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No Palaver: Afrofuturism and the Short-Film
Within aesthetics a term persists that has ushered a wave of thought, cannon and expression- afrofuturism. Erupting in Mark Derry’s 1993 essay “Black to the Future”, the term has covered the horizons of music, film, painting, fashion and more but how does this structure for thinking highlight the power of medium? Afrofuturism has previously been identified as the blending of science fiction and magical realism to explore the societal and creative bounds of African diasporic identities. Perhaps, one could analyze how artists have negated the rigidity of precedent and medium to tell stories consumed by world order.
By using afrofuturism as a mode of reframing, one can expound on the power of language to explore representation. The use of the ‘short film’ has fluctuated throughout cinematic history akin to the term 'afrofuturism' in – who it applies to, what is considered elite and how it fits into the larger art historical canon. Pumzi by Wanuri Kahiu and Afronauts by Nuotama Bodomo utilizes the short film to situate the past, present and future within one plane. The short film allows for oppressed narratives to impact the everyday through a regeneration of time structurally and conceptually.
Pumzi by Wanuri Kahiu in 2009 is a Kenyan film that takes place after World War III or the Water Wars in the Maitu community. Over the span of 21 minutes Kahiu comments on the past and current actions of globalized society to show a possible future. As the curtain opens, the main character Asha enters, clothed in a mix of avant garde – rags to riches chic upon a grey stoic backdrop- The Museum of Natural History. For only a second, a fluorescent view of an alternate world hits Asha, then returning her to the mass control and scarcity that swallows her. In the Maitu community every drop of water is used, recycled and forced out of the body through mandatory exercise. However, over the disparate story portrayed to the audience, Kahui interestingly layers time within the autocratic society. Kahiu builds a world that is tethered to the present with a future the audience funds but cannot fix without Africa which has been branded as primitive in popular media.
The Maitu community, devastated by the loss of water, has lost all vegetation and planetary life with them as the only evidence of survival. Within this scarcity Asha receives a box of soil which beckons her visions. Although the sender of the soil is unknown, Asha sees herself approaching its source causing her internal dissonance. With her anonymous gift in tow, she plants an old Maitu seed and watches it germinate. Overcome with joy, Asha asks for support but when her superiors learn of her visions they order her to stifle them, asking if she has kept up with the prescribed dream suppressants.
The implementation of visions within a world of dream suppressants is powerful in how this quality could not be cut from the fabric of African tradition or Asha. Specifically, “Ontologies shaped by orality assume that the world consists of interacting forces of cosmological scale and significance rather than of discrete secularized concrete objects” (Tomaselli 18). Within oral societies, like many across the African continent much of history and tradition were passed down by word of mouth. In this exchange, language is not concrete but rather is a flow of intuition, experience and the sacred permeated from each individual's divinity along the chain.
In using projection a potential falsity of what is displayed is created, enacting skepticism in the viewer. In worldbuilding it is imperative the director pushes the viewer to give up their current world for what they creatively offer through language creation, color grading, linearity, characterization, etc. However, apart from formalised modes, “If these grammars are less precise in dealing with discrete objects, then they possibly have greater applicability when dealing with relations of culture-nurture … in the form of spirits and ancestral relationships” (Tomaselli 28). By infusing this layer of skepticism, the director’s world mirrors what the audience feels while assimilating the cinematic narrative into their reality – culture-nurture. In addition the short film as a medium of interrelation furthers this nonconformity, allowing for ideas far from the viewer's schema to be inhaled.
To further expand viewer connection, Kahiu sets her narrative in the future while playing upon the viewer’s now.
In popular media the declining state of the planet has been voiced and by setting her narrative around this globalized fear she recenters Africa. Given the history of colonialism and globalization, third world countries have been pushed to the outskirts of planetary concerns, but by placing the ‘magic key’ within Asha and her community in an ‘east african territory’ notes Africa as the answer. Going against systems of power exemplified in the west, Asha is motivated by her intrinsic spiritual ‘north star’ that without visions would not have been possible. Wanuri Kahiu in Pumzi structurally locates time by showcasing nonlinearity through magical realism, advanced technologies and African spirituality versus building a conceptual object for consumption like Nuotoma Bodoma achieves in Afronauts.
The 2014 black and white film Afronauts by Nuotama Bodoma, encircles the Zambian Space Academy that took place in the late 1960’s. In 14 minutes Afronauts masterfully touches upon the wave of African independence, the global space race and how the ‘black’ body is situated within this milieu. Opening with a string of text, the main character Matha is the only thing in focus as she runs from the band of men chanting “Matha, Matha, to the moon”.
Bodoma alters time through her narrative directly noting the cinematic work as a retelling. By naming it a retelling, Bodoma conceptually exclaims that she brings the past into the present as an idea and consumable object. Objecthood then extends to the term bricoleur which, “…detaches objects from time, making them available for the creation of new histories… not by their origins but by their potential” (Samatar 178). By framing film, history and intellectual property as objects, space and time are rendered pliable in service to critical commentary.
