The buzz around Haile Gerima’s yet to be released movie is already going viral on social media. As a rule, every time that a cinematographer of Haile’s caliber announces that he is going to release a new film, the media automatically turn it into a media frenzy. All the hype aside, Haile’s stature as a mature, highly gifted and committed filmmaker is enough grain to feed the media rumor mill that is grinding it into daily diet of news, analyses and interviews until the time the film is released to the general relief of the hungry audiences and the insatiable critics.
A glimpse into recent media coverage of the imminent release of Haile’s new entitled in Amharic as Yetut Lij, literally meaning Child of the Breast, suggests that eager anticipation is the order of the day; at least until the film hits the silver screen. No one doubts that Professor Haile has already scaled the highest heights of filmmaking with films like Sankofa, Bush Mama, Harvest 3000 and Adwa to name but only a few. He has already demonstrated his unflinching commitment to a kind of “liberation cinema” or the kind of black cinema he advocated and practiced all along his long career.
It is not politics that stirs Haile’s imagination and yet there is something of a political statement in some of his productions like Sankofa which is a protest against slavery, and Teza, a kind of criticism against absurd political violence during the Red Terror in Ethiopia. We can perhaps say that he is a politically engaged artist without making political statements. There is always protest against black oppression, racism and senseless violence at the back of his mind or hidden somewhere in his subconscious although Haile seldom admits it.
It would however be an injustice to call Haile a politically-driven cinematographer because one can be an excellent artist even when handling political themes in cinema. Haile is rather an intellectual filmmaker. Sergei Einstein is admired not for making a film about the Russian revolution but for his extensive use of techniques like montage he used to bring the film Battleship Potemkin to a poignant life for the audience.
What makes Haile different from the run of the mill Hollywood filmmakers is that he neither cares about how much money his films make, nor worries about audience acceptance unless it is his audience, the black audience for which he cares much. Haile is a fiercely critic of the Hollywood film establishment that is dominated by the power of exclusively white studios, mostly owned by multibillion dollar white-owned companies.
Fortunately, Haile’s achievements cannot and should not be measured with the yardsticks of Hollywood where success is basically measured with the amount of money blockbusters make at the box office and not for their artistic qualities.
The barons of the American cinema make huge headlines every year at the Grammy awards but that is not intimidating to Haile who is a relentless critic who never tires to speak against the injustice of the film establishment. Not because he is denied access to the studios but because he is often averse to the injustices, lies, greed and tyranny with which Hollywood is operating both within America and globally. In a recent interview in connection with his upcoming film, Haile told the audience that, had he joined Hollywood, he could have died of a heart attack long time ago.
Given the racist and biased politics of Hollywood who would imagine that the boardroom could have accepted to make Sankofa? It was early in his career that Haile distanced himself from Hollywood because he knew they would not invest a dime in the production of his films. Haile believes that film is a weapon and can be used for good or evil and he considers himself a fighter for black rights, black voices everywhere in the world with the same potent weapon.
On another occasion, he was asked why he is passionate about being an African filmmaker, being black to which he answered that it was because he was a lost man right from the beginning when he came from Gondar to Addis Ababa, adding that he did not and does not know to this day why he left his native place and went to America. “I don’t know why I came here until this day instead of finding myself in Gorgora at this time where I could lie in my boat on the lake, bathing in the morning sun that appears every morning.” Haile said with a touch of nostalgia and a feeling of loss.
He said that he felt lost when he left his native Gondar and then when he left Ethiopia and went to the United States. He rather feels like this is not his natural place until his encounter with African Americans while studying in college and later on when he joined the black filmmaking fraternity that gave him confidence and purpose.
Haile’s father, Gerima Tafere, was a history writer and dramatist his mother who was a teacher. He was thus the product of two educated and talented people who have influenced not only his upbringing but also his later career as a filmmaker. Haile’s love for his father borders on adoration. He is immensely proud of his father and this is evident whenever he speaks about him. He owes both his inspiration and the materials for the stories that he is molding into his films to his father. That is why he is often saying that “Filmmakers who are not interested in their parents and grandparents should not call themselves filmmakers at all.”
