Haile Gerima: Biography from Answers.com

movie producer; business owner

Personal Information

Born on March 4, 1946 in Gondor, Ethiopia; son of Tafeka Gerima; married Shirikiana Aina; five children.
Education: University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), MFA, film, 1976.
Memberships: Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers; African Committee of Filmmakers.

Career

Filmmaker. Works include: Hour Glass, Child of Resistance, Bushmama, 1975, Harvest: 3000 Years, 1976, Wilmington 10-USA 10,000, 1977, Ashes and Embers, 1982, After Winter: Sterling Brown, 1985, Sankofa, 1993, Adwa: An African Victory, 2000. Professor, Howard University, 1976-. Business owner: Mypheduh Films (film distribution), Sankofa Video and Bookstore, and Negodgwad Productions (film production).

Life's Work

Filmmaker Haile Gerima's 1993 film Sankofa follows a modern African woman as she is transported back in time to become a slave. The word sankofa means to go back to the past in order to move forward. It is an apt summation of the filmmaker's life. When he began making films, Gerima went back to mine the richness of his Ethiopian culture as well as the horrors of African slavery. In doing so he created a new form of African cinema with blacks as heroes and the Diaspora (the dispersion via slavery of African peoples throughout the New World) as the landscape. He weaves together history and traditional storytelling to create a provocative filmmaking style. Along the way he has become one of the most highly regarded independent filmmakers in the world.

However Gerima takes little pleasure in his renown. "My name is more known than my work," he told www.addistewlid.com, a website about Ethiopia. "In Africa, you just make four, five, or six films and you are renowned. That is like a mockery [of] our talent." Throughout his career Gerima has struggled for funding and been ignored by Hollywood, yet he has not stopped filming. When he found he could not get his films distributed, he founded a distribution company. When video rental chains refused to stock his films, he opened a video shop. When no theaters would carry his films, he rented out theaters across the country and presented the films himself. "We feel we are making our last stand in the cultural struggle--that is the struggle to make our own image," he told www.seeingblack.com. By reclaiming his past with film, Gerima is doing just that and creating a future for African and African American cinema in the process.

Embraced America, Shunned Ethiopia

The fourth of ten children, Haile Gerima was born in Gondor, Ethiopia, on March 4, 1946. His parents were both teachers, his mother at a primary school and his father for the Ministry of Education. His father, Tafeka Gerima, was also a playwright and founded a theater troupe that the young Gerima often performed with. According to the Sankofa website, his father "presented original and often historical drama, always submersed in the genuine culture of Ethiopia." It was a culture in direct opposition to the one Gerima studied in school.

"My sister and I were the first [in our family] to go to a so-called modern school," Gerima told www.rastafaritoday.com. There he was taught by well-meaning U.S. Peace Corps volunteers to spell Connecticut while his own culture and country were expelled from the curriculum. " ... I [learned to look down] on everything I [had] as primitive and savage, backward," Gerima recalled in an interview with the Africana website. Movies reinforced this idea. At his local theater nothing but American movies played. "I felt we [Africans] were savages," he told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "I learned from Tarzan that everybody has to go to America to become human." After a brief stint at the Creative Art Center at Haile Selassie I University, Gerima did just that, emigrating to the United States to study drama.

Gerima arrived at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago in 1967 and soon discovered that the American culture he had grown up admiring was not ready to accept him. At Goodman he was relegated to minor roles as servants and crooks. Gerima recalled the frustration during a speech at Mount Holyoke University, "I was writing plays at home... I was in my father's plays and here I am now [in the] background." Distanced from his own culture and rejected by Chicago's theater scene, Gerima found refuge in the Black Power Movement that was gaining momentum throughout the country.

Turned to Film to Reclaim His Culture

In 1969 he moved to California and, according to www.africana.com, "grew the biggest Afro he could." However it was not only his hairstyle that changed during that time--his focus also shifted. He continued in the interview with www.africana.com, "a whole lot of rebellion [was] going on across the United States. [It was] a very turbulent time, but for me it was my rehabilitation. It gave me a time to breathe, to think and to reassess my life as well." Gerima soon turned to film. "I went to UCLA to start all over and made the transition to film by accident," he told the Addis Tewlid website. "I stumbled into the motion pictures department and I thought it was an interesting power of expression. I felt it was a very important medium to express myself."

