THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 5, 1995 TAG: 9506030036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
``SANKOFA'' IS the first film about the slave trade made by an African filmmaker. It is a surprisingly poetic, and matter-of-fact, film that treats the past as if we were onlookers, devoid of the expected hatred. It is clear from the outset that Haile Gerima is a class filmmaker, not one who is out to exploit the renewed interest in black films for commercial purposes. This is a serious effort and it is worth seeing on that basis.
Gerima, a native of Ethiopia, is a professor of film at Howard University in Washington D.C. It took him nine years to raise the $1 million needed to go into production. Still lacking funds to reproduce prints, the film has become something of an underground hit over the past two years. The director-writer put it into a rented theater in Washington, where its one-week booking stretched into an extended run. It has had similar such makeshift bookings in Richmond and Atlanta. The local premiere was sponsored by InSyte Magazine and signals the latest in the Naro Theater's efforts to target a specific, and perhaps otherwise unserved, audience for ``special'' bookings.
``Sankofa'' stars the strong-faced and strong-willed Oyafunmike Ogunlano as a modern fashion model who, when first seen, is done up in a Tina Turner outfit and flaunting her 20th Century hedonism. The setting is modern Ghana. In mystic circumstances, she is zapped back in time as she visits a dungeon where slaves where once held before being shipped to North America. She is promptly stripped, branded and sent to a sugar cane plantation in the West Indies.
Much of this material has been treated before in film and literature to the point that we can't really say this film reveals anything new. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of slave life with no less ferocity. ``Roots,'' the phenomenally popular TV miniseries, provided more detail.
What is new, though, is Gerima's documentary-style quality of letting us become an onlooker at everyday life - minus some of the melodramatic spoon-feeding. The heroine becomes Shola, a house servant who has no knowledge of the 20th century. She falls in love with the rebellious Shango (Mutabaruka) but refuses to poison her masters, feeling that murder is not condoned.
The rebellion is staged at mystic caves in the hills. In fact, the otherworldly look of the film, complete with gorgeous sunsets, gives a perhaps-too-comfortable distance to the film. We are partially let off the hook by this distance but, still, the evils of slavery are very much there. The film effectively creates another world of morality, a world in which this type of inhumanity was not only tolerated but was considered the norm. The re-creation of this world, with its unbelievable evil, is the film's greatest achievement.
A subplot, which doesn't quite work, involves a mulatto man who is enthralled by religion and seems to have turned against his own people. Joe, as played by Nick Medley, is a strange rather than compelling character. His mood changes are sudden and often accompanied by quick flashes of religious paintings. There's another plot here somewhere, trying to break out,
Warmth is supplied by Alesandra Duah as Nunu, the motherly slave who joins the rebels only after she finds she's too old to be sold.
The opening, as well as the closing, are accompanied by the chanting of ghosts who encourage that ``spirits of the dead, rise up and claim your story.''
Although the limited budget dictates that the film be photographed largely in close-up, the director transcends such limitations to make this a meaningfully mood piece which, while not containing the details of historical fact, surely evinces the feeling of an immoral era. In this case, it is the mood that is more important. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW
``Sankofa''
Cast: Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Mutabaruka, Alesandra Duah, Nick
Medley
Director and Writer: Haile Gerima
Music: David White
MPAA rating: not rated but probably merits an R (nudity,
language, floggings)
Mal's rating: ***
Locations: Naro Expanded Cinema
by CNB