Gerima, Haile

GERIMA, Haile

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Nationality: Ethiopian. Born: Gondor, Ethiopia, 4 March 1946. Education: Studied acting at the Goodman School of Drama, Chicago, Illinois; University of California at Los Angeles, B.A., 1972, M.F.A., 1976. Family: Married Shirikiana Aina, 1983; five children. Career: Professor of Film, Howard University, Washington, D.C., 1975—; with wife, created film production and distribution enterprise consisting of Negodgwad Productions, Mypheduh Films (distributor), Sankofa Books and Video (sales and rental), and Positive Productions (community development). Awards: Grand Prix Award, Lisbon International Film Festival, Silver Leopard Award, Lorcarno International Film Festival, and Prix de la Ville de Alger, for Mirt Sost Shi Amit, 1975; FIPRESCI Award, Berlin International Film Festival, London Film Festival Outstanding Production, and International Film Critics Award, for Ashes and Embers, 1983; Best Cinematography Award, FEPACO Film Festival (Burkina Faso), Oscar Micheaux Award, and First Prize, African Film Festival (Milan), for Sankofa, 1993. Address: Mypheduh Films, Inc., P.O. Box 10035, Washington, D.C. 20018–0035, U.S.A. Contact: Ada Babino, Nommo Speakers Bureau, 2714 Georgia Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20001.

Films as Director:

1971

Hourglass

1972

Child of Resistance

1975

Mirt Sost Shi Amit (Harvest: 3000 Years) (+sc, pr)

1976

Bush Mama (+sc, ed, pr)

1982

Wilmington 10—USA 10,000 (doc) (+sc, pr)

1982

Ashes and Ambers (for TV)

1985

After Winter: Sterling Brown (doc)

1994

Sankofa (+sc, ed, pr)

1994

Imperfect Journey (doc-for TV)

1999

Adwa: An African Victory (+sc, pr, ed)

Publications

By GERIMA: articles—

Daney, Serge, "Rencontre avec Haile Gerima (une Moisson de 3,0000 ans)," interview in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris) September-October 1976.

Pfaff, François, "De Quelle Moisson s'agit-il (dialogue avec Haile Gerima, auteur du film "la Récolte de 3,000 ans)" interview in Positif (Paris), no. 198, October 1977.

Safford, Tony, and William Triplett, "Haile Gerima: Radical Departure to a New Black Cinema," interview in The Journal of the University Film and Video Association, vol. 35, no. 2, Spring 1983.

Edelman, Rob, "Storyteller of Struggles: An Interview with Haile Gerima," in The Independent (New York), October 1985.

"Visual Footprint—The Battle for the Film Frame," in Journey Across Three Continents, edited by Renee Tajima, New York, 1985

"Triangular Cinema, Breaking Toys, and Dinknesh vs. Lucy," in Questions of Third Cinema, edited by Jim Pines and Paul Wileman, London, 1989.

On GERIMA: books—

Pfaff, Françoise, Twenty-five Black African Filmmakers: A Critical Study, with Bibliography and Bio-Bibliography, Westport, Connecticut, 1988.

Gray, John, Blacks in Film and Television: A Pan-African Bibliography of Films, Filmmakers, and Performers, Westport, Connecticut, 1990.

Diawara, Manthia, African Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana, 1992.

Yearwood, Gladstone, editor, Black Cinema Aesthetics: Issues in Independent Black Filmmaking, Athens, Ohio, 1982.

On GERIMA: articles—

Fieschi, Jacques, "Harvest: 3,000 Years de Haile Gerima (Ethiopia)," in Cinématographe (Paris), no. 19, June 1976.

"Ethiopian Directs," in Amsterdam News (New York), November 1976.

Fullman, E., "Wilmington 10—USA 10,000 Makes Its World Premiere," in The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), 17 November 1978.

Maslin, Janet, "Film: 'Bush Mama' Tells the Story of a Coast Ghetto," in New York Times, 25 September 1979.

Quam, Michael D., "Harvest: 3,000 Years. Sowers of Maize and Bullets," in Jump Cut (Berkeley), March 1981.

Hoberman, J., "Ashes and Embers," in Village Voice (New York), 23 November 1982.

Derobert, E., "Bush Mama," in Positif (Paris), October 1984.

Howard, Steve, "A Cinema of Transformation: The Films of Haile Gerima," in Cineaste (Berkeley), vol. 14, no. 1, 1985.

Tassy, Elaine, "'Sankofa' Takes a Different Route to Theatres," in Los Angeles Times, 25 January 1994.

Porter, Evette, "Black Marketeering," in Village Voice, 13 September 1994.

Millar, Jeff, "'Sankofa': Flourishes Undercut Powerful Saga," in Houston Chronicle, 18 November 1994.

Thomas, Kevin, "'Sankofa' Delivers Powerful Indictment of Evil of Slavery," in Los Angeles Times, 12 May 1995.

McKenna, Christine, "A Saga of Slavery Reaches the Big Screen" in Los Angeles Times, 29 May 1995.

Hartl, John, "Film on Slavery Fights for Screenings," in Seattle Times, 22 September 1995.

Kernan, Michael, "'Bush Momma' (sic) : Realities," in Washington Post, 27 January 1997.

Howe, Desson, "'Adwa' Overcomes All Obstacles," in Washington Post, 19 November 1999.

Reaves, Michele, "Filmmaker Wins Fight for 'Adwa', in Washington Times (Washington, D.C.), 20 November 1999.

