Short Essay

A Black Camera Movie Review: Sisters in Law Sisters in Law by Florence Ayisi; Kim Longinotto Review by: Jennifer Maher and Marissa Moorman Black Camera, Vol. 22/23, Vol. 22, no. 2 - Vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 120-122 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27761711 . Accessed: 28/08/2012 13:52

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A Black Camera Movie Review

Sisters in Law Jennifer Maher and Marissa Moorman

SISTERS IN LAW, Directed by Florence Ayisi and Kim Longinotto (2005), 104

minutes, distributed by Women Make Movies.

Sisters in Law (2005), directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, tells the story of two women, Vera Ngassa and

Beatrice Ntuba, who prosecute and preside over court cases

in Kumba, Cameroon. Both of these women see themselves as advocates for the women in this

town, women who have long

been discriminated against by patriarchal views of women and

family (as we learn toward the end of the film, there hasn't been a domestic violence conviction in Kumba for 17 years). It is no accident that the opening scene is of a family standing in front of Madame Ngassa's desk in order to

settle the following dispute: A mother is advocating for the return of her child who has been taken by her husband, without her knowledge and without her consent, with the blessings of her father. One child on her back, the distraught woman pleads her case despite the fact that under customary law she and their children are the property of her husband (he had paid bridewealth to her father formalizing the union under customary law). Ngassa orders the child to be returned immediately, chastises both the husband ("This is what you men do, you harvest children everywhere.") and the father ("This is what you do for 80,000 francs and a pig!?") Within this one case a variety of subjects central to

the film coalesce: patriarchal culture as represented by the male "plaintiffs," the imposition of a

colonial system of rules and regulations as seen in Ngassa's Western court attire and her reliance on a system based in British jurisprudence, individual identity and desire weighed against community imperatives. The documentary revisits these issues via a variety of cases, including the physical abuse of a 6-year-old girl at the hands of her aunt, a woman trying to gain a divorce and prosecute her husband after years of marital rape and abuse and against the advice of a male-run family council, and the rape of a 9-year-old girl by a Nigerian immigrant residing in the town who claims to have been immersed in his Bible when the alleged assault occurred.

Clearly, this documentary's force comes from the "characters" of Ngassa and Ntuba,

Ngassa especially. Both are strong, funny, and astute, naturals in court and in front of the camera.

Though the description on the DVD, distributed by Women Make Movies, is insulting in its pitch to

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make the film accessible by referring to Ngassa and Ntuba as "African Judge Judy's," the women's

charisma is undeniable. Speaking mainly in English and pidgin (the film is also subtitled), they take no prisoners as they create them, consistently reminding their charges that African women in the 21st century have and deserve equal rights, that until women like Amina and Ladi (both seeking divorces from abusive husbands) stand up for themselves in a court of law, men will not change their

behavior. In this respect, the film is a welcome corrective to hegemonic representations of "Third

World" women as indelibly victimized and helpless. When Amina succeeds and returns to the Hausa

quarters in town and to the women who have supported her, their enthusiasm and optimism is

infectious, their laughter triumphant and a joy to watch. At the same time, though, the film, despite what are clearly the best of intentions, in some

ways enacts the very rubrics it criticizes. To be sure, there is no male Nanook-esque narrative voiceover (in fact, the film has no external narrative at all). Longinotto, a critically acclaimed feminist director who teaches at the International Film School in Wales, has a long feminist track

record, collaborating with other scholars, artists, and activists from the cultures within which she films. For instance, co-director Ayisi is both a filmmaker and a lecturer in film at the University of

Wales, Newport, who originally hails from Kumba. Her other films, such as Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Shinjuku Boys (1995), take care to avoid the sort of ethnographic style oft-criticized by post-colonial feminism. What this means for Sisters in Law (which has won numerous awards and near universal critical approbation), as a narrative, however, is more problematic. The film provides next to no context for the events taking place: What is the history of Cameroon? Where does it stand in relation to the rest of West Africa historically and politically? How did Ntuba and Ngassa get into the positions they currently hold? Where and how did they go to school? Who are the other women?police officers, guards?we see glimpses of? What about a criticism of a structure

that, while it clearly benefits the women involved here, still arose from an inherently repressive system (British/German/French rule and colonialism more generally)? Further, does the "invisible" filmmaker refute the traditional ethnographic power dynamic or simply reinforce it? In other words, does the erasure of voiceover or dialogue on the part of the filmmaker reify a pre-supposed (white) objectivity and "view from everywhere?"