He also began to turn a critical eye to the American movies he had devoured as a child. "At UCLA, I was intermingling with students from Brazil and Mexico. We shared a collective rage," he told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "We realized we had been betrayed by the movies." Hollywood had misrepresented his culture and that of countless others, including that of African Americans. "Once you see all these Hollywood movies you have two demonized populations of America, black people and Native Americans, and you're scared of them," he told www.africana.com. "Blacks were criminal, always, constantly, and violent, and will kill you to rob you. If you saw those movies when you were a kid it aggravates your consciousness." He decided to make movies that told the truth.

While in graduate school, Gerima made the short film Bushmama about the political awakening of a young black mother on welfare. "When I made the movie ... Black people were so hungry," he recalled in his speech at Mount Holyoke. "In Oakland they saw my movie and they thought it was a miracle movie and hugged me and cried and wrote poems about me." It was a very important experience for Gerima and validated for him the need for his work. His first feature film followed. Released in 1976, the same year he earned his MFA in film, Harvest: 3000 Years "was a sophisticated examination, through the story of a village that finally overthrows its feudal landlord, of the centuries-old oppression of the Ethiopian peasantry," wrote the Africana website. It drew international acclaim and earned Gerima the Oscar Micheaux Award for Best Feature Film from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. Micheaux was an important African American filmmaker from the twenties and an inspiration to Gerima.

Chose Howard University Over Hollywood

In the filmmaking industry a graduate degree from UCLA's famed film school is considering a launching board for a career in Hollywood. However, Gerima had other ideas. He moved to Washington D.C. and took a teaching position at Howard University, where he continues to this day as a professor in the radio, television, and film department. "[Hollywood] doesn't have an appeal to me because it only inducts or recruits people to serve its interest," Gerima told www.addistewlid.com. "That is why I even came to Howard to teach and be a part-time filmmaker. Because I didn't want to be subservient to the white Euro-centric cultural power in Hollywood." He concluded, "They wouldn't want me, nor do I want them."

Gerima's next few films documented the struggles of the African-American community. His 1977 documentary Wilmington 10-USA 10,000 told the story of ten African Americans, including former NAACP leader Benjamin Chavez, who were jailed on questionable charges for the fire-bombing of a white-owned grocery during riots in Wilmington, North Carolina. The convictions were overturned after Amnesty International intervened. In 1982 Gerima released the powerful Ashes and Embers. Described by The Nation as "honest and brave," the film documents a black American soldier's return from Vietnam and the realization that he doesn't have a place in his country--neither within the white power structure, nor with black activists.

Though both these films were well received, neither of them drew the attention of Hollywood, and Gerima found trouble getting them distributed. So in 1982 he founded Mypheduh Films which became one of the leading distributors of films by people of African descent. Mypheduh, from the Ethiopian Geze language, was a name given Gerima by his father and means "sacred shield of culture"--a very fitting description of the goal of the company.

Struggled to Make "Sankofa"

It was about this time that Gerima first conceived the idea for Sankofa. He wanted to tell the story of slavery from a slave's point of view and honor the forgotten history of the many slaves who escaped to freedom on their own. "Hollywood makes stories like Cry Freedom and Mississippi Burning where blacks are either spectators or victims to be freed by whites," he told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "This cripples the African American viewer's self-esteem." Upon completing the screenplay Gerima encountered massive hurdles in securing funding. "The moment I wanted to make Sankofa my credentials in the USA vanished, because I was venturing into forbidden territory," he told the One World website. "The resource centers were closed to me; I couldn't get funding."

It was not until 1991 that Gerima had enough money to begin filming. Two years later Sankofa premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. It won international critical acclaim and several awards, including first prize in the African Film Festival. However, distributors did not want to touch it. "One distributor said it was too black," Gerima recalled to the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "Then another said they couldn't market this movie. Yet another said the black audience would not go see 'serious' films." In response, Gerima rented out theaters across the country and marketed the film directly to African American activists and leaders. Buzz about the film soon filled the black press, and in each city where Sankofa played, it played to full houses. "In city after city, audiences weep at Gerima's saga of Shola, an African woman who is shackled, then sent across the sea to toil on a sugar plantation in the Americas before rebelling against her slave-owners," wrote the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Both blacks and whites flocked to see the film and it became clear that not only was there an audience for the film, but that audiences felt a need to see it.

