Four film shorts showcasing queer Ghanaian cinema screened at the 11th edition of Film Africa 24 in London. Abena Sεwaa went to the South London Gallery to watch them and shares her verdict.
Nyame Mma, (God’s children) by filmmaker Joewackle J. Kusi, tells the story of Kwamena (Kobina Amissah-Sam), a man who returns to his hometown following the passing of his estranged father.
We follow his journey from a remote part of northern Ghana to a bustling part of Sekondi in the Western Region where he reunites with friends and sees an old love.
While the preparations for his father’s burial proceed, Kwamena learns that the love of his life is getting married. We watch and feel the tensions between the two as they reunite in a club knowing they are destined to be apart. Why? Because Kwamena and his love Maroof (Papa Osei Akoto) are gay.
Nyame Mma was one of four film shorts, centring queer Ghanaian cinema, that debuted at the 11th edition Film Africa - London’s leading film festival that promotes African storytelling by African filmmakers.
The other films were Reluctantly Queer, a US-based production by Akosua Adoma Owusu, Dzifa by UK-based filmmaker Savannah Acquah, who made her directorial debut with the film, and Waterlily, by USA-based filmmaker Ami Tamakloe.
Nyame Mma is credited as the first queer film to be written, produced, and screened in Ghana, which is significant when we consider the political climate in the country currently.
In 2021, a community centre in Accra intended to be a safe space for Ghana’s LGBTQI+ community was closed due to public opposition. What followed was a chain of events that saw politicians, religious leaders, and public push for tougher laws against this community.
On 28 February 2024, the Ghana government passed the Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, also known as the ‘Anti-LGBTQI’ Bill, which criminalises people from the community and allies.
Even without the bill becoming law (it must be signed by the president first), verbal and physical threats towards LGBTQI+ communities and their allies have increased.
Socio-political events
Galvanised by these socio-political events, Joewackle decided that this love story, which he said had initially been about a man and a woman and had been "gathering dust" on his computer, needed to be told through a queer lens.
Speaking during the post screening panel discussion, chaired by Adwoa Owusu-Barnieh and including filmmaker Savannah and LGBTQI+ rights campaigner Lady Phyll, Joewackle said: “It started from just listening to the news and what was happening in Ghana’s parliament, and as a filmmaker – as a storyteller, I felt if there was ever a point in history to make a queer Ghanaian film, this was a good time to tell that story.”
A brave move when you consider what that meant for a queer filmmaker, making a queer film in a country where anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment was growing. Joewackle recalls witnessing an anti-LGBTQI+ protest while filming one of the scenes. And although the protests were not directed at him or the team, I can imagine the experience would have been frightening, and even more reason to ensure that those involved in creating the film shared his social politics.
Following the passing of the bill at the end of February, plans to publicly showcase the film in March 2024, were scrapped in favour of a private screening. But Joewackle is hopeful that more audiences in Ghana and internationally will get to witness the film.
Universal issues
And it’s easy to see why. While this story centres around the experience of two men in love, the layers within the film speak to a range of themes that, I believe, are universal. Nyame Mma tells the story of what it means to be a young man in a hyper-religious world and holds a mirror up to Ghanaian society.
Societal expectations and perceived routes to happiness typically revolve around getting married, having children, and securing a respectable job. And yet, there is a sense that although Maroof is on the road to ticking all these boxes, he is still unfulfilled and describes his ‘happy place’ as being sat in that moment alone in the car with Kwamena.
So, it is both sad and telling when later on, Kwamena asks Maroof if he loves his bride and Maroof’s response is: “I’m learning to love her”. Clearly, Maroof must put in the work of loving his wife but his love for Kwamena is effortless and yet forbidden.
Dealing with emotion
Silence is a theme that features heavily in all four films, particularly in exploring how the unsaid is communicated.
Akosua’s Reluctantly Queer is a beautifully poetic submission – a love letter – that a young Ghanaian man (played by Kwame Edwin Otu), who moves to the USA, pens to his mum. The outpouring combines scenes from his life in a foreign land where we watch his private, silent activities overlayed by his monologue to his mum.
We see his academic achievements, him finding a partner but also the pain of neither feeling fully at home in the USA because of the over-policing of Black bodies, or in Ghana because of his sexuality. And yet, the honesty of his outpouring is likely to mean it will never reach his mum – only us the audience.
During the panel discussion, Joewackle said he was “interested in telling stories of queerness in spaces where men are not necessarily allowed to express emotions.”
This exploration is communicated through juxtaposition.
We, the audience, see the abandonment with which heterosexual couples in the club can express their feelings for one another while Kwamena and Maroof are forced to keep their distance. And it is only when Joewackle introduces two spirit figures, dressed in masquerade costumes as extensions of each man’s inner desires, that we see the full force of their love.
Throughout the film, the tension between emotional expression and resistance to it plays out. Kwamena doesn’t openly mourn the passing of his father – the father that we later learn banished him to the North. But his mother, who is flanked by the matriarchs in the community, is afforded the space to grieve and to do so publicly. It takes Kwamena stubbing his toe in the privacy of his room to illicit the impulse to cry.
Water symbolism
Another powerful symbol uniting all the films is water – be it through the daily ritual of ablution, drinking or in the presence of water bodies, which seem to act as spaces of rebirth and cleansing.
In a scene in Dzifa, friends gather to celebrate the rebirth of one friend who embraces her new gender identity through a naming ceremony. In Dzifa, Savannah offers new dimension to how we interpret the naming ceremony by placing it in a queer context. The acknowledgement is sealed with the passing of a drink around the group – rather like a libation.
What I liked about the films was the care in embedding elements of Ghana’s cultures. There are ample references to Ghanaian foods, clothing, cultural symbols, and music in both Dzifa and Waterlilly.
And in Nyame Mma, Joewackle draws from a folkloric belief linked to death and water from his home region of Brong Ahafo. Kwamena reunites with his dead father by a river, makes peace with him before his father is ushered by boat to the spirit world.
Despite the themes of grief, isolation, migration and loss, there are also flashes of humour. During the screening of Waterlily, the audience laughed at the dexterity with which the lead character manages to have a whole conversation with her friend while cooking and blancing her mobile phone on her shoulder. Equally humorous were the verbal interactions between Kwamena and his old friend Flash.
Day-dream sequences and the nods to magic realism or Ghanaian folklore, allowed the filmmakers to take their stories into spaces that explored optimism, possibility, and hope – something that Savannah pointed to during the panel discussion.
“These films create a way of bringing people together and highlighting possibility through having moments of dream and imagination.”
As well as showcasing possibilities, these films also have the potential to shift hearts and minds, Lady Phyll said during the discussion. This is achieved “when truth is being told or where there is a lived experience or you feel that shared commonality,” she said.
Accra's community centre for LGBTQI+ groups may be closed in Ghana but spaces where community and allies can convene, reflect and share solidarity exists thanks to these films.
They speak to the rich storytelling narratives, the need to communicate the pain and grief of a persecuted group but also the hope and community that exists inspite of the opposition.
“It’s so nice to see all of these films together because being queer and Ghanaian is so multifaceted and but also so connected in so many different ways,” Savannah said - so true.
Film Africa screened over 70 African films across London cinemas between25 October and 3 November, and is a Royal Society of Africa event.
This article is an original piece written by Abena Sεwaa of AKADi Magazine and cannot be reproduced without permission.
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