Souleymane Cisse in retrospect

I promised to post my 2005 article on the Souleymane Cisse film retrospective, and how British Consulate officials rained on the Malian director's parade and denied him a visa to attend a screening of his modern classic, Yeelen, at the Barbican in London.

This below was originally published in The Guardian, Lagos, on November 27, 2005...


Souleymane Cisse Film Season… in Retrospect
By Molara Wood

A film retrospective on Souleymane Cisse at the Barbican Centre, London, was much anticipated, coming as it did on the heels of Ousmane Sembene’s appearance in the city earlier this year. Although not nearly on the same scale as the Sembene programme at the National Film Theatre, the short season of five films by Cisse was nevertheless significant. It was to include a stage appearance by the director, following the special screening of his international hit film, Yeelen (The Light).

Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize 1987, Yeelen is one of the most acclaimed and widely seen African films ever made.

Born in Bamako, Mali, in 1940, Cisse studied in Moscow under the Soviet director Mark Donskoi, and on return to his country, worked as a documentary filmmaker for the Ministry of Information before embarking on his own cinematic career. The director’s first short film, Five Days in a Life, was made in 1972; his first feature length movie, Den Muso (The Young Girl), followed in 1975.

Den Muso - about a young mute woman who is raped and becomes pregnant, with disastrous consequences for her family - formed part of the Barbican season of Cisse’s work. Also on the programme were: Baara (Work, 1978), about the condition of workers in the city; Finye (The Wind, 1982), about a love affair between an army commander‘s daughter and the grandson of a tribal chief; and Waati (1995), a rarely-seen work about racial politics in South Africa. The season was to kick off with Yeelen, then the director would take the stage to discuss his work.

Africa at the Pictures, an organisation that seeks to promote and enhance the distribution and exhibition of African films in Europe - organised the event. The Barbican described Cisse as someone who “crafted a body of films that combine visual elegance with Marxist ideology and allegorical storytelling. Drawing on traditional indigenous lifestyles and Malian folklore, Cisse attempts to explore the conflicts in Mali society, particularly the conflicts that emerge between the desire for change and the need to preserve tradition.”

The first sign that all might not be well, came on the Thursday on which Cisse was due to be making his Barbican appearance. The venue’s website confused matters, indicating that the event would take place on the following day - Friday. Those who turned up on Friday, were in for a disappointment. Indeed, Yeelen would be shown, but the director himself would not now appear - an assistant at the ticket desk informed. He revealed that this was because Souleymane Cisse had not been granted a visa to travel to Britain. One wondered whether the assistant had gone beyond his brief, and went into the cinema hall hoping the report would turn out to be a piece of misinformation.

Another sign that perhaps all was not well, was an unusual sign just at the entrance to the auditorium. Unusual, because one does not normally encounter such at a prestigious venue like the Barbican. The sign apologised in advance for the ‘poor print quality’ of the film we were about to see. Inside, a sizeable audience awaited the entrance of Souleymane Cisse, only for another man to saunter onto the stage, looking like he would have preferred to be elsewhere. It was Keith Shiri, the director of Africa at the Pictures. An apologetic Shiri informed that Cisse would not give the Screen Talk as expected, due “to a lot of complications with getting people from Africa, especially from Mali.” The ticketing assistant had been right afterall: a Cannes Award winning filmmaker, one of Africa’s best, had been refused a visa to enter Britain - in the year of Africa 05.

A clearly disappointed Shiri said: “We wanted him to be here. This (Yeelen) is one of my favourite films and Cisse is one of my favourite film-directors, one whose work I always refer to.” He explained further, that African filmmakers always carry their own films when they travel, and Cisse was to have done the same. His inability to travel scuppered the whole arrangement. Africa at the Pictures therefore had to get a less-than-perfect print of the film as a last resort, from distributors Artificial Eye, and Cisse consented for this to be shown instead, hence the poor quality of the film we were about to see. Shiri hopes he will succeed in bringing the director over to the UK next year.

"Knowledge is built and consolidated by one generation, it is destroyed by another, and recreated by a new generation," Cisse once said, on the role of indigenous film and culture. And in Yeelen, a young warrior, Nianankoro, must face his destiny by destroying a corrupt older elite represented by the secret Komo cult. A leading figure of that cult is Nianankoro‘s own father and his greatest enemy, Soma. Often described as “an oedipal story mixed with magic,” Yeelen is an adaptation of an ancient oral legend from Mali.



