With the exception of an alluring red carpet, its' safe to say that BUFF has pretty much rolled out everything else in its power to deliver this year's annual showcase of British urban filmmaking of which, at the time of writing has been 1 week removed.
A showcase is of course nothing without the undoubted stars of the show - the filmmakers. It has been a blast this year with 3 UK premieres ("Sparkle", "12" and "Melvin"), 2 venues packed out to the rafters and 1 night on the telly and all in the space of 10 days. As is the custom there are quite a few other people to thank for making BUFF VII possible (you know who you are anyway) but for the moment, there is the small matter of this month's BUFF blog which is guest-written by one of the many stars of the aforementioned showcase. Those of you who were there to sample BUFF Shorts UK will have seen his directorial efforts (along with Shola Amoo) with 'The Prayer' - one of 11 shorts that were shown back-to-back, and for some provided one of the highlights of this year's British Urban Film Festival. He certainly had his say on the day and once again, he obliges once more this time on these hallowed pages. Prepare to be enlightened by the award-winning director Nosa Igbinedion...
I kind of feel like Clint Eastwood in the dollars trilogy,
the man with no name but great shooting skills (cameras not guns). My name is
Nosa Igbinedion and I am an award winning independent writer/director. After working in film for the past few years,
observing the industry closely and developing my style, I feel it’s time to
open up a little more about myself.
I am looking at new models of doing business and making
films. I am a scientist in this lab of chaos, mixing solutions and
EXPERIMENTING. I feel BUFF and the films that it chooses to show epitomises
this independent energy and I am happy to have been a part of the festival this
year with the premiere of ‘THE PRAYER’.
They say the grass is greener on the other side (the USA being
the ‘other side’ for us) but sometimes it takes someone standing on the outside
to look in on what is special here. FLASHBACK: It’s 2011 and I am in a filmmaking workshop in
Virginia, USA. Based on my show reel, I have been flown over as the only
British participant by distributor, exec producer, actor and director Tim Reid
(you probably know him as the father, in the sitcom Sister Sister, but trust
me, this man has done a-lot more!). At the Legacy media institute, it’s been 4
weeks of working alongside 12 other USA filmmakers and one Nigerian documentary
filmmaker. It’s been 4 weeks of being mentored by some of the best people in
international film business and production, people who have stayed relevant in
the business for up to 40 years. It’s been 4 weeks of shooting in sweltering heat
that consistently is at 40 degrees. After an all night editing session, I sit
down with Tim Reid and discuss the next frontier of film. 4 words pop up
consistently in our conversation, UK URBAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA. Interestingly he compares us to the 90s US
Indie revolution, which saw filmmakers like Quentin Tarintino, Robert Rodriguez
and Richard Linklater emerge. This makes me go back home and think long and
hard about this comparison, hmmmmm...
BACK IN THE UK: I feel that as film professionals, actors
and actresses, we sometimes feel our destiny in the hands of others. We may
feel our talent is not recognised and our star not as bright as it should be, quite
a few people express these feelings to me. My take on it is if there are
barriers; find a way around it, across it or KNOCK IT DOWN! I feel very excited
and you should be too! There has never been a time like this.
Information is
widely available and technology is rapidly accelerating (see Moore’s law);
filmmakers have the potential for more control over their future than ever
before. Independence is the order of the day. In hindsight I
realise I have been living by this philosophy from day one. I started taking
filmmaking seriously in late 2009.
Frustrated at the lack of practical
opportunities for ‘actual filmmaking’ at my university, I came up with a
concept for an urban neo noir film. I contacted my friends, Sheila Nortley and
Shola Amoo to collaborate; I got hold of a camera, bought some editing and FX software with student loans and started shooting. The film went on to
win the best short at 2009 BFM (Black Filmmaker Magazine) festival. Both Shola and Sheila are doing great things
and I am proud to have sprung (metaphorically speaking) from the same embryo as
them. Shola is currently finishing his MA at the NFTS (National Film & Television School) and Sheila is working at
Kingdom Entertainment.
There is nothing better than seeing a packed audience,
collectively go ‘oooh’and ‘aaah’ at the points you want them too. Emotions
become the musical notes on my visual piano. That’s exactly what happened at BFM and that
feeling was a drug which I was immediately hooked on! From there I went on to an internship at Film 4, where I
read various scripts in production and sat in on meetings about film
productions.
In these meeting commissioners discussed whether to green light or
not green light certain productions. For me to go from shooting my movie for
next to nothing to hearing people casually discuss whether 5 million should go
into a film or not, was quite surreal.
At the end of it all, I realised that
the amount of money and the positioning isn’t everything. Attitude is most important. The veil and mystique about these
commissioners was removed. I saw them for what they were. Human beings with a
high level of experience but just as human as anyone else. They were human, as
in subject to ‘human error’. The only thing that we must have, regardless of
whether we are working on "Slumdog Millionaire" or a low budget production, is
conviction in our own decisions and ideas. It’s taken me a while to get there
but I really feel that deep in my bones now.
