One of the UK’s small band of black female writer/director/producers, Adaora Nwandu is already making her mark at the tender age of 29. After launching her debut feature Rag Tag at the 21st London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in April, followed by a promotional trip to Cannes, she spills the beans on the highs and lows of filmmaking and funding in the UK.

August 2007

Adaora Nwandu

What was your route into filmmaking?

It started with a love of cinema. It is something I was really into, but it never occurred to me that this was something I would pursue. I thought I would just be watching them forever. But I was always encouraged with my writing from when I started my education in the UK to editing a school magazine I re-started in Nigeria when I was 16. It was a great success.

You studied at Oxford University. Was your degree in film?

No. It was in Experimental Psychology with Physiology and Philosophy. By then I knew I wanted to do something in film. When I was doing my ‘A’ levels I told people that I wanted to go into television or be a journalist. They said don’t do media studies! Study something you are interested in and then pursue your media interests on the side. So I started off with a radio station and got involved with a Channel 4 documentary on our college. By the time I left I wanted to do something that told stories. After graduating I went to Nigeria and worked for a media NGO making documentaries on things like female genital mutilation. On the side I did this huge 52-part radio drama series and I ended up being one of the primary writers on that.

You say that you have always been inspired by film. Can you give some examples?

I was a film omnivore. I watched everything and anything. I was living in the eastern part of Nigeria where the new generation of Nigerian films (Nollywood) re-emerged in the early-90s. This was when Living in Bondage [by Amaka Igwe] came out. We had never seen anything like it. It felt like our story. I ended up running the film department at the radio station where I interviewed people like Ben Affleck when they came to town. I got to see all the films for free because I was reviewing them for the radio station.

When did you make that transition from reporting on the film industry to being part of it?

When I went back to Nigeria for youth service, and I was making all these documentaries, I realised that a lot of them were almost as fictionalised as dramas. There were so many things you had to do to manipulate the story; even the most honest documentaries have so much staging in them. Film shows you the truth of a situation without having to take out the truth such as getting people to do things that they wouldn’t normally do. That was when my thinking changed.

So what did you do with this new awareness?

I left Nigeria after youth service and went to France where I stayed for a year. I learnt French and worked as a waitress to clear my head. I lived in Nice, which is close to Cannes, so I could to all the film industry events. When I left France, I pretty much knew I wanted to make films. I got some jobs to pay the bills and started saving for film school in America. I chose the three month course at the University of Southern California. You had people like Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis who came to talk to you. Even people like John Singleton went to USC. That is when everything came together. There were 30 of us on this directing course and we all had to make a short film but only five or six of us managed to come out with a film. I happened to be one of them.

What was the name of your short?

It was called Laid to Rest. I was on a combined writing and directing course so I wrote the script and then directed it and made it into a film. It’s about how a black gay priest finds resolution with his mother who didn’t love him enough by helping a woman who loved her children too much.

Tell me about your first full length feature - Rag Tag – and why male sexuality is a significant theme in your films?

I knew I was going to make Rag Tag even before I went to film school. There are so many scenes in Laid to Rest that reflect scenes in Rag Tag, like getting the two young black men to kiss, looking at parents and how they deal with their children and their sexuality. Male sexuality is always something that has fascinated me from the age of seven. I noticed all of these imbalances in the male/female relationship and the way they counterbalanced themselves in the male/male relationships in my culture, be in it Nigeria or in the UK. The film I’ve just finished writing now [Shifting Paradigms] is about identity, the environment and our responsibility to the world. At the centre is two young men, making love and kissing, which is a means to explore many other topics.

It’s regularly noted that there aren’t enough black women film directors and even less black writer/director/producers. What pitfalls have you managed to side step?

On the financial side, if you have to make a film, come up with the money and present yourself as a writer/director they don’t take you as seriously when you present the figures to them. They feel a lot more comfortable giving their money to men. Paradoxically, if you just come to them as a producer, they give you the benefit of the doubt as women producers have proven themselves. Once you are making the film, I find a lot of the cast and crew expect to be mothered. They want you to be more nurturing and at times the only method to get things done is to bust balls. When you do that there is this whole thing of, oh she feels like she has to be masculine about this. That isn’t the case, but it is about how things need to be done at a certain point.

What has happened since Rag Tag was shown at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival?

I was going to say surprisingly little, but I’m not going to say ‘surprisingly’. With the UK film industry, when the champagne is flowing and everyone loves the film people are full of promises. Afterwards they will always go back to the people they are used to working with. I have followed through the requests after that night, but very little has come of it. Rag Tag was ready from last year and I sent it to a lot of film festivals in the UK, but it was the Canadians who picked it up. When it was shown there I got invitations to show in the US. It was only after it got the interest of the Americans that British film festivals took an interest. Despite having a film behind me I’m still getting the same response from the UK Film Council. I’m part of a group of young black filmmakers in the UK who have been given space in Brooklyn to do our own version of ‘The Brits Are Coming.’

What tips do you have for burgeoning writer/directors?

What helped me was going to American and getting the attitude that something can be done. All you hear in the UK is that it isn’t possible or it cannot be done. If you get it into your head that you are going to do this, even if it kills you, you won’t stop until you finish. Don’t spend all your money on books or on courses. Learn the basic formatting, write your arse off and get feedback from people you know, even if you have to pay for it via the Script Factory. Yes it is a blow if what you thought was perfect is actually crap. Write another draft and it will be better.

Website: www.mukaflicks.co.uk

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