Haile Gerima

Haile Gerima (born 19 Mrch 1946)is an Ethiopian filmmaker who lives and works in the United States. He is a leading member of the L.A. Rebellion film movement, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers. He was Born and raised in Ethiopia, the fourth in a family of 10 children. Quotes “We took control of the distribution of our films because most distributors believe black people only want to see shoot-’em-up movies, and the deals I was offered were exploitative,” “So, we came up with our own system, and this is how it works: When we plan to open the movie in a city, we prepare by making phone calls to the black community and telling people, ‘If you want to see this movie in your town, call 10 people by phone,’ ” “In each city we have an employed coordinator, and the contract we offer theaters who book the film stipulates that we be allowed time between each show for discussion." “ ‘Sankofa’ is our first success using this methodology,” “Prior to this we had been booking our films in art film theaters, and were failing to reach the African American community that could make the film a success--we weren’t aware that art houses alienate the African American community. So, we went to the elders of the African American community in D.C., and they arranged for us to have use of a theater for one week. The film got a huge response--we played to full houses for 11 weeks. We then took the film to Boston and Baltimore, and using the revenue from those screenings, took it to 25 more cities. At this point, we’ve taken in more than $2 million.” “When I was growing up, I wanted to work in theater--it never occurred to me I could be a filmmaker because I was raised on Hollywood movies that pacified me to be subservient. Filmmaking isn’t encouraged or supported by the Ethiopian government, who prefer that people merely consume things exported by the U.S.” “It was there,” “I saw the African and Latin American movies that awakened me to myself as a filmmaker--by the time I graduated in 1976, I’d completed four films.” “Many distributors looked at ‘Sankofa,’ but they all refused to handle it,” “The first part of ‘Sankofa’ is set on a plantation and my original plan was to shoot in Louisiana, but the minute we got there and they saw a black crew they jacked up the price of everything,” “So, I shot that sequence in Jamaica, then a year later went to Africa and completed the rest of the film in three weeks.” “I didn’t bother looking for funding in Hollywood because Hollywood is incapable of allowing African Americans to make the films they want to make--what they want from us is hooligan movies. The blaxploitation films Hollywood produced in the ‘70s, for instance, did nothing for the African American community. Those directors were like cotton pickers who were working for the major plantation--Hollywood." "This situation made me ask myself: Why are we submitting to this narrative dictatorship? Can we introduce our language? ‘Sankofa’ is an imperfect answer to those questions. I want to tell my stories the way my father told stories to me and have no interest in perpetuating the Hollywood planet, because everyone is disfigured by the disaster taking place there.” ‘Sankofa’: A Saga of Slavery Reaches the Big Screen : Movies: Haile Gerima hit a brick wall when trying to finance his story of a black woman, so he did it himself- Los Angeles Times(29 May 1995) “It really taught me how to do everything. We taught each other. We worked on each other’s films…People like Charles Burnett and Larry Clark, they had a big impact on my own work.” “I may not have a claim, of how distributed I am all over the world, but what comes to me are all the black people who hugged me after doing Sankofa. That to me was the biggest capital I ever received, and it’s emotional, it’s very visceral.” A Chat with Haile Gerima: Part II-UCLA FilM and Television Archive(21 September 2012) I don’t claim to make perfect films. It’s all imperfect. It will be imperfect it’s in the imperfection that you start to reconstruct the real story of our people To put a perfect human being [on screen] with no contradiction is, to me, fascist If you mythologize our heroes—if you say that you can’t be like Assata Shakur, you can’t be like Angela Davis, you can’t be like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X—then you’re destroying us, you’re killing us, you enter Hollywood I don’t want a culture that says you can’t. I don’t want that culture that discourages me for me a Black cinema that does not demystify, make human, make accessible to us [our people], to realize our capacity, that I too can make a difference—that to me is a fascist cinema It is important for me to know that there were many filmmakers before me. I’m not the first to discover Black film—there are other Black people It’s a bad knowledge for a Black person to think I was the first anything, and to accept that is