gun hill road is a film about a latino family whose paroled father comes back to the bronx to find his teenage son transitioning to femalehood. i had a chance to see it at angelika film center a couple of sundays ago, followed by a q&a with lead actress harmony santana and writer/director rashaad ernesto green.

it's one of the more interesting and engaging films i've seen in a very long time--and i'm not just saying that because rashaad is one of my nyu grad film colleagues. i left the theater a more enlightened person, both as a viewer and a filmmaker. the writing is fresh and authentic, the acting on point, and it spotlights an issue that isn't being discussed in mainstream american society, particularly in latino and minority communities.

when i was on set with tunde kelani, he said--quite emphatically, as i remember--that there's nothing coming out of hollywood. i wanted to disagree, point out all the wonderful indie filmmakers, some of them friends, doing really interesting work. then i realized they all work outside the hollywood system. it's a hard reality that the hollywood machine is mass producing, packaging and distributing the same old stories again and again. but it's really refreshing to know there are alternative means for telling other kinds of stories out there. --AL.

yes, 'filmmaking in akwa ibom' is in fact the title of this post. as i write this, one mr. paul frank--an akwa ibomite and university of utah-trained filmmaker--is shooting a trailer for his feature film in uyo. he sourced the 45-person cast with locals--drawing from the 400-person strong ibom actors forum--and the crew from locals too--some of whom were trained in india and south africa. he will edit the film in uyo, too, and plans to submit the final feature to sundance.

it was a chance meeting after i stopped by the national gallery to visit with ani udosen, a wonderful sculptor i met last year, who gave me paul's contact info. i called, and paul stopped by the house just hours before i left for the airport headed back to lagos. he was younger than i thought he'd be, optimistic, excited, with a delicate balance of ego and humility that is the trademark of a successful filmmaker. we had one of those filmie conversations--fast, run-on sentences with heavy jargon--at the end of which i was convinced we had to work together somehow. if i weren't presently broke and headed back to nyu in the fall, i would simply stay behind and work on his film.

paul also told me that the tropicana entertainment complex is finally open, supposedly the largest cinema in africa. they had been building it for some years, and finally launched in may before the gubernatorial election. political stunt? maybe, but it seems that the governor is a film fan, since we've been waiting even longer for the library to open. paul hopes the good governor will help finance his film, as he's done for a few others in the past.

"when you're ready to come back, we're here," paul said, and, with a warm handshake, drove away. i stood there a minute, stunned, wondering how i could possibly then go to the airport and leave. how i could pass up an opportunity to help jumpstart the akwa ibom feature film industry. i am too broke and confused right now, i thought. i'll be back--prepared.

at any rate, i did apply for an all roads seed grant to shoot a documentary this year at my late mother's secondary school in afaha oku. i also have a feature film idea, set at that same school, that would be my dream to make.

i meet so many diasporans who dream of revolutionizing cinema in their native countries, many of whom learn and labor in the international system without setting foot on ground back home to see what's going on. a part of me knows that can't possibly work in practice. you have to be on ground. you have to know what's going on. you have to stay current and relevant. place does matter. learn what you need to abroad, if you like, but go home and do some good. really.

i hope to join paul soon. meeting him helped to crystallize the yearnings i've been having these past few years. nevertheless, this blog still took a very long time to write. --AL.

Met Haile Gerima at a screening of his new film, Teza, at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

It isn't perfect--no film ever is--but if it comes to your town, go see it.

Not because it's poetic and political; spoken in English, German and Amharic; and mines the experiences from Gerima's Ethiopian childhood, the revolutionary expats in communist East Germany, and Mengistu's terror regime. Those are all really great reasons to see the film, but not the one I find most compelling: it represents what is possible when you persist in reaching a distant dream.

Even after the success of Sankofa, a thriving career as an independent filmmaker, and a teaching post at Howard, it still took Gerima fourteen years to raise funding for Teza, to find a producer who supported the telling of this story.

And that's both the reality and great mystery of filmmaking.