On the Film, “Kweku Ananse”, the film-maker had this to say: My name is Akosua Adoma Owusu. I originally come from Kwumawu, Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The title of my film is called, “Kweku Ananse”. It is about covering the rare story of a father-daughter relationship, an adaptation of a folktale told in Ghana. I was inspired to tell the story, based upon my childhood memory of my father, and how much he loved Kwekwu Ananse folktales in Ghana. And I am really excited to have the opportunity to tell it, in a fiction film.
On the Film, “Black Sunchine”, the award-winning artist had this to say: My name is Akosua Adoma Owusu, and I am a filmmaker, and the project that I will be presenting to you, right now, is called, “Black Sunshine”. “Black Sunshine”, will be my first feature length film, and is a story of a promiscuous hairdresser named, Afi, who lived in a compound house with her teen-ager albino daughter. So, the film portrays an emotionally conflicting relationship between a mother and an albino child. The mother and daughter, struggle with this burden that, the albino daughter’s skin colour, and this Ghanaian belief, that albinos hold supernatural powers. The mother is full of shame, with birthing an albino child, and ironically, of her own blackness, and she rejects her albino daughter, by sleeping with European lovers, and bleaching her skin.
And one may ask, ‘Why making a fiction film, with an albino as the main character?’. Beauty, has become the zymogenous desire in the African society, where you have a lot of African women, bleaching their skins, in order to reach a European idea of beauty, and also you have in many parts of Eastern Africa, you have a lot of albinos, being murdered, for body parts. There is this bizarre belief that, if you kill an albino, and use the body parts for witchcraft, you will get famed and power. So, a lot of people in power, like politicians, are using albinos for witchcraft. And, albinos have this problem that, they are more visible to everyone, but they are more socially invisible. And this is the story about an albino girl, who wants nothing more than love, fine love, wants nothing more but to win her mother’s love. So, she’d do anything, to win her mother’s love.
The film is kind of, mother-daughter conflict, but it is also a visible conflict. In Ghana, there is this belief that, albinos have 2 fathers, they have a physical father, and a spiritual father. There is this village in Ghana called,”Agogo”, where I will be shooting, and there are a lot of albinos there. And there is this river, not far from this village, where there are a lot of albinos there. And there is this legend that says that, if a mother wants to have an albino child, she goes to drink water from this village, I mean, goes and drink water, from this river, and to have an albino. So, when an albino grows up, they are not allowed to go near this river, because, it is a belief that their spiritual fathers will take them away. So, my film opens with an albino girl, floating on her back in the river, and there is this black boy that goes in into river and watches this albino girl, that wants to take her life. So, the girl has to decide whether, she would want to stay in this world, where she is now rejected and not loved or get drowned and die to be with her spiritual fathers. So, my film combines myths and reality and, “Black Sunshine”, will be my first feature that will talks about this identity issues in Africa. In addition, Salif Keita, he is a legendary albino singer, he has agreed to compose the résumé music for the film, after reading the treatment for the film. Two days ago, ARTE France, has also awarded the film a price for development.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
Akosua Adoma Owusu,an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage.
MINI-BIOGRAPHY: Akosua Adoma Owusu (born January 1, 1984) is an AMAA award-winning American avant-garde filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage. Producers of Owusu’s first feature film Black Sunshine won France’s ARTE International Prize Award at the 2013 Durban FilmMart.
In 2013, The Huffington Post listed Owusu in “Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know.”[4] Her film Kwaku Ananse won the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Short Film. Kwaku Ananse participated in French Cesar Film Academy Golden Nights Panorama program of Best Short Films of the year, organized with support from UNESCO, a program that selects notable short films awarded in 2013.
CREDITS:
Creative Capital: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTAh1QyJnZc
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akosua_Adoma_Owusu
Editor’s note: Do you know of another outstanding story and or a lifestyle of a daughter of Africa, that ‘mustered‘ courage, to positively change the world around her, the MusteredLady.com would like to hear from you. Contact us through this link: http://musteredlady.com/contact/
MY NAME IS AKOSUA ADOMA OWUSU
No comments:
Post a Comment