Cisse takes his audience to the powerful Mali Empire of the 13th century, where Nianankoro and his aged, wizened mother have been on the run for ten years from his father, an evil sorcerer who does not want his son as an equal, and so seeks to destroy him. With the aid of a magic post (used in ancient Mali to find lost things), Soma goes up and down the land in search of the son he wants to kill. Two bumbling servants carry - or are driven to distraction - by the wilful post, to great comic effect. Nianankoro too, is sent to seek the help of his blind uncle, Soma’s twin brother. Along the way, the young warrior learns to use his magic powers for good, discovers himself, and acquires a wife in traumatic circumstances.

All the while, he readies for the confrontation with the father, which may end in the “luminous death” of one or both of them. “I think one can die without ceasing to exist,” goes a line in the film; and Souleymane Cisse, in depicting the death of one culture, makes way for the birth of a new one.

Nianankoro is played by Issiaka Kane, an actor whose stark physical grace carries the film - through scenes of war, magic, hallucinations and full-frontal nudity. But the real star of the film is the West African landscape, as the warrior journeys through arid lands of the ancient Bambara and Fulani peoples. Not even the ‘poor print quality’ could detract from the landscape, which, thanks to the excellent cinematography, astonishes the viewer with its parched beauty.

Yeelen is regarded by some as Africa’s greatest film. Pity the British Consulate in Africa was not impressed enough to grant its maker a visa. At the end of the Barbican screening, the audience gave the absent director a respectful applause. By this simple gesture, cinema goers gave their own verdict - both on the director and his work, and those who would not allow him into Britain.

Keith Shiri (right) photographed with actress Kate Henshaw-Nuttal at the Africa Movie Academy Awards Nominations Night in Nairobi on February 25, 2011 - Photo by MW.

Artist Juliet Ezenwa denied UK Visa

Writer Adewale Maja-Pearce is concerned. His wife, the artist Juliet Ezenwa, has been denied a visa to travel to the UK for an exhibition that would have opened in Portsmouth on July 29. Maja-Pearce, a dual Nigerian/UK citizen, has written an open letter to the British High Commissioner to protest the decision. See below.


Dear Sir,

I have the good fortune – as many would see it - of being a citizen of both Nigeria and the UK. For the last twenty years or so I have chosen to live in Nigeria, although I travel to the UK from time to time for professional as well as personal reasons. Almost ten years ago I married my wife, Juliet Ezenwa, the artist and a Nigerian citizen. Shortly after our marriage she applied for, and received, a six-month visa to travel to the UK but was unable to use it for reasons which she explained in her three subsequent visa applications, the most recent being just last month. On each of these occasions she was denied a visa, apparently because it was thought that she might abscond and thereby become a burden on the state, and this despite the fact that we have our home here and have no desire to go and live in the UK, at least for the foreseeable future.

On those three previous occasions she had been invited by family, including my mother, a British citizen who lives in the UK and had undertaken to host her for the duration of her stay. However, on this last occasion she was also invited by the King’s Theatre in Portsmouth, which invited her to hold an exhibition of her paintings from 29 July to 11 August 2011, the details of which are with you, including a letter from the director. I am now at a loss as to what to do.

Neither the Germans nor the Italians shared your view about her likely intentions when they granted her visas to travel to their countries, both times in connection with her art, and yet she cannot travel to her husband’s country for a similar activity. I know perfectly well that foreigners married to British citizens do not automatically qualify for British citizenship, and I know how difficult it can be for British citizens to have their wives join them in their own country, but it seems an abrogation of a fundamental human right that the wife of a British citizen is barred from travelling to her husband’s country for a specific period of time in pursuit of her legitimate business. I feel insulted on my own account and also on hers.

Many others have written over the years about the cavalier treatment meted out to Nigerians by the British High Commission and I know exactly what they mean. The pity, of course, is that successive Nigerian governments have never stood up for their own citizens, which is why other countries treat them with the contempt they do. Indeed, I witnessed it myself some time ago when I ran into a problem in neighbouring, Togo, with only my Nigerian passport to hand but that is a matter for Nigerians to solve.

As regards my wife, by all means continue denying her what seems to me her legitimate right but I can at least voice my sense of outrage that she – and, by extension, myself also - should be treated in this despicable manner.

