Another star is born!

PART 1

Move over, Mama G; Alice is in town!

M. O. ENE

egbedaa@aol.com

Saturday, January 20, 2007

OF COMMONS & CLASSICS

Occasionally, one comes across a Nollywood movie that jumps off the shelf and straight into my archives, where the following reside: Living in Bondage, One Dollar, Osuofia 1 & 2, The Bridesmaid, Virgin’s Night Out, Falling Apart, Captain 1,2 &3, Crazy Passion, All My Life, the all star-cast Games Women Play, and , of course, the pioneering trilogy of Eka Chris. Scanning through the latest supply of new Nollywood movies was not an easy task, but I have devised a simply method: You watch the first CD (1/4); if you get the story trend and can predict the ending, just play the 4^th CD (4/4). If the ending meets your expectations, do not worry with the 2/4 and 3/4 disks… almost everything in-between is embellishment. You see, when the hill learns to give unnecessary waist pains, we learn to climb and pause. Since Nollywood insists on pumping out so many junks with few great works, it will take a new way to sieve out the gems from the rough.

During the long MLK, Jr. weekend, I applied the scanning method liberally and quickly dismissed many late 2006 titles as not worth the increasingly poor packaging. I also discovered that, contrary to what they say about VCDs, one disk can contain the entire “Part 1”! Mamush 1 & 2 came in just two disks! -- starring Elliot Desmond, Kate Henshaw-Nutall, Bimbo Akintola, and delectable newcomer Syl Anim Mbata as ‘Ope’ a.k.a. Mamush. What changed? I bet the day will come when Nollywood movies will come in just one disk (VCD or DVD). On that day, the chaffs will fall apart before they reach stores, and only those that have something to offer will grace the shelves in great packaging as Nneka Onyekuru has pioneered in the United States of America with Ka Chris Productions.

Alice, My First Lady

When I first saw the package announcing Alice, My First Lady (2006), I noticed something about the cover. No, it is not the photo of Patience Ozokwor (‘Mama G’); since she became Chief (Mrs.) -- Adadioramma of some community -- her movies are now predictable, more predictable than the generally predictable good-guys-win endings. It is not the image of Nkeiru Sylvanus; I am not a great fan of her acting. It is rather the subdued photo of a hitherto unknown actress and the photo spread of Christian mothers in their gorgeous traditional regalia. I succumbed to watching Patience Ozokwor deal with her fellow women for a change, not always suck it to local men who are yet to realize that ‘women have arrived’ and that ‘nothing will happen,’ as they say. After watching the first CD of the two-part movie, something about the new actress and director caught my attention. Then, for the first time this year, I watched the second CD of Part 1, and it held my attention on to Part 2.

Alice, My First Lady tells the story of “the unadulterated, one and only” Mrs. Alice Amadi-Okoye, a cantankerous senor sister-wife (“nwunyedi okpa mkpulu ito”) and trouble-seeker (ochonganoko) -- a mate straight from hell! A certain man Amadi Okoye (Joseph Okechukwu) in a fictional community in Enugu State called “Shikaghom” marries his lover Alice (Chinny Ahaneku) against the good advice of his aunt Amaoge (Patience Ozokwor) and uncle Adindu (Sam Loco Efe). Alice turns out to be an evil incarnate. With one daughter Angela (Nkechi Thelma Chukwu) and a booming business in fish retailing, she becomes the boss and denigrates the struggling carpenter husband as if he is a retarded house help. “You weakling of man! You will come home and meet me. Me, Alice!”

The man marries a second wife, Akunne (Comfort Bruno) to maintain some sanity in his matrimonial life. It makes matters worse. Nothing will pacify Alice. It turns out that Alice is under some spell, which her mother’s mate injected through a love-hate juju when she was eleven. When Alice realizes that she has lived a life dictated by forces beyond her control, she miraculously sees the light and makes amends. Simple Nollywood story, but the powerful production of the play in living colors transforms the everyday events into an instant Nollywood success story.

For the entire part, Chinny Ahaneku puts on a very powerful performance that no one else in the industry could have delivered so scientifically without dull moments. It is interesting that the cover projects Patience Ozokwor and Nkeiru Sylvanus as the main stars when the hidden treasure, the secret superstar is Chinny Ahaneku. It is interesting because Chinny Ahaneku is the writer, the director, the producer, and the man actor in the movie. In essence and in my own estimation, Chinny Ahaneku is not simply the next ‘Mama G’ but also the next powerhouse in the Nigerian movie industry. The next time we see her in any movie, she will be occupying the front cover all by herself. All the urban, glossy starlets of yesteryears and the whitewashed wannabes of cosmetic Lagos life should stand and welcome the new superstar. Unless something goes terribly wrong, the woman to watch in Nollywood 2007 is Chinny Ahaneku.