For at least the last 50 years or so, Haile’s attitude towards cinema has never shown any sign of wavering. It all started when his first feature film entitled Sankofa appeared in 1993. The white move establishment tried to kill the film with silence maybe thinking that Haile would never survive without grants or co-productions with big studios. As he recently told the audience at a New York film festival where he elaborated on his ‘philosophy of cinema’ saying that telling stories is not only a passion running in his veins but a constant struggle to make the voice of black artists, filmmakers at all levels to be heard or find their voice and speak in their own voice to portray their own realties.
Haile’s philosophy of movie making is not a new one because even before him radical African filmmakers like the Senegalese Sembene Ousman had espoused the anti-colonial point of view and made films that defend black rights and exposed white oppression. But what makes Haile different from others is his militant personality, his courage to speak the truth, his critical faculty and his non-conformism when it comes to issues pertaining to his country, his family, memories of his father in his native Gondar and blackness vis a vis white supremacist oppression.
Haile is equally uncompromising when it comes to making films that reflect one’s history and identity instead of imitating Hollywood stereotypes. Professor Haile is also merciless in criticizing contemporary young filmmakers who are trying to imitate or copy Hollywood films in their attempt to copy-paste well the themes as well as the acting thereby producing something between a caricature and fantasy. According to him, young filmmakers to know their society and themselves, study their subject matters thoroughly before picking up the camera and start shooting.
Judging from the recent interviews he has with various social media sites, Haile Gerima’s obsession with history, the history of his family and that of his country seem to have assumed obsessive dimension. he is not trying to speak of Gondar, his father and grandfather and the past history of Ethiopia in a critical manner.
However, he is not only critical of is country but also the radical politician of his generation who chose to copy-paste the foreign ideologies from the West and from Eastern nations that embarked on revolution while they neglected their own history and traditions. He accuses them of failing to learn from their mistakes and worse still, criticizes them for making the same mistakes over and over again, in a kind of vicious cycle.
You might be amazed by his openness, outspokenness, disarming frankness and easy going manners. But most movie fans in Ethiopia or around the world agree on many points about Haile Gerima, the maverick filmmaker who has, single handedly taken Ethiopian cinema one step ahead and put it on the African and global map with Adwa, Harvest 2000, Bush Mama and his masterpiece Sankofa and many other major and minor productions.
First, Haile is a serious filmmakers, serious in its deepest sense. He takes years writing and polishing his scripts, as a scriptwriter. He does deep research spending months if not years on location studying the settings, the language, the psychology and behavior of his characters. He spends nights and days working in his studio on new stories before he has even the time to finish producing the project in hand. He is a human machine that invents stories, digging deep in history and he loves to dwell again and again on the theme of African and black oppression, black alienation, black or Ethiopian victory against while colonialists.
On the personal level many people agree that Haile is a fearless person who speaks his mind or has no axe to grind He is fiercely independent, nostalgic about Gondar and Ethiopia as a whole and keeps on working on new films although his previous productions did not make money as far as commercial success is concerned. Even Teza, the film that earned him critical acclaim has not earned him much money according to a recent interview.
The much anticipated new film by Haile Gerima is not or will not be his last masterpiece, Haile is a kind of person who does not stop making movies everyday-writing scripts, researching in depth, editing, toying new ideas. These are activities that usually take their tolls on the time he could devote for other things like family or friendship or social engagements. “I have raised my children properly and now that they have their own children, let them take care of them. I have done my job as a father and I am now free to pursue my passion. I am not going to become a baby-sitter.” He recently said with his characteristically loud laughter. Whether his scripts turn into films or not, Haile is always working. “I will die working on my films!” he told his interviewer, laughing at himself and adding, “I don’t even think I’ll die at all!”
Let’s wish Haile still many summers to come while he will continue to shock and surprise us with yet other masterpieces beyond his forthcoming production. Will it be even more powerful than Teza? Let us save this assignment to the critics.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald September 16/2023