Yours sincerely

Adewale Maja-Pearce

BBC: Overseas artists 'poorly treated' by visa system

Related post: Atukwei Okai - no show

Paintings by Juliet Ezenwa

Nigerian visa officials are pigs too

Zimbabwean writer Novuyo Rosa Tshuma who by now should be in Nigeria for the Farafina Trust Workshop, is in far away South Africa not believing what's happened to her, due to the immovability of visa officials who, having extracted (or extorted) a huge amount in visa fees, ensured she could not get on her Wednesday flight to Lagos. They told her to come back today, Friday. The workshop started yesterday. The writer posted about her frustration, to put it mildly:

I go to the embassy. And then, and then they say, there is some stamp on some paper that is not clear, I need to get a clearer one. My flight leaves this afternoon, I try to tell them. They really don’t care, just get a clearer stamp, they say. But why couldn’t they have told me this the very first day I submitted my papers? Or called me, since, as they could see from the workshop dates and the flight dates, I am supposed to leave today. I mean I did pay a visa application fee, and what I know is most embassies do call you if there is a problem and the time frame for the visa is stringent, such as in my case. I mean what is this visa fee for at the end of it, really. I do not say all of this, of course, even though I am thinking it; what I need is to get co-operation, not cause friction. I try to plead now, because time is no longer on my side, I tell them, my business in Nigeria is as clear as can be; all I applied for was a single entry visa to go and attend a writing workshop for 10 days, I have the invitation letter, and my ticket clearly shows that I would leave South Africa the day before the workshop and leave Nigeria the day after the workshop. All I want is to enter Nigeria to attend a writing workshop, please, I am just a student, and I am also a writer, this workshop is of the utmost importance to me. Ok ok, so I realise that reasoning with these people will not work. I run around, get them the clear stamp they want. I return to the embassy, plead with them, please, my flight leaves this afternoon, I need this visa. Don’t tell us you need this visa, they say, it’s not up to us, it’s up to the Officer in Charge. Ok ok, calm down Novuyo, calm down. So can you please just bring this to the attention of the Officer in Charge and please please point out to him that my flight leaves in two and a half hours. If ever there was an emergency, this is it. And I assume any reasonable person should grant me this visa, I mean my business is clear, I have run around to get them everything they ask, I have my flight ticket, my flight leaves this afternoon, and I parted with R780 for this visa. I mean I am as serious as can be, I have done everything in my power to make sure this works as smoothly as possible, surely they can see that, surely they can empathise, surely they can put a little effort and make this happen, because my fate now literally rests in their hands. That is what I am trying to get across. So I wait. And wait. And wait. An hour passes. Please, I say, I really need this visa. And what do they tell me? The person who does the visas has gone out, and we don’t know when he is coming back.

Sadly, this nasty visa scenario is what gives with Nigerian officialdom and sundry service providers daily. The girl in the restaurant drags her feet and 'serves' you - eventually - with a permanent scowl on her face. There is no 'please' and no 'thank you', certainly no 'sorry'. They don't give you all your change because they don't have 20, 50 naira notes and they expect you to just accept it and walk away - it doesn't even occur to them to apologise - as of course they don't when things advertised on the menu are not available. They just shrug and say: we don't have it, no explanation, no embarrassment, they're just impassive. They act as though you're bugging them as they take your money off you.

Same with banks, where the cashier will have a full conversation with colleagues behind the counter while you're standing there like an idiot, a captive audience. Or they will take personal phone calls and ignore the customer, who shifts from one foot to another. You get no service, no satisfaction, no respect. Certainly no empathy, something Tshuma was desperately in need of. Having lived in England where politeness is key when dealing with customers, I'm constantly appalled at the terribly poor customer service in Nigeria, and I sometimes flare up, telling the person 'serving' just what I think of their behaviour. They are always taken aback, as though I were the one being unreasonable.

As it is in the lowest establishments, it is in the bigger ones, where the stakes are inevitably higher - like a writer sitting in a Nigerian visa office in SA while at the airport her flight takes off without her.

• Read Novuyo Tshuma's post

Onyeka Nwelue gets his visa

Following a media outcry on the refusal of an entry visa into Hong Kong for writer Onyeka Nwelue to participate in a literary festival, the Chinese authorities have reversed themselves. Nwelue now has a visa and will go to the ball, though later than planned.

Here's what the author told Wordsbody:
"Writers Nury Vittachi and Jane Camens asked booklovers in Hong Kong to petition the Immigration Department and went on radio shows to talk about it. Newspaper reporters were brought in and the Nigerian Consulate was contacted to talk to the Immigration Department too, which they did. In fact, I have never felt so much love like this before, since I became a writer.

The Chinese people happen to be sensitive towards the media and protests.

When I went to the Chinese embassy in Delhi, the visa section woman couldn't look up to my face. She only said, 'The Immigration Department has now approved your visa. Come and pick your visa tomorrow and don't ask me more questions'. She is still rude, but I forgive her.

