Short Essay

African Women's Voices on Film Monday's Girls by Ngozi Onwurah; Femmes aux yeux ouverts [Women with Open Eyes] by Ann-Laure Folly; These Hands by Flora M'mbugu-Schelling Review by: Elaine Savory NWSA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 99-106 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4316490 . Accessed: 06/08/2012 16:27

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REVIEW ESSAY

African Women's Voices on Film

ELAINE SAVORY

Monday's Girls directed by Ngozi Onwurah. BBC Great Britian/Nigeria, 1993, 50-minute video in Waikiriki and English with English sub- titles.

Femmes aux yeux ouverts [Women with open eyes] directed by Ann- Laure Folly. Togo, 1994, 52-minute video in French with English subtitles.

These Hands directed by Flora M'mbugu-Schelling. Tanzania, 1992, 45- minute video and 16-mm film in Swahili and Kimakonde with English subtitles.

All three films are available through the Library of African Cinema, California Newsreel, 149 Ninth Street/420, San Francisco, CA 94103. Telephone (415)621-6196, Fax (415)621-6522, E-mail newsreel@ ix.netcom.com.

These three films are engaging, often profoundly provocative or disturb- ing, and have the great strength of giving rural or displaced African women a direct voice within the English-speaking global community. Many issues are raised here which speak to women everywhere: that women should have control of their bodies; that women should be paid a fair wage for their labor within capitalist economies; that traditions are cohesive and strengthening for communitites as well as stifling for those women who want to become modern. More specifically, we see clearly in all three films that "modern" in Africa mostly means Western and, therefore, a betrayal on some level of old, established African identities and community.

There are no easy answers to the dilemmas raised here. In Monday's Girls, two young women are juxtaposed, one who is willing to undergo the elaborate ceremonies that testify to a young girl's passage to womanhood, certifying her virginity and finally the culture's acceptance of her as a mature woman ready for marriage, and one who has spent ten years in the city and abandons the traditional ritual early on because it requires her to bare her breasts in public. The strength of the film is that we feel a strong identification with both: there can scarcely be a woman alive today who has not at some time felt or lived resistance to the wishes of her parents

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or her community, just as there are probably no parents of any worth who do not strongly wish that their child pleases accepted communal expecta- tions. We feel the pride of parents and girls when a test is passed and a girl grown up well. But we also see, as the film presents it, the limitations of a city life spent in modern bars and nightclubs, a parent's nightmare vision of life for a young woman alone; yet we admire the strength of the young woman who declares that she must do what is right for her, whatever the cost-and there is a huge cost, for her father, himself high up in the village hierarchy and fined for her behavior, will not speak to her after she refuses to bare her breasts in public.

This is the most difficult part of the ceremony, and for anyone who might think that the modern young woman is quite wrong in not wishing to expose herself, in rejecting the idea that in her culture there is no sexual titillation in bare breasts, the sight of a young boy (dressed in long Western trousers and a shirt) running to touch the breast of one girl as she walks across a space surrounded by village spectators should prove an ample corrective. Clearly, the context of old traditions has been somewhat changed by colonization and contact with the West.

The final rite of passage that makes a girl a woman begins with the "ticketing" ceremony, for which the girls dance certain steps in front of the village and have their hair cut short and colored saffron yellow. They are dusted with white powder, and their bodies-faces, arms, breasts, backs, lower legs-are painted with ground indigo seed and charcoal. This coloring in effect disguises them and ought to have instilled respect in the crowd. The girls then parade in front of the whole village and have their breasts inspected by the formidable Mother Moses, president of the circle of postmenopausal women, who have real power in the community. If Mother Moses does not see signs of pregnancy, which an experienced older woman in the culture can see in the face or breasts, each girl receives a certificate: each walks over to a table at which some senior men sit and receives a piece of paper duly stamped with evidence of her success. She then gives a tiny bob curtsey as a sign of respect. The council of chiefs wear traditional dress and British hats, such as the bowler.