In 1996, with some of the proceeds from Sankofa, Gerima opened Sankofa Video and Bookstore in Washington, partly in response to the refusal of video rental chains to stock his and other African filmmakers's work. The store also housed Mypheduh Films and Gerima's film production company, Negodgwad Productions. Gerima's wife Shirikiana Aina, with whom he has five children, is his business partner in these ventures. Though the store stocks mainstream black films, according to www.seeingblack.com, the couple hoped to "make it normal" for African Americans to rent and watch independent and foreign films about the Diaspora.

Works Continued to Reclaim History

Gerima's next major film documented the 1896 defeat of invading Italian armies by the Ethiopian people wielding little more than spears and an incredible conviction to defend their land. "It is a major event, but very underplayed not only to other people, but even to myself," Gerima told The Washington Times. Part documentary, part historical drama, Adwa: An African Victory released in 2000, required Gerima to travel back to his homeland and interview elders who knew first-hand accounts of the battle and could pinpoint the areas where fighting took place. Again, Gerima distributed the film himself, booking theaters across the nation and marketing it straight to the black community through the black media.

At the close of 2002 Gerima had two projects in the works: The Children of Adwa chronicling the return of Italy to Ethiopia in 1935 and a film about the Maroons--freed or escaped slaves that created their own communities during slavery. Both stories are examples of Gerima's driving motivation--sankofa, reclaiming the past in order to move forward. By rescuing these histories, Gerima is hoping to undue some of the damage that generations of white Hollywood heroes have unleashed on the minds of countless children of African descent. "How can black people be anything if they are not culturally anchored?" Gerima asked during his speech at Mount Holyoke. "If one doesn't have cultural peace with ones self, does not respect one's origin, one's soul, one's spirit, one's physical appearance, how can they succeed in anything?" His solution is to turn to the past. "Many of us have disconnected our antennae," Gerima told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "But those people in shackles who crossed the ocean are trying to speak to us." Through his films, Gerima is giving them a voice.

Awards

Oscar Micheaux Award for Best Feature Film, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame for Harvest: 3000 Years, 1976; Best Cinematography Award, Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Burkina Faso, Africa for Sankofa; First Prize, African Film Festival for Sankofa; Oscar Micheaux Award for Best Feature Film, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame for Sankofa; Mayor's Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, Washington DC, 1993.

Haile Gerima
Born	March 4, 1946 (1946-03-04) (age 63) Gondar, Ethiopia
Occupation	Film director, film producer, screenwriter
Years active	1972–present
Spouse(s)	Shirikiana Aina (?? – present)

Early years

Gerima was born and raised in Gondar, Ethiopia, where he sat around the fire engrossed in the tales told by parents and grandparents. His father, a dramatist and playwright who traveled across the Ethiopian countryside staging local plays, was perhaps his greatest influence, nurturing a love of the art.

He immigrated to the United States in 1968, at the age of twenty-one, with an interest in theatre. In Chicago, he enrolled in acting classes at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. "When I was growing up," he reveals in the Los Angeles Times, "I wanted to work in theatre—it never occurred to me I could be a filmmaker because I was raised on Hollywood movies that pacified me to be subservient. Film making isn't encouraged or supported by the Ethiopian government." He felt limited by theatre and was resigned, notes Francoise Pfaff, to "subservient roles in Western plays." By 1970 he had discovered "the power of cinema."

He migrated to California to attend the University of California, where he earned Bachelor's and Master of Fine Arts degrees in film. At UCLA he, along with award-winning filmmakers Charles Burnett ("Killer of Sheep"), Jamaa Fanaka ("Penitentiary"), Ben Caldwell ("I and I"), Larry Clark (not the Larry Clark who directed Kids) and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) was a member of the Los Angeles School of Black filmmakers.

Influenced in part by the pioneering work of film luminaries Vittorio de Sica, Fernando Solanas, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and Med Hondo, Gerima makes films that tell of the human condition. He exploits the medium as a political weapon and as a catalyst for understanding and social change at the same time, consciously eschewing what he describes as the narrative dictatorship of Hollywood pictures.

