BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis New Orleans is the Lost City of America. Rod Amis, publisher of G21: The World's Magazine, once believed one of the best bartenders in New Orleans, tells the story like no one else could. A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need. Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF Copy now! To order on Amazon.com, go here! AFRICA FRESH! New Voices from the First Continent An anthology of African writing only featured on the Internet until now, this book features the collected works of writers for the G21 AFRICA section of G21.net. The eight writers represented here are from around the continent and present an exciting look at cutting-edge fiction and reporting from the first continent today. Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF copy now! Buy the Book at Amazon.com

by John Karanga Kariuki

Special to G21

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL ("http://www.g21.net/africa134.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.

kabuki theatre of the mind

G21 #451: LONE WOLF Ten Years of Truthspeak 1996-2006 G21 AFRICA MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa G21 AFRICA JOHN KARANGA KARIUKI, Kenya G21 FICTION ROD AMIS, United Stares JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. Sign up for our Email Newsletter G21 E-MAIL NEWSLETTER ON FILM BRAD BALFOUR, United States SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ THE PREVIOUS EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. Send Page To a Friend We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE.

G21 AFRICA - ON NIGERIA FILM: Kenyan guest writer JOHN KARANGA KARIUKI, in his second submission to your World's Magazine, opines on th e influence of Nigerian film in his own intellectual development.

John Karenga Kariuki

Ol Kalou, KENYA - I had many reservations while watching my first Nigerian film. Prejudiced with the formal education that we have all gone through, I waited anxiously for gory blood drinking rituals and heart of darkness magic. Instead, I found myself viewing an engrossing re-enactment of Chinua Achebe's Nigeria of "Things Fall Apart," with background music from the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

The scene playing was like a shot from Okonkwo's peaceable moments, where he hosts the Umunna (male relatives) to a feast, cementing the bonds of kinship. I saw kola nuts being broken and going round. Next were mounds of foo-foo and plates of meat soup. I cannot recall the whole story line now, but the bright robes and gowns and refreshing Africanized English in a backdrop of palm trees, scurrying chickens and bleating goat kids dumbfounded me. It was not one those productions from Hollywood that sometimes further racist agendas, depicting black people as perpetually servile or slightly better than drunken monkeys, but a movie that could have been shot in my village!

Ten dozen movies on, I beg to comment about these productions marketed from Box office 51 Iweka Road, Onitsha; 4 Edidi Lane, Tadumo, Lagos and 1 Milverton Avenue, Aba. A good Nigerian movie is in two or three installments. This closely follows the African traditional art of storytelling, where the length of the narrative can be quite long. Four and half-hours of videotape are just commercially right to tell an African story.

In these films, police officers arrive at the scenes of crimes, invariably, in black Isuzu pick-up trucks or Peugeot 504 station wagons. Affluent families sport some Toyota Prados or Mercedes Benz cars. The car motif appears over dramatized with too much footage of cars reversing out of garages or backing into up market palatial houses. However, the impression made by the car is understandable. From burial and wedding processions to public lectures, the models of motor vehicles make a strong social statement in Kenya. The new generations of four WD fuel guzzlers are hot favourites with those who have made it. And in most of the world, the presidential limousine is often a marque of style of taste.

In these films, sorrow and joy are expressed in the way we always do it: fully and communally. There are no pretensions, either, when it comes to cursing and offering blessings and all in the same breath! Chineke! In these films, burials and mourning are elaborate - unlike the scenes from Hollywood productions where we never see bodies again once they hit the ground.

In many scenes of eviction, there is a common checkered canvas bag, which is always packed. Beverages on the stage always include the Don Simons packed juice. In addition, many films end with the pronouncement: "Thanks to God Almighty" or "Believe in God". As if we didn't!

Most cutout shots zero in on a black female actors' ample backside and bosoms or faces, which is not a bad thing at all. I see this as a subtle nationalistic statement. That it is time we stopped parading pale-skinned weaklings on catwalks and appreciate our full-bodied African women as beautiful. For those looking forward to full steam huffing and puffing love scenes, with the remote possibility of sweaty black hair in the armpits, there is nothing to write home about, in this regard, about in Nigerian films.

Yet these films tackle many important themes - from folklore to contemporary issues - through such experienced actors as Peter Oduchie, Clem Omaheze, Rita Nzelu (a femme fatale in most of her appearances), Chidi Ihezie and Nkem Owolo. Other household names are Amaechi Muonagor, Ngozi Azeonu (the weeping widow or distraught mother in most of her appearances), Pete Ene, Uche Odupata and Okuchukwu Ezike.

