. We didn’t have any multiplexes, so old, characterful little cinemas were very popular, and the architecture of those places was fantastic. The biggest cinema in Krakow is called Cinema Kiev. It’s a beautiful building, with solid Russian socialist architecture, and it still exists. It’s very geometric, very simple, very beautiful.

Many of the smaller regional cinemas are discount supermarkets now. After communism, the 90s had a kind of wild neoliberal capitalism, and nobody in the government was taking care of how cities should look. It’s disgusting that they destroyed those cinemas. One of the most famous was Kino Wanda. When I was a teenager there was an amazing premiere of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red [1994]. I remember the conversation with Kieslowski after. People were drinking wine that probably wasn’t very good, of course people were smoking – but, come on, it was magical.

I was influenced by watching Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman in Kino Wanda and Cinema Kiev. In the 80s cinemas presented films by ambitious artists. Then in the 90s everything changed. American films attacked these beautiful cinemas. I can’t even mention the titles because to me they were disgusting. My friends who are 10 years

‘In the 90s everything changed.

American films attacked these beautiful cinemas. I can’t even mention the titles’

younger, they remember them. For them it was [in an American accent]: “Oh my God, America, capitalism, I’m so happy!” I’ve never watched those huge, famous films. I’ve never watched E.T. [1982] – I have something against E.T. I grew up on Russian animations. I was always going to the Kiev with my parents to see things like Nu, pogodi! [Well, Just You Wait!, a Russian animated series]. I loved them. We weren’t allowed to watch Disney animations. Around the corner from the cinema was the Hotel Krakowia, which is a similar, modernist building. It had the most famous cake shop. It was connected: you went to the cinema to see a piece of art and you bought a cake before or after. The hotel also had a bar with capitalist alcohol, like whisky, and with a lot of prostitutes, very luxurious prostitutes. The combination was interesting.

When I was in high school, around the end of the communist era, I went to Cinema Kiev with a friend to watch The Bodyguard [1992]. I remember he was so annoyed by how kitschy the film was, and I was crying, totally in the moment. I would like to write a melodrama one day. If you ever watch a melodrama made by Malgorzata Szumowska, it’s because of the Kiev and The Bodyguard.

When I was in Venice [at this year’s film festival] screening Never Gonna Snow Again, I was almost crying because the experience of cinema hit me all of a sudden. Half a year of streaming was terrible for me. In the beginning it was OK, I thought: “Everything’s going to be streaming anyway, that’s the future.” Now I’ve totally changed attitude. You’re pausing, you’re making a coffee, you’re not focusing. You don’t have an experience. There’s nothing to do with the power of art. It’s only entertainment.

Malgorzata Szumowska was talking toThomas Flew. The Other Lamb is in UK cinemas and on Mubi, and was reviewed in last month’s issue.

Never Gonna Snow Again will be released next year.

Film Africa runs to 8 November at Rich Mix, London E1, and BFI Southbank, London SE1: www.filmafrica.org December 2020 | Sight&Sound | 11

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Q&A with Arie and Chuko British Blacklist 18.4k followers.

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ALT AFRICA ­ a progressive platform for the creative industries celebrating diversity and inclusion Q&A with Jude Akuwudike

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Video Interview

The Fan Carpet Extra: ‘EXCLUSIVE Interview: Arie Esiri + Chuko Esiri | Eyimofe’

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Reviews Review by Chrystel Oloukoi for Sight & Sound online.

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AnOther Mag (78k twitter) ­ a modern eye on fashion, culture and ideas ­ placed Eyimofe in the top 10 films at the London Film Festival.

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The Film Magazine: Eyimofe ‘This Is My Desire’ (2020) BFI LFF Review.

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Close­Up Culture reviews the latest films, theatre (mainstream and fringe), live music and books.

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.The Indiependent ­ a cultural blog created for and by young writers.

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Independent film magazine for the best in world cinema.

Alexa Dalby is very knowledgeable about African film.

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Reviews Hub cultural website.

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The latest news from the Gaming World and independent film.

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The Digital Fix is an entertainment website featuring news, reviews and features on pop culture.

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The Upcoming: Culture, trends, fashion from London and NYC.

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The Backseat Mafia­ LFF REVIEW: EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE).

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Filmotomy ­ LFF Review: This Is My Desire [Eyimofe] (Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri).

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Clapper­ LFF 2020: Eyimofe (This Is My Desire).

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Nollywood film with a starring role for Lagos.

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Announcements Eyimofe was also mentioned in a number of general LFF stories, see below.

8/10/20 The people’s movies (list of films showing at LFF): ‘‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’ BIG THEME WITH 2020 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL LINE UP’. Paul Devine: paul@thepeoplesmovies.com

https://thepeoplesmovies.com/2020/09/social­justice­big­theme­with­2020­bfi­ london­film­festival­line­up/

30/10/20 The British Blacklist: ‘TBB’S 2020 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL FEATURE FILM RECOMMENDATIONS’

http://thebritishblacklist.co.uk/tbbs­2020­bfi­london­film­festival­feature­film­ recommendations/

24/09/20 FAB UK: ‘The 64th BFI London Film Festival Announces Full 2020 Programme’

https://fabukmagazine.com/the­64th­bfi­london­film­festival­announces­full­ 2020­programme/ press@fabukmagazine.com

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9/9/20 Radio Times: ‘BFI London Film Festival 2020 full line­up’

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2020­09­09/london­film­festival­line­up/

8/9/20 Flickering Myth: ‘Full programme for BFI London Film Festival 2020 announced’

https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/full­programme­for­bfi­london­film­ festival­2020­announced/

9/8/20 MSN entertainment: ‘BFI London Film Festival To Screen ‘Soul’, ‘Nomadland’ At Hybrid 2020 Edition’

https://www.msn.com/en­us/movies/news/bfi­london­film­festival­to­screen­ soul­nomadland­at­hybrid­2020­edition/ar­BB18OzDW

8/9/20 The Voice: ‘64th BFI London Film Festival programme launch’

https://www.voice­online.co.uk/entertainment/festivals/2020/09/08/64th­bfi­ london­film­festival­programme­launch/

yimofe mentioned in a general announcement store in the Movie Marker blog.

http://moviemarker.co.uk/bfi­london­film­festival­line­up­announced/

8/9/20 Invision community: 64th BFI London Film Festival Programme.

Alison Jones: alison@invisioncommunity.co.uk

https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/64th­bfi­london­film­festival­programme­ launch/https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/64th­bfi­london­film­festival­ programme­launch/

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Media Campaign conducted by tpr media consultants +44 (0)20 8347 7020 | sophie@tpr-media.com www.tpr-media.com