Film career

Early films

By the time Gerima graduated in 1976, he had completed four films^[1]: Hour Glass (1972); Child of Resistance (1972); Bush Mama (1976); and, Mirt Sost Shi Amit (also known as Harvest: 3,000 Years; 1976)

Gerima's 1976 "Bush Mama", produced during the period of film history known as the Blaxploitation era, is in stark with that era as its depiction of the travails of black life and culture are far removed from that of the drug deals and revenge killings of Superfly (1972) and Foxy Brown (1976). Bush Mama is the story of Dorothy and her husband T.C., a discharged Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a "hero's welcome." Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Theirs is a world of welfare, perennial unemployment, and despair. To some, the film may appear bleak and nihilistic with its stark black-and-white photography, but its message is moving and distinct. Issues of institutionalized racism, police brutality, and poverty remain sadly pertinent and the film, nearly twenty-five years old, retains its potency.

For the production of Mirt Sost Shi Amit (Harvest: 3,000 Years)^[2] Gerima returned to his native Ethiopia to produce the tale of a poor peasant family who eke out an existence within a brutal, exploitative, and feudal system of labor.

1978's Wilmington 10—USA 10,000 exposed the impact of racism and the shortcomings of the criminal justice system by examining the infamous history of the nine black men and one white woman who became known as the Wilmington 10.

Ashes and Embers and the 1980s

In 1982 he again focused his camera upon the travails of black urban life in the two-hour film, Ashes and Embers (film)|Ashes and Embers, the story of a moody and disillusioned Black veteran of the Vietnam War.^[3]

After Winter: Sterling Brown (1985) is a reverent and absorbing documentary about the famous Black poet Sterling Brown.

Sankofa and the 1990s

Gerima is perhaps best known as the writer, producer and director of the acclaimed 1993 film Sankofa. This historically inspired dramatic tale of African resistance to slavery has won international acclaim, awarded first prize at the African Film Festival in Milan, Italy; Best Cinematography at Africa's premier Festival of Pan African Countries known as FESPACO; and nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film festival, where it competed with other Hollywood films. In addition, the film captured the imagination of huge audiences across the United States, many of whom waited in long lines and filled theaters for weeks on end. In so doing, the film defied the notion that signing with mainstream distributors was the only option for filmmakers to have the public see their films. Guided by an independent philosophy, Gerima practiced an innovative strategy in distribution whose success remains unprecedented in African American film history.

"Spirit of the dead, rise up and claim your story!" as its haunting opening, it presents with brutal realism, the horrors of African slavery. The story is revealed through the eyes of Mona, a modern-day woman who is possessed by spirits and transported back in time as Shola, a house slave on the Lafayette plantation in Louisiana. The savagery and violence of the evil institution are clearly disturbing and go far beyond the safe and conventional images of slavery presented by Hollywood. In Sankofa, we hear the chilling sound of human flesh as it is seared with a hot branding iron and see the barren faces of the human cargo; women are stripped of all dignity and subject to the continual sexual exploitation of their owners; human necks are enclosed in iron shackles; and rape is used as a tool of terror and domination. Some panned Gerima for his stylistic flourishes but the response by the black community was positive and enthusiastic. The film was well-received and played to full houses for many weeks in major cities.

Imperfect Journey (1994), is a BBC-commissioned film that explores the political and psychic recovery of the Ethiopian people after the atrocities and political repression or red terror of the military junta of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The filmmaker questions the direction of the succeeding government and the will of the people in creating institutions guaranteeing their liberation.

1999's Adwa: An African Victory is a compelling documentary drama of the history of the 1896 battle of resistance in which the Ethiopian people arose and united to defeat the Italian army. The film is skillfully interlaced with paintings, sound, music, rare historical photographs, and interviews of elders who recall the details of the story of Adwa. It concludes with a dramatic recreation of the final battle.