I wish to have a swell time in Hong Kong, because I learnt Moses Isegawa, author of Abyssinian Chronicles would be there too."

• Related post

Is it because I'm black?

Now, what have we here...

21-year-old Nigerian author of 'The Abyssinian Boy', Onyeka Nwelue, has had quite a steep rise since entering into the Lagos literary scene as a teenager. Pretty impressive, unless you're a Chinese immigration officer who has to consider the author's visa application to be allowed into Hong Kong for a major literary festival.

Nwelue was billed to feature in this year's Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, due for programmes and appearances on March 9 (City University in Hong Kong) and the festival itself on March 11. Alas, the writer got a call from the Chinese embassy in Lagos informing him that his visa application has been turned down. No reason given.

We are by now used to Britain rubbishing artists from African when it comes to visas: Odia Ofeimun, Souleymane Cisse, Atukwei Okai, Samuel Fosso etcetera etcetera. But Hong Kong now as well?

Almost certainly the only African and the only black writer participant in Hong Kong, Onyeka Nwelue is left mouthing the oft-repeated cliché: is it because- ?

Africa Day in Trafalgar Square

Next to Miriam Makeba is her grand-daughter.

The 11-year-old percussionist is Makeba's great-grandson.

Later today, Trafalgar Square will rock to the beats of Africa, come rain or shine (likely rain, as last year) for Africa Day. With the shocking news and images coming out of South Africa, my heart is not exactly warm towards the so-called Rainbow Nation just now. But I don't suppose I can blame its greatest singer, Miriam Makeba for that, and so I thought I'd blog my pics from last year's Africa Day in Trafalgar Square. The weather was horrible on the day, but I told my sons: this may be your one and only chance - your very last chance - to see Miriam Makeba (who came out of retirement to play the free gig) in the flesh. And so we dressed up warm, I took my umbrella and off we went to Trafalgar Square. We were pounded and soaked to the bone by rain, all day. But no one there minded once Mama Africa came out. Certainly not my sons, who thanked me afterwards for taking them to see the legend. Performing with Makeba on the day were her grand-daughter; the brilliant percussionist, only 11, was the singer's great-grandson. One of Makeba's favourite backing vocalists, Innocent, who in the old girl's words is "not so innocent" also featured.

Last Thursday evening I was on a radio programme, African Essence, on Resonance FM, presented by Debbie Golt. Kadija George and I were on the show to promote the upcoming Word From Africa programme. Debbie Golt is an amazing source of what's happening in Africa London, mentioning on the airwaves in passing lots of events even I didn't know of. It was thanks to something she said on air that I discovered that Manu Dibango will now headline today's celebration (replacing Les Amazones de Guinée who could not get visas to get into Britain to perform for the Trafalgar Square crowd... same old story of the visa humiliation of the African artist wanting to enter the UK to perform... officially, Les Amazones de Guinée can't come because of "circumstances beyond their control"... ).

Also on the programme are: Bassekou Kouyate, Kanda Bongo Man, Busi Ncube, Emmanuel Jal, Inemo Afrobeat Experience, Kaago Drummers, Black Eagles Dancers, DJ Rita Ray and DJ Eric Soul.

Africa Day in Trafalgar Square is a legacy of Ken Livingstone's Mayoral vision, and this year's celebration was already programmed before he lost the London election. With Boris Johnson as Mayor now, I don't suppose a celebration of African culture and music will be high on his agenda. It may not be far-fetched to think that Africa Day in Trafalgar Square will die a quiet death in a few short years...

• Images taken by MW in Trafalgar Square, London, on 28 May 2007.

He Claims To Be A Writer

One indignity regularly suffered by African writers and artists planning to visit the UK and the US is the denial of entry visa. It happens even when they are to feature in high profile UK events. And not even prominent, well-travelled ones are immune. Earlier this year, the poet Odia Ofeimun applied for 4 years' visa - for multiple short visits to the UK. The British Consulate in Lagos denied him a visa. You'd have thought any educated person in Nigeria would be aware of Ofeimun's status as a major Nigerian poet, but no. The consulate official compounded the insult by noting down in writing: "He claims to be a writer." The experience led to Ofeimun's poem, 'I Am A Writer'. It didn't end there. Adefayi Martins, in a victory for the power of the pen, wrote a piece in TheNeWS on the visa insult. And as if by magic, the British Consulate invited Odia Ofeimun back and instead of the 4 years applied for, they granted him leave to enter for 10 years. Adefayi Martin's opinion piece, below...