During this time, I set up the production company Precise
Pictures with Shola. It was an eye opener and took a different skill-set to
manage. The first short under Precise Pictures was called "Reparations for the Soul", an urban supernatural thriller (we like playing with genre). The film
starred Ashley Walters, Kyla Frye and Michael Maris. Like every project has
been, it was a development in technique and it was the first time I shot on film .
It
instilled in me a new level of discipline.
Since then I have stayed busy (extremely so) by dividing my
time between shooting music videos, commercials and running various youth
workshops on film. Speaking of the youth workshops, it’s been great to see so
many young people inspired by the success of ‘youth/urban cinema’. Times have
changed and they feel they have the ability to tell their stories. When I say
‘their stories’ I don’t mean stories confined to knife crime and gang culture.
For instance at the youth film school we facilitate, we have young people
coming up with films as wide reaching as ‘vampire movies’ to ‘romantic
comedies’.
The future looks bright! Mine and Shola’s third directing partnership was on ‘THE
PRAYER’, which got its UK premiere at this year’s BUFF Festival (cheers
Emmanuel!). With limited resources, our ‘resourcefulness’ shone through.
More important than any funds was being able
to work with so many amazing people.
From Fiona Lamptey, (our wonderful producer) to a
great cast of actors and a crew that mostly hailed from the abundantly talented
NFTS. What I enjoyed the most was being
able to explore and immerse myself in a whole new culture, Bangladeshi to be
exact.
What I found was that behind each peculiar situation that one experiences is a basic
emotion that is universal. Once myself and Shola tapped into that, we felt we had a
great story to tell - a story that deals with issues about
love, spirituality and culture.
So that brings me back to where I started, out in America.
What I noticed there with regards to films from the UK, was a lot of admiration.
Obviously in recent years we have seen a lot of actors, feeling marginalised by
the UK industry, go 'over there' and find success. I feel this is because they are
in some ways fascinated by the culture in the US. By the same token, UK black culture
is in some ways still an unknown quantity over there (raise a hand if you been
there and still get the ‘ya’ll got black people in England?’).
I get a sense
from my American counterparts that they feel there is something special going
on in the UK. Unconstrained by some cultural inhibitions that they may have, independent UK filmmakers have something fresh and new to offer them...
What that means to me is that the diversity we have here and
its' connections to the rest of the world give independent UK filmmakers the
ability to promote their work and find audiences globally. I saw examples of this pioneering spirit all throughout this
year’s festival. Sunny King, (who I have
known since the BFM festival) and Edith Nwekenta (wonderful actress/writer) have
brought their unique British sensibilities to the Nigerian market (‘Nollywood’)
with their film ‘Unspoken’. As a
British/Nigerian I have a keen eye on the way Nollywood is developing and its'
relationship with us 'over here'.
There are many
parallels, notably that they are feeding a market that hasn’t been previously served
properly. Regardless of the discussion of quality issues, the
entrepreneurial spirit is something to be admired and applied to our own
situations.
So what am I up to now? I am currently finishing up a
documentary for Islington black history month, called ‘The importance of black
history?’. Islington’s tagline this year is ‘educate and innovate’, two of my
most favourite words in the English dictionary.
This brings me to my final
point. During this documentary I have interviewed various people but 2 of my
favourite interviews have been with people who have acted in BUFF featured
films. Mikel Ameen (Drink, Drugs and KFC) and Kyla Frye (Where’s my Supermalt?). Both, very eloquently, speak about the role of social
responsibility and how that plays out in their performances; they speak about being
teachers, carriers of culture in the work they do. I think this is a very pertinent point. With
the opportunities to create the output you desire to see and tell the stories
you want told, come great power. Anybody that’s ever watched "Spiderman" knows
what comes with great power......
Speaking of power, I am also in the pre-production stages of one
of the first superhero movies based on West African deities called ‘Orishas’ - OYA:
RISE OF THE ORISHA’S will commence with a crowd-funding campaign by the end of the
month and your support will be gratefully appreciated! P.S. If you are a good actress/ actor with a
martial arts experience, I would love to hear from you.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog and as I am
sure you will agree, it’s a bold new world for independent filmmakers. There are
new ways of reaching audiences and new skills that are needed to reach these
audiences. I am determined to learn and
harness these skills and I am always interested in people who see the world for
what it could be as well as what it is. So basically, if you feel it like I feel it, get
at me.
Or I may get at you.
(c) Nosa Igbinedion
The British Urban Film Festival is the home of urban film coverage in the UK.
Submissions for BUFF 2013 open on Friday November 2nd. For more information visit the site www.britishurbanfilmfestival.co.uk