This movie is a Nollywood classic, a classic to keep -- trust me on this. If you get an original copy, keep it; it will be worth something down the line. As for the connoisseurs of copies illegally manufactured in the dark alleys of overseas ghettos, here is one good reason why we must help to kill the piracy project: If we do not support Nollywood, as we should by buying original copies, the likes of Chinny Ahaneku will never grace our screens. We will have dozen-a-dime dinosaurs dragging the industry down, and we will have no one to blame but ourselves. No one wants to invest good money for others to harvest in Nigeria or in faraway America, Asia, and Europe.

WHO IS CHINNY AHANEKU?

Her full names are Chinasa Chukwu Ahaneku. She is an under-30 Enugu State woman from the same neck of the woods that gave us Patience Ozokwor (‘Mama G’), Nkem Owoh (Osuofia, The Master), Celestine Ukwu, Gentleman Mike Ejeagha, and of course, Mrs. Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Her mother, according to an interview with South African Broadcasting Corporation in 2005, is from Udi in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria. Her dialect in Alice, My First Lady also confirms that she is from that part of the world. Such imperative expressions as “Eenyi, ngwaaka nu,” O’u gunu, Ha menyitewé, and Ikakwa are typical Udi LGA dialectical expressions. Public-domain details of her biography and her life off-stage are still sketchy.

Chinny, as she now styles herself, is a director, producer, scriptwriter, and actress. She started her acting career circa 1999, about eight years ago. “After auditioning, no matter how good I am, I was told my voice it too tiny I can only be a secretary.”[*] The initial hitches did not stop her. You see, if you are not tall enough to play basketball, nothing stops you from managing a basketball team. She shrugged off the disappointment and dabbled into moviemaking. Reportedly, her first feature film fell into the hands of flimflam fraudsters, who sold the movie to  marketers without her permission. The stress of a brief five-day sojourn in police detention and the legal maneuvers did not stop her. She took on an epic film titled, “Deceit of the Gods,” in which she showed her ingenuity by hiring and casting of a white South African TV crewmember interviewing her to play the role of an Irish priest!

Chinny Ahaneku has also acted in the true-life drama titled True Feeling 1 & 2 (2004) She featured alongside such established actors as Clarion Chukwura-Abiola, Chidi Mokeme, and Ejike Asiegbu. In the movie, she played the part of ‘Ada,’ a village orphan rejected by her community because of some family curse. A powerful female politician hires her as a domestic help, and she grows into a chick. So far, so good; but, as in all Nollywood movies, something somewhere goes wrong and introduces new dimensions in an otherwise normal setup. In this case, the expected happens: the woman’s son comes back from the US and falls for Ada! Now, if the relationship gets to where it is going (marriage), it will attract Ada’s family curse to the family of the rich female politician. In essence, it will short-circuit her political ambitions, deny her the right to take titles, and generally reduce her position in society. She either succumbs to the power of love in the hope that the society will someday see the light, or she does something about it. She does a whole lot to stop the blooming bliss before it eclipses her sociopolitical el dorado.

From her movies so far, Chinny Ahaneku appears to be obsessed with the demystification of taboos. In Deceit of the Gods, she sets out to prove that “a particular evil forest in my mother’s village [in] Udi, Enugu State of Nigeria” has none of the powers ascribed to it. Hear her: “And as a child, I played a lot in the evil forest and nothing evil happened to me so I started thinking it must have been a deceit of the Gods.” [*] The trouble with taking on these issues literally and without an in-depth understanding of Udi culture is another story, but the so-called “Ajo Ofia” is not “evil” at all; in fact, it is a sacred grove, where plant species persevere and preserve without daily human incursions. It is a place for the protection of creepy crawlies, a sanctuary for birds, a reservoir for medicinal herbs, and a natural laboratory where nature evolves on its own terms without incessant interruptions.

Each community strategically locates the grove to assist with the weather pattern. It is cultural illiteracy to think that every taboo is evil and that all prohibitions exist to oppress some people or to accomplish some unspeakable evil end. The gods (alusi) have absolutely nothing to do with such society’s institutions as sacred groves; in fact, the alusi -- as deities, gods -- are institutions of the society. The day a particular alusi starts behaving badly, competent citizens of the community will remind it (alusi) of its particular wooden constitution, and the elders will assemble, deliberate, and dismantle it! The sacred grove (not ‘evil forest’) is one of those institutions, a shrine of sorts.

But this is about the tackled taboos in Alice, My First Lady.

The story continues in Part 2 -- a la Nollywood :)

*This week on Special Assignment SABC 3 at 21h30 on Mar 29, 2005: "Nollywood Dreams - Broadcast script"