Stack, Peter, "Ethiopian Victory Retold with Pride: Documentary Looks at 1896 fight with Italy," in San Francisco Chronicle, 15 May 2000.

* * *

"I'm a Third World, independent filmmaker," declared Haile Gerima in a 1983 interview. He now resides in the United States "for many historical reasons." Gerima—professor of film, philosopher, writer, producer, and director of a singular stature—has earned a unique place in film history as one of a handful of African filmmakers to earn international notoriety.

Gerima arrived in the United States as a youngster of twenty-one with an interest in theatre and enrolled in acting classes at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, Illinois. "When I was growing up," he reveals in the Los Angeles Times, "I wanted to work in theatre—it never occurred to me I could be a filmmaker because I was raised on Hollywood movies that pacified me to be subservient. Filmmaking isn't encouraged or supported by the Ethiopian government." He felt limited by theatre and was resigned, notes Francoise Pfaff, to "subservient roles in Western plays." By 1970 he had discovered "the power of cinema." He migrated to California to attend the University of California, where he earned Bachelor's and Master of Fine Arts degrees in film.

Influenced in part by the pioneering work of film luminaries Vittorio de Sica, Fernando Solanas, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and Med Hondo, Gerima makes films that tell of the human condition. He exploits the medium as a political weapon and as a catalyst for understanding and social change at the same time, consciously eschewing what he describes as the "narrative dictatorship" of Hollywood pictures.

Gerima's 1976 Bush Mama provides a striking example of this mission. The film presents a poignant contrast, produced as it was during the period of film history known as the "Blaxploitation" era. Gerima's depiction of the travails of black life and culture are farremoved from that of the drug deals and revenge killings of Superfly (1972) and Foxy Brown (1976). Bush Mama is the story of Dorothy and her husband T.C., a discharged Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a "hero's welcome." Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Theirs is a world of welfare, perennial unemployment, and despair. To some, the film may appear bleak and nihilistic with its stark black-and-white photography, but its message is moving and distinct. Issues of institutionalized racism, police brutality, and poverty remain sadly pertinent and the film, nearly twenty-five years old, retains its potency.

For the production of Mirt Sost Shi Amit (Harvest: 3,000 Years) Gerima returned to his native Ethiopia to produce the tale of a poor peasant family who eke out an existence within a brutal, exploitative, and feudal system of labor. In 1985 he again focused his camera upon the travails of black urban life in the two-hour film, Ashes and Embers, the story of a moody and disillusioned black veteran of the Vietnam War. The film's characters, notes Shepard in the New York Times, "are human rather than cardboard types." Wilmington 10—USA 10,000 exposed the impact of racism and the short-comings of the criminal justice system by examining the infamous history of the nine black men and one white woman who became known as the "Wilmington 10."

Though now well established and respected as a filmmaker, Gerima's path has not always been paved with gold. His name is not likely to be bandied about in the boardrooms of Hollywood studios, a reality he finds bittersweet. "I was never enamored of the film industry," he reveals in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Every Hollywood story is Eurocentric and if it isn't, then it will simply be disregarded. So I never wanted to be part of an industry that fails to represent the world as it really exists."

"Money is an incessant worry for independent filmmakers and Haile Gerima is no exception," notes Pfaff. Indeed, Gerima has endured his share of the indignities of being an independent filmmaker of color, including elusive funding, closed doors, and distributors refusing to show his film. "[S]ome indie black filmmakers," notes Porter in The Village Voice, "are reluctantly becoming do-it-yourself distributors." Gerima began his self-distribution by booking his films at "art" theatres—only to find they were not reaching the black community for which they were created. Now he distributes his films and that of other low-budget, independent filmmakers through Mypheduh Films, a distribution company that he and his filmmaker wife Sirikiana Aina established in 1984. He speaks with rancor of the "incestuous relationship" between Hollywood, theatre owners, and video stores. "We've been evicted from several theatres when Hollywood wanted use of the theatre," he complained in the Los Angeles Times. "Why? Because if theatres don't take whatever junk comes from the industry pipe, they won't get movies they want in the future. . . Hollywood is incapable of allowing African Americans to make the films they want to make, what they want from us is hooligan movies."

"Spirit of the dead, rise up and claim your story!" is the haunting opening of what is probably Gerima's most successful production, the 1993 film, Sankofa. It presents with brutal realism the horrors of African slavery. The story is revealed through the eyes of Mona, a modern-day woman who is "possessed by spirits" and transported back in time as the Shola, a house slave on the Lafayette plantation in Louisiana. The savagery and violence of the evil institution are clearly disturbing and go far beyond the safe and conventional images of slavery presented by Hollywood. In Sankofa, we hear the chilling sound of human flesh as it is seared with a hot branding iron and see the barren faces of the human cargo; women are stripped of all dignity and subject to the continual sexual exploitation of their owners; human necks are enclosed in iron shackles and rape is used as a tool of terror and domination. Some panned Gerima for his stylistic flourishes but the response by the black community was positive and enthusiastic. The film was well received and played to full houses for many weeks in major cities.

Adwa: An African Victory is a compelling documentary drama of the largely forgotten history of the 1896 battle of resistance in which the Ethiopian people arose and united to defeat the Italian army. The film is skillfully interlaced with paintings, sound, music, rare historical photographs, and interviews of "elders" who recall the details of the story of Adwa. It concludes with a dramatic recreation of the final battle.

In spite of numerous limitations and against all odds, writerproducer-director Haile Gerima has succeeded in a tough industry for nearly thirty years and has emerged as one of the more potent "outsider" voices in the history of filmmaking.

—Pamala S. Deane