Rebutting the British… and their Visas, in Verse

Acclaimed poet and writer, Odia Ofeimun, one of Nigeria’s finest public intellectuals, disclaims the conceit of the British Consulate – that denied him visa – because "he claims to be a writer". Adefayi Martins reports

Oscar Wilde, the late Irish playwright, and iconoclast par excellence, did not suffer fools gladly, both is his art and in real life. He had, like many Europeans of his age, an understated continental disdain for the United States, the political, economic and spatial behemoth that always fancied itself as "the world". When he visited the United States, long before the current age of the finger-prints and other indignities that the US forces visitors to experience at her entry points under the guise of keeping out unwanted guests, Wilde was asked if he had anything to declare. "Nothing", the witty and deprecating Wilde replied, "except my genius"!

The US Customs official must have had a sense of humour. He allowed Wilde to pass. The officer at the British Consulate that attended to Odia Ofeimun, acclaimed poet, writer, journalist, political scientist, polemist and public intellectual, when he applied to renew his UK visitor’s visa must have been humourless. They often are, at any rate. The official denied Ofeimun, who lived in the United Kingdom as a scholar at the oldest British University, Oxford, for a few years in the 1980s, and has visited the UK many times since returning home, entry visa last month. He must have thought the poet lied. Incidentally, the latter phrase is the title of the affable Ofeimun’s celebrated poetry collection. The official stated in denying Odia visa – in a sticker attached to his passport - that "he claims to be a writer". A most condescending insult added to the injury of visa denial.

Ofeimun is not one to take such insult, which many Nigerians regularly take - with equanimity from the British and other consulates in Nigeria - lying low. The denial comes exactly ten years after the same British High Commission denied him visa to enjoy a facility provided by their own cultural agency, the British Council, for the poet to see the London Book Fair. The Consulate later relented when challenged, only for the more humourless General Sani Abacha’s goons at the airport to seize Odia’s passport.

In his poetic response to the recent British conceit entitled, "I am a Writer…", Ofeimun tells the joyless consuls,

I do not claim to be, I am a writer

As my passport insists

across decades, and still counting.

If the grating visa-granting official is still unconvinced, the poet adds that the years he has spent bearing that passport as a writer draws

humus from Year Twelve
When school bells added my name
To the throng gamboling along
With the Pied Piper of Hamellin
And, the Ancient Mariner
Whose magic, and the bamboo flutes
Of Martin Carter in Guyana jail
Took me by hand to know Ogun
when Okigbo’s road was famished.

If the British Consulate is unaware of the poet’s accomplishments, or what another poet, Okinba Launko describes in his poem, We are Climbing Still, as the "several prizes we were showered with/and the congratulations we wear like mendallions!", Ofeimun sings of his possession of a cultural capital which the British themselves claim to value, but have devalued "through the syllabus of errors…(that) set no column to my stripe" marking the denial of visa to him, this second time. He tells the consulate in the poem that, at 18, his "waify poems" were already "elevating siblings" at the West African Examination Council examinations, that is the General Certificate of Examination (GCE) and the School Certificate exams, popularly called School Cert and even university thesis, long "before stamps hit the pad at the Passport Office".

The poet presses his claims further. For the avoidance of doubt, he advertises his artistic victories that link with world cultures at famous cultural centres of the world, including the British cultural centres:

I do not claim to be, I am a writer
Whose trip under African skies
Took Sun-dance to Sadler’s well
Queen Elizabeth Hall by the Thames
And Fleet Street of glancing nods
with poesy of the body’s rhythm
rounding the Cape of Good Hope
and toasting five hundred years
above visa-gripe, truth’s fibre
as art for life vouchsafes it
setting navel closer to navel
to keep fellow-feeling in grace.

As he tells friends, Ofeimun will soon journey to South America where, if the poet can be unveiled, he has some honey, who - as he croons in his poem, "Oyin" -

breathes a quiet ardour
against a calculus of (perhaps, British) nerves.

Ofeimun, who, a few years ago, predicted the terrible fate that General Abacha met in one of his poems – Thighs fall apart, the General (dis)appears – insists that though

the division of spoils
encumbering the earth with visas

can stop his travel to Britain, it cannot encumber his spirit, because

I’m happy, beyond mere fashion
for trips that visas can’t deny.

The British consulate can deny Odia Ofeimun visa, but it cannot deny him his voice – his verse.

• Odia Ofeimun has since travelled through Britain.