Shooting in black and white immediately falls in line with the notion of retelling. However, a retelling in the 21st century can occur in color, so what else can this decision tell the audience? Possibly, Bodomo speaks upon the use of the camera on the black body and utilizes monochrome to doubly highlight this. With ethnography being a primary mode of dissemination the black body has endured, representation is reclaimed through an African holding the lens and controlling the gaze. By now commenting on her ability to tell stories within film, Bodomo reminds the audience of the past where narratives such as hers would not have been possible urging them to think of progress and how to safeguard it. Bodoma’s casting of Matha speaks to the power of her gaze. Matha being an albino touches upon their negative reception in Zambian society but also singles out her difference. Tonally in the landscape Matha shines but not in her favor. Alike to the Zambian Space Academy, Matha is an apparent prey and teased for her efforts of progress or escape. The Zambian Space Academy, although unorthodox, was a yearning for possibility within a continent that saw their first horizons of ‘freedom’ through waves of independence. With African countries feeling the ease of new-found autonomy many pushed their capabilities to surpass their oppressors and the space race was no exception.
Imagine a country that has been stifled for decades beating the world powers in their space to attain the unthinkable, a place untouched, an arena up for grabs?
To compound the creation of the short film as an object, sound is also characterized. Bodomo silences many of the characters within her retelling, opting for archival audio that heralds the western triumph over space. This further encapsulates the retelling by reminding the audience of the outcome in a way they cannot ignore. Superimposing the western triumph over the black struggle speaks bounds conceptually on the black body within the colonized schema as compromised. Doubly layering time builds a world for the viewer to absorb in the past, present and represented. “Through speculative fiction.. writers stake their claim to Africa’s future, resignifying ‘Africa’ as a sign of liberation from and transformation of known realities. Given a contested past and a precarious present, this is both a necessary and radically visionary act” (Bryce 16)-- A story is no longer reduced to a sum of its parts but also how it cross-references history, inherent biases and every viewer’s corporeality. In the use of the short film the story becomes larger than what is shown on- screen and allows for such cross-cultural readings.
This visual quality characterized by alternative aesthetics and liminality calls the audience to imagine Bodomo’s retelling as if it is occurring in real time, highlighting absurdity on all fronts. ‘Why should humanity race to space to begin with?’ echos as the conqueror's habit even extends to the arbitrary, bringing the efforts of the Zambian Space Program closer; for an absurd result, one must use absurd methods.
After looking at two works of speculative fiction, how is the short film the prime medium? “The short form of independent film and video is fleeting; it glances across the imagination without committing itself to scrutiny”
(Sandlos 30). Due to its condensed structure the essence of an idea can be touched upon without needing all details to be explicated. Instead of the audience leaning into chronology to derive meaning, they are given bits and pieces of visual relationships to parse as exemplified in Pumzi and Afronauts.
Alongside the medium’s structural and conceptual potential, one must also count for its allowance of democratization. Because these films allow for a smaller budget the power of creation can be enacted in many hands. No more is elitist academia or mainstream Hollywood the sole way for work to gain traction and respect. Returning to afrofuturism as a tool for reframing, one can now question what makes a piece of art afrofuturistic. No longer can this solely be based upon aesthetic or cannon but instead of how each medium is queered by the suppressed voice. Akin to the two films previously discussed, many ‘afrofuturistic’ works push the bounds of what their chosen medium has been allowed to look like in popular media, garnering attention. But rather than speaking about how the powerful minds have harnessed medium and narrative to their advantage they firstly enter a conversation of canonical containment. Yes, afrofuturism allows for a line of discourse, linking works of speculative fiction together but instead of being wholly considered like Pumzi and Afronauts, they fall into common exoticized narratives. How else can work be analyzed without initially reducing them through asserting pedagogy, terminology or canon?
Bibliography
Bryce, Jane. “African Futurism: Speculative Fictions and ‘Rewriting the Great Book.’” Research in African Literatures, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.50.1.01. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.
mothertongue. “AFRONAUTS | Short Film.” Www.youtube.com, Youtube, 16 July 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb3pu5jXWHU. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Phathom. “SCI FI SHORT FILM: Pumzi from Director Wanuri Kahiu.” Www.youtube.com, Youtube, 8 Jan. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPD-mvR6C-M.
Samatar, Sofia. “Toward a Planetary History of Afrofuturism.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 175–91. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.48.4.12. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.
Sandlos, Karyn. “CURATING AND PEDAGOGY IN THE STRANGE TIME OF SHORT FILM AND VIDEO EXHIBITION.” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, vol. 4, no. 1, 2004, pp. 17–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41167145. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.
Tomaselli, Keyan G., et al. “Towards a Theory of Orality in African Cinema.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 26, no. 3, 1995, pp. 18–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820133. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.