Their attire is not surprising, for this ancient tradition has made a passage through high colonialism, via missionaries who, as Monday's Girls tells, thought this ceremony was highly suspect and led to the fattening of girls as if they were turkeys. Cultures exist and develop through syncretism, whether they adopt, peacefully and gradually, as- pects of cultures geographically close to them or, through war or con- quest, must adjust to dramatic changes. It is very fortunate that this community held fast to its beliefs in how to shape young women (and therefore young men) for marriage; -teenage pregnancy was thus publicly discouraged. So it is unfortunate, though entirely understandable, that Mother Moses castigates Azikiwe as a prostitute (a universal woman's

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insult to another woman who has hurt her feelings seriously) because she abandons the ceremony. For Mother Moses, you either accept tradition as it is or leave the culture-strict Catholics would understand. But it is unsettling to think of a young girl who makes the effort to come home and try to go through the ceremony finding one aspect too difficult and thus being alienated entirely from her cultural roots: she returns to the city to work out her identity and make choices without the assistance of those with whom she grew up. Images of her enjoying a nightclub and a bar- restaurant are not reassuring.

Interestingly, the director of Monday's Girls is Anglo-Nigerian and, from her name, has connections with southeastern Nigeria. She seems, however, to weight the film in favor of tradition, not syncretism or modernity: the dilemma is very important and very difficult, for tradition gives identity to a people. Their ancient customs, especially when they have struggled to survive colonialism and racism, are immensely sym- bolic of a long history and identity. This makes it difficult to attack them from what is usually, in effect, a Western position.

But health and survival are not just Western concerns, and when tradi- tion comes into conflict with these, then it has to be rethought. Femmes aux yeux ouverts faces this issue directly. It is a documentary essay, with subheadings or sections, dealing with female circumcision, forced mar- riage, and AIDS in Africa. These three issues are connected by a general concern that certain traditional practices ought to be reassessed in the light of new problems. For example, the custom of a man taking his brother's widow as his wife has immensely destructive implications if the brother died of AIDS and the wife is infected. Through such customs an entire extended family can be decimated. Similarly, because female cir- cumcision can lead to serious complications in childbirth, as Femmes explains, it is best to approach the practice as a health issue, not as an issue of identity, culture, or tradition.

Femmes aux yeux ouverts is explicitly feminist and includes strong statements by African women about the degree to which African women are expected to take care of family, work hard, and protect the culture but are not given the freedom to control their own bodies or the right to speak out.

The section on female circumcision begins with the statement that sex is a taboo subject in Africa. To speak openly about anything to do with sex is to break with tradition, and the film records women, like Mariam Lamizana, who are prepared to do that.

Of course, there has been a strong debate about female circumcision (genital mutilation) both inside Africa and internationally. Jomo Ken- yatta's powerful defense of Kikuyu custom in Facing Mount Kenya re- mains important because it was written at the height of colonial power, when female circumcision first began to become a political issue that was

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bound up with African sovereignty and the refutation of European as- sumptions of African barbarity:

The real argument lies not in the defence of the surgical operation or its details, but in the understanding of a very important fact in the tribal psychology of the Gikuyu-namely, that this operation is still regarded as the very essence of an institution which has enormous educational, social, moral, and religious im- plications, quite from the operation itself.... The initiation of both sexes is the most important custom among the Gikuyu. (133)

Kenyatta's comment that "the African is in the best position properly to discuss and disclose the psychological background of tribal customs" is in the spirit of this film (154).

We hear women speak on both sides of the debate. A gorgeously dressed woman, in golden robes, is seen working with a group of women making thread. Then another woman speaks out about the pain and psychological scars of circumcision and how it is done without warning. The woman in the golden robes turns out later to have been performing circumcision since she was eight, because her lineage is traditionally expert in that role. She demonstrates with two different kinds of blades on a piece of cloth how she does it and offers to demonstrate on a child if the procedure isn't clear. This scene comes dramatically after we have heard about the agony and futile screams from a woman who endured the procedure as child and has never forgotten. Then there is the question of long-lasting health problems if the operation is too severe or heals badly.