In "The Price", a pastor faces near insurmountable obstacles in the spreading of the gospel. He tracks girls to European brothels, as some local "employment" bureaus , reportedly, do, as is well documented in Lady Bianca.

All sorts of shenanigans about college girls are chronicled in the "Girls Hostel". This is a chilling account of life in a university women's hall of residence. The story line heavily alludes to some Kenyan College girls' alleged forays onto Koinange Street.

In "The She-Devil", a girl housed and supported by a woman lawyer snatches her host's boyfriend in a story line too familiar with us. And in "The Hour of Judgement", three women with bones to pick with their philandering husbands consults a native doctor. They obtain love potions, at a fee, to tame their errant husbands. The plot goes wrong and the effects of the medicine boomerangs on them.

Indeed, the runaway popularity of Nigerian films in many Kenyan homes is their rendering of familiar family conflicts in settings and with casts we can all identify with. They also dwell on the occult and metaphysical in our own symbols. This is what defines them. Greed, ambition, materialism and jealousy often lead people to a dabbling with the occult and Satanism, which mostly goes haywire. There are superstitions galore against a backdrop of the rich tapestries of Nigeria 's written works of fiction, which are vivid in our imaginations.

However, beyond our living rooms, we are reluctant to acknowledge this aspect of the black man. That he is superstitious through and through. Thanks to the way formal education has socialized and evangelized us, we pretend this isn't actually so. But often we are "civilized" up to the point where Western science and philosophy fail to provide answers and we troop back to the villages to seek native wisdom, as many learned people do in these films.

The film "Holy Crime" shows an enterprising priest incorporating the occult in a Christian religious sect. This is a clear and present danger in Kenya in this age of multiplicity of sects and cults, some of which have already forecasted the biblical Armageddon. Other films in this genre of destructive powers meeting their match in religious righteousness include "Karishika", "Witches", "Strange Women" and "By His Grace".

Nolllywood has not let us down in hilarious comedies. In "Police Officer", a sacked cop goes back to his village to practice "community policing" by taking bribes. "Nwa Teacher" revolves around two adult education Ngumbaru-teachers. They speak a high falutin' English, asking their adult learners about their personal nomenclature instead of names. They threaten to bamboozle and synchronize everybody, whatever this means. (I will add here that they end up in concupiscence with some adult female learners.) In "Apian Way", two little twin dwarfs (Agu and Akpa - tiger and elephant!) marry two normal twin girls from an affluent family in a rib tickling profusion of chaos. In "Mr. Ibu", one encounters a clown who fits writer Nkem Nwanko's main character in the novel Danda.

One empathizes with the lowly urban life characters in the films "Orange Girl" and "House Girl". In "Aba Women's Riot", the revolt is against age!=old male subjugation of women. The film evokes memories of Wanja, the heroine in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood. The "Aba Women's Riot" can also be Kangemi, Muranga'a or Engashura women demonstrating against the social precepts that enable young men to turn themselves into cabbages with the kumi kumi demon drink.

In my view, the "Oracle" trilogy ranks amongst the best Nigerian movies ever. In it, some men desecrate an ancestral shrine and steal a hallowed golden mask, which they sell to a Mzungu artifacts collector. The gods get upset and launch a vengeful campaign. Most of the mask thieves die in mysterious circumstances. The rest of the community is benighted with a ge neral restlessness, accidents and inexplicable deaths. The Igwe, traditional chief, consults with his court regularly in a bid to find an answer. But in this council is an elder who had cooperated with the mask thieves. Gradually suspicion shifts to him. "Oracle" presents the theme of dislocation well. It is a metaphor of modern Africa with a cultural imperialism where everything sellable, including honour and integrity, is up for grabs.

Despite Okot P Bitek's warning in the book Song Of Lawino, we have uprooted the pumpkin in the center of the compound, occasioning a fundamental shift in our concept of value and purpose.

Overall, Nollywood is a hugely successful story of African filmmaking. With skillful selection, learning institutions can build up libraries of these films to teach class readers and set books and many other aspects of African studies. In the absence of authentic Kenyan films that are devoid of the "happy valley" and outdoor big game viewing motifs, Nigerian films can be a formidable check on the American cultural imperialism that is virulently eating through our moral fabric. They are our undiluted story.