Zina Saro-Wiwa
2021Phyllis
Zina Saro-Wiwa
Olushola Adeyinka, Gboyega Babajide
Phyllis is a moving and atmospheric portrait of a ‘psychic’ vampire, a woman obsessed with synthetic Nollywood dramas, that lives alone in Lagos, Nigeria. The central idea of this short experimental film is the practise and significance of wig-wearing in Nollywood film; a practise the director has invested with deeper psychological as well as science-fiction layers. Underpinning this central idea however is a critique of the unforgiving treatment of single women in Nollywood and Nigeria. The film is an example of what the director, Zina Saro-Wiwa, has termed “alt-Nollywood”, a genre that plays with and reworks certain narrative, stylistic and visual conventions of Nollywood. Phyllis explores the gothic possibilities of the Nollywood aesthetic creating a new kind of low-budget atmospheric film that is very much of Nollywood and yet subverts the genre. Using Nollywood to subvert Nollywood.
Phyllis
The Deliverance of Comfort
Zina Saro-Wiwa
Onome Sansom
Short satirical fable about a 'child witch' called Comfort. The Deliverance of Comfort is a critical and densely-layered response to the belief in child witches in some parts of rural Nigeria and Africa. The film questions the very nature of belief and comments on the complex relationship between pre-Christian pagan belief and modern day Nigerian Christianity. The relationship between Exu, The Devil, the human spirit and God. Inspired by the low-fi special effects employed in Nigerian Nollywood films especially when the supernatural is being evoked, "The Deliverance of Comfort" uses these same techniques but challenges the conservative and unchanging ideas about the supernatural drawing uncomfortable conclusions. In essence using Nollywood to subvert Nollywood.
The Deliverance of Comfort