The traditional perspective is that if a woman is not circumcised, her fertility will be compromised and that if the baby's head touches the clitoris during birth, the baby may die. This harks back to Monday's Girls' Mother Moses saying that if a girl is not chaste, her baby may die. But a young woman in Femmes remembers how one of her companions at circumcision died, and she feels she may not permit her daughter to be circumcised.

The second issue dealt with in Femmes aux yeux ouverts involves what is called a "forced marriage, "where a girl is promised to an older man from the age of four sometimes and actually married in her midteens. Such arrangements are made because families wish to cement their friendship and ties through the marriage in question. Then, if a woman is widowed, she can be inherited along with her property and children by her brother- in-law. Traditionally, though the film does not go into this, the idea was to protect the woman and her children, but Femmes reveals that some men simply take the property and then neglect the children. There are children living in the streets because their mothers cannot feed them- something that would have been unheard of generations ago. The film shows a strong older woman, Lucie Kabore, arguing for an end "to this inhumanity."

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AIDS comes next. Monique Ilboudo, an impressive young joumalist, explains that women are too submissive in marriage, that men go outside the marriage for sex, and that because men want children, their wives feel they cannot use contraceptives. So there is a good deal of fatalism where AIDS is understood and feared. The scene shifts to a crowded market- place, where women traders are generally the most powerful figures in modern African culture. One stall has a cheerful mature woman, dressed very modestly, explaining sexually transmitted diseases and showing how a condom works over a carved wooden penis: a grassroots organiza- tion brings information directly to the people.

The next segment of Femmes deals with freedom of speech, "the struggle," as it is termed. This section pulls together the previous parts of the film. It begins with a student demonstration in Mali in 1991 in which the police opened fire on demonstrators. Aissata Cisse, who had been helping the wounded students, joined a march by women and their chil- dren in protest of the violence. This march was also fired upon by police, and her student daughter was killed. With immense strength, but with the devastation of her loss very visible on her face, Cisse argues that women have a different reaction to men, because of their maternal response, and that if women speak out, men will follow. She is followed by a leading woman politician, Kadidiatou Sow, a district governor, who also argues for women's involvement at a high level in political life and for the continuation of the free-speech struggle.

There follows a portrait of women who dry fish and tan hides in Senegal. They do not even own land, and their lives illustrate some of the problems that the film has already addressed, like polygamy, which oc- curs because men want more laborers to contribute to the family income. Women need to find a way to deal with the double pressure of home and working life.

The section on the economy opens with women working at a gas station, pulling on rubber tubing to start the petrol flowing into a bottle and then fueling each car from the bottle. Two women, dressed in blue denim overalls, work as car mechanics. The world of female market traders is touched upon, as is the custom of taking female children to the market so they get used to the environment and learn what to do there. If a husband loses his job, the wife invites him to work with her.

The next section deals with women in politics and is narrated by a woman lawyer who points out that women's economic power does not necessarily translate into political power-women need to claim their freedom of speech. Ysatou Sani reminds us that in "the days of King Guezo, there were the Amazons"-now women who strive to be success- ful are in a similar tradition. Tradition, then, at times can support the idea of strong and high-achieving women.

Though Femmes has a good deal of excellent material, it is sometimes

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vague in important details, failing, for example, to specify the precise political background of the Mali demonstration and the exact cultural location of certain customs, for it ranges over four countries, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and Benin. It is a cerebral film, and quite polemical.