to kill every Black effort before him or herself. I hate that—more than racism The first of anything denies the struggle, the human texture of resistance. You can’t begin resisting. You are a descendant of resistance We forget that barefoot Black people, the day they hit this continent, resisted A lot of young people think it will be a takeaway from them when they recognize their grandparents. It doesn’t take away from your individual film storytelling, it only strengthens you to say “I am amongst many people Your own resistance becomes fake when you say “I’m new Instead of benign storytelling that makes white people comfortable, now is the time [that] we have to unleash Black vision, Black people’s idea of what kind of world Black people want, from an economic, cultural, social state You need to hold hands collectively, even with people you can’t agree with What are we doing here unless we have young Black people behind us to take over? The script is written in front of us. All we have to do is amplify it with the camera, put the light on it. A Collective Cinema: A Conversation with Haile Gerima 22 May 2024 cinema's devastating capacity to colonize can be counter-utilized in a way that projects one's own human story—without apologies My particular form of politicization, not wanting to be subjugated by the mainstream cinema to its mandates and assumptions, has by default made me into a political animal My audience is myself None of us are without the virus of colonialism and its impact on who we are When I do a movie, I respond to my own hunger first Every movie is a staircase for me, something to learn from, but all of them possess a rage that has not left me : I don't calculate when I write. I vomit when I write. I don't sanitize things African Americans, in a sense, realigned me, helping me to find my own political center, my own cultural centeredness, in a way that has been important Africans worship whiteness indirectly, unconsciously DECOLONIZING THE FILMIC MIND An Interview with Haile Gerima n.d Without struggle, there is no life When the oppressors realize that the world cannot be ruled by savagery anymore, then history will testify on behalf of those who are powerless now I see that women in all societies still play the role of outsiders—even when they participate I'm an outsider, but I will also always be in the opposition I've always believed that the more you endorse the new system you bring about, the more you become like the very people you overthrew If you see me fighting for something, I will also be the first to oppose it when it starts to disfigure itself White Americans and African Americans tend to portray the struggle as between the two of them. They always forget the Native Americans are there In America everybody is silent about the oppression and the bad condition of people who are outsiders. Nobody seems to care I don't think I'll ever make a perfect film, but I know every film will be a very, very important experience, will be a very energetic entrance. How willing are you to be your own spectator, your own audienœ—just to look at what you're doing as it happens? Black independent film: An interview with Haile Gerima 13 December 2007 I’ve always felt that your strength has to come from a community you have a certain affinity with Without a community, it’s hard to gauge where you are in your work or your own evolution if you’re coming to a community that’s very discouraged from being equal partners in the cultural evolution, it’s a very dangerous world When you suddenly become a chorus to your own destruction, it’s visible To be highlighted from the rest of society is not my culture Maybe ambitiousness is the problem. Stop being ambitious, and learn how to say no I think we need to address our own inner needs, which are maybe distorted needs Logic is the enemy of art There’s no green light or red light or law and order in the faculty of the imagination. It’s irrationally born. Once it’s born, you can study it to find its own logic and fashion it accordingly. The only thing new on this earth is the artist. Their voice is new, and it’s their job to empower it, not to kill it with the committee of mainstream film culture Your uniqueness is ripped off by uniformity It’s important to defend how you think, converted, inverted, concave, it doesn’t matter. under your nose there is always a story to be told I’m interested in humanizing facts. Facts have to be nationalized by human emotion because facts have been dehumanized, decapitated from the people who need them, and used as a weapon against them. I prefer boring you to death than submitting to this hip-hop, fast cut, very non-transactional bombardment of audiences piecemeal death is dangerous. Once you start to taste the sugar, you take more and more, and before you know it you’re addicted to sugar Stoking the Fire: A Conversation with Haile Gerima 8 November 2021 External Link