Longinotto and Ayisi do not address these concerns, opting instead to let the court cases and situations speak for themselves. While, obviously, any filming or framing constitutes mediation, Sister in Law's lack of context, omniscient narration, or voice-over is not simply an argument for humanism or universal feminism. Rather, it can be read as an anti-exoticist position that asserts difference without othering it. One of the film's achievements is that we see Cameroonian women, in this case Ngassa and Ntuba, as well as other women employed at the court, working to educate both women and men about Cameroonian law and their rights. This is not about Western heroics (no

Madonna, Angelina Jolie, or even a well-meaning Alice Walker and Prathiba Parmar here) righting the lives of victimized African women.

Without acknowledging it (or perhaps even being aware of it), the film parallels recent work by historians who study court cases in the early 20th century to understand the lives of men and women in various West African societies during colonial rule. This historiography demonstrates that African women have long used the courts to contest abusive spouses, non-consensual marriages, paternity, and their right to property and the fruits of their labor. And it debunks the over-simplified tradition/modernity dichotomy by showing that customary law ("tradition") was produced at the same time as statutory law ("modernity") as colonial officials and male elders often collaborated to constrain the movements of women and junior men. This work thus overturns the preconception that casts African women as helpless, centuries-old victims. Indeed, it has helped to specify the ways in which conditions for women often took a turn for the worse with the institution of colonial rule, despite its civilizing and liberating rhetoric.

The film's tight focus on the present may inadvertently nurture the notion that Cameroonian

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women are age-old victims of patriarchal oppression. That said, its snapshot nature and the consistent lack of added historical or contextual information demand that the viewer ask questions and refrain from making assumptions. At the same time, this method strives to assure the viewer that she can understand the situation these women are in. Whether American viewers will do so is another question. But, at the very least, they are sure to find an "Africa" here that is refreshing in its unfamiliarity, i.e., it is not the Africa of disorder and disaster, but of everyday life, town

streets, court offices with piles of papers, men dusting desks and washing windows in the offices of female professionals, family tensions, and people learning to stand up for themselves and face their limitations. The film's most disturbing moments have, in fact, little to do with women per se and more to do with girl children. Both Sonita (the 9-year-old raped by a neighbor) and Manka (the 6-year-old abused by her aunt) are subject to what must have been very difficult moments in court. Sonita is so near her accused as to be able to hear him mutter as she makes her formal accusation before the judge, and Manka's body is repeatedly, almost obsessively, exposed at various points in the legal process as evidence of her aunt's cruelty. Even when courts and judicial activists succeed in dispensing justice, the burdens of evidence are still borne by the victims.

This choice on the part of the filmmakers to highlight not only tensions between husbands and wives, but also between young children and the adults who ostensibly exist to protect and care for them complicates a film that could otherwise be read as a parable of "traditional" African

masculinity made to answer to Western feminism and the courts. Instead, Sisters in Law asks us to empathize with a range of situations and people. While Sonita's rapist clearly deserves the

punishment he receives for his crime, he is less the imposing monster rapist of our imaginations and more an emotionally isolated (if vicious) man with sloped shoulders and no family. Similarly, when

Ngassa visits Manka's aunt in prison, she promises to bring the frail woman medicine, adding that

prisoners are not "animals" and we "don't hate you." This combination of present-tense narrative and multiple identifications makes for a film that universalizes experience without co-opting it, a fine line that Sisters in Law manages to walk with its head held high.

To coincide with Nelson Mandela's visit to London and fundraising concert for the Mandela Children's Fund, the Museum of London will be presenting an exhibition on Mandela's first visit to London in 1962. At that time, Mandela was wanted by the South African authorities, and left the country illegally to build support for the

African National Congress overseas. During his 10-day stay in London, he met a number of Labour Party politicians. Shortly after his return to South Africa, he was betrayed, arrested, and ultimately would spend 27 years as a prisoner.

The Museum of London's exhibition will use a number of photos and documentation from the Peter Davis Collection at the BFC/A.