These Hands is the most emotionally powerful of the films under review. Whereas Monday's Girls is a documentary structured as a narra- tive, and Femmes aux yeux ouverts uses documentary footage and inter- views to present the idea that a modem woman keeps her eyes open, These Hands uses neither plot nor narration. The film opens with a woman's face and a hammer rising and falling, a hammer that the woman whose face we have seen is clearly wielding. The camera tracks back and a longer shot shows women sitting amidst piles of broken rocks, backs straight, legs apart, breaking rocks with hammers. We hear the rhythmic collision of hammers with stone, and later a motortruck or the women singing. Since there is no dialogue, the viewer is forced to concentrate hard on each image to work out what is being presented. The monotony of the women's work is conveyed by the length of time the camera stays on the details of it: the hands of a woman placing a stone in position, the sound of hammers falling, the changing shadows of the sun marking the passage of time. The film is set in a huge quarry, as we discover from a long-distance shot just after the title, a desertlike landscape filled with heat and dust and a little sparse vegetation here and there. We see mounds of stones, many of them, and then heavy machinery and conveyer belts under a hot, clear blue sky. The women continue to beat their hammers on the stones. A woman walks with a tray of stones on her head and throws them down for others to break, her child tied to her back. An older woman looks directly into the camera then back to sorting stones. An- other older woman beats a tough stone hard and long without much success: she uses the handle of a pickaxe. The heavy machinery sorts stones around a conveyer belt, but women perform heavy, boring, uncre- ative labor under the sun.

A small child carries a tin of water to her mother on her head. After her mother has taken a drink, she takes one herself and disappears with the tin on her head once more. A woman holds a hurt finger, painfully. A mother hits stones with a child on her knee. The women sing, even dance, as they work. We see a camp where food is being prepared in very simple condi- tions under cloth tents. The women eat, daintily, rolling rice into balls with their hands.

Though no names are offered for these women, their work and their collective identity is a very powerful image. We become voyeurs, watch- ing exploitation in actual progress. At the end of the film, a series of facts are put up on the screen. The women work in a quarry in Tanzania; they break stones that are then sorted into different grades for use in the

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construction industry. They are paid twelve U.S. dollars for a pile of stones which takes two weeks work.

I remembered, while watching this film, a deeply moving poem, "His- tory Makers, " written by the Jamaican poet George Campbell, who watched women break rocks in the Caribbean during the colonial period. It is worth quoting at length. It would have made a most apt opening for this immensely powerful film:

Women stone breakers hammers and rocks Tired child makers Haphazard frocks. Strong thigh Rigid head Bent nigh Hard white piles Of stone Under hot sky In the gully bed.

Some kinds of exploitation, depressingly, go on unchanged, especially when it comes to women's labor.

Monday's Girls, Femmes aux yeux ouverts, and These Hands are part of a growing body of excellent work by African women film directors. Those intersted in locating more titles should contact the Library of African Cinema at Califomia Newsreel. I have found that films like these have a powerful impact in the classroom, though they are best shown after a class has read seriously in the areas of African feminism, women's labor, women's health rights, sexuality, and so on. Once some of the political- cultural issues are thoroughly understood, then students can fully enter into the emotional power of these films and also analyze their treatment of issues in an informed way. Such films repay aesthetic analysis also: they are part of the documentary tradtion but, like These Hands can sometimes be quite poetic.

The combination, for example, in These Hands of the imagery of women's work and the silent facts that we see on the screen during the last few moments of the film is quite devastating. We watch the women with whom we have vicariously shared a day going home, and we learn that they have no fixed hours, that they work as their bodies allow them, that they are mothers and grandmothers, often single mothers, that they are sometimes refugees. Then we view a last shot of a woman we have seen before, her frayed light-cotton dress, her bare feet, her shovel hitting rock, her head tie, her rhythmic, extremely tired effort. That image stays a long time after the film is ended: a long, long, sober time.

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Works Cited

Campbell, George. "History Makers." Ed. Paula Bumett. The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. 177.

Kenyatta, Jomo. [1938] 1961. Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu. London: Secker and Warburg.