Teza

Gerima's most recent film is Teza (2008). Set in Ethiopia and Germany, the film chronicles the return of an Ethiopian intellectual to his country of birth during the repressive Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the recognition of his own displacement and powerlessness at the dissolution of his people's humanity and social values. After several years spent studying medicine in Germany, Anberber returns to Ethiopia only to find the country of his youth replaced by turmoil. His dream of using his craft to improve the health of Ethiopians is squashed by a military junta that uses scientists for their own political ends. Seeking the comfort of his countryside home, Anberber finds no refuge from violence. The solace that the memories of his youth provide is quickly replaced by the competing forces of military and rebelling factions. Anberber needs to decide whether he wants to bear the strain or piece together a life from the fragments that lay around him.

Independent distribution and Mypheduh Films Inc.

Gerima distributes and promotes his films himself through Mypheduh Films Inc., a distribution company for low-budget, independent films that he and his wife of 12 years, Sirikiana Aina (who is also a filmmaker), established in 1984.

"I'm a third-world, independent filmmaker," declared Haile Gerima in a 1983 interview.

Though now well-established and respected as a filmmaker, Gerima, like many independent filmmakers, has failed to capture a mainstream audience, a reality he finds bittersweet. "I was never enamored of the film industry," he reveals in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Every Hollywood story is Eurocentric and if it isn't, then it will simply be disregarded. So I never wanted to be part of an industry that fails to represent the world as it really exists."

In spite of numerous limitations and against all odds, Gerima has succeeded in a tough industry for nearly thirty years and has emerged as one of the more potent outsider voices in the history of filmmaking.

Sankofa Bookstore

His film center, located in the heart of the African American community at 2714 Georgia Avenue in Washington, DC, represents one of the real manifestations of the dream he has for independent African American cinema.

Filmography

1972 - Hour Glass Hour Glass
1972 - Child of Resistance
1976 - Bush Mama
1976 - Mirt Sost Shi Amit (also known as Harvest: 3,000 Years)
1978 - Wilmington 10 -- U.S.A. 10,000
1982 - Ashes and Embers
1985 - After Winter: Sterling Brown
1993 - Sankofa
1994 - Imperfect Journey
1999 - Adwa - An African Victory
2009 - Teza

Awards, nominations and distinctions

Main article: List of awards won by Haile Gerima

Over the course of his career, Gerima has received a considerable number of awards and distinctions in film festivals, saluting his work as a director, and screenwriter.

1976 - Grand prize / Silver Leopard for Harvest: 3000 Years-Locarno
1982 - Grand Prix Award for Ashes and Embers-Lisbon International Film Festival
1983 - FIPRESCI Film Critics Award for Ashes and Embers-Berlin Film Festival
Outstanding Production Ashes and Embers-London Film Festival
1984 - Tribute Festival De la Rochelle, France
1987 - Long Metrage De Fiction-Prix de la Ville de Alger for Ashes and Embers
1993 - Best Cinematography Award for Sankofa,FESPACO,Burkina Faso
2003 - Lifetime Achievement Award, 4th Annual Independence Film Festival, Washington D.C.
2006 - Festival De Cannes Selection Official Cannes Classic -Harvest: 3,000 Years
2008 - Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize and Best Screen Play Award - Teza
2009 - Jury Award at the 18th International Film Festival Innsbruck/Austria - Teza
2009 - Golden Stallion of Yennenga at the Fespaco African Film Festival - Teza http://www.rfi.fr/actuen/articles/111/article_3102.asp
2009 - Dioraphte Award Hubert Bals film in highest audience regard at the Rotterdam Film Festival
2009 - Golden Tanit/Best Film Award for its "modesty and genius," Best Music(Jorga Mesfin Vijay Ayers), Best Cinematography(Mario Massini), Best Screenplay(Haile Gerima), Best Supporting Actor Abeye Tedla at the Carthage/Tunisia Film Festival for Teza (film)
2009 - Golden Unicorn and Best Feature Film at the Amiens/France International Film Festival France for Teza
2009 -The Human Value's Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece for Teza
2009 - Best Composer (Jorga Mesfin) at the Dubai International Film Festival for Teza
2009 - Official Selection at the Toronto Film Festival for Teza

References

^ Kristine McKenna, Los Angeles Times, "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", May 29 1995.
^ Asrat, H., Abesha.com, "H. Asrat’s review of Harvest:3,000 Years on Abesha.Com", March 4, 2009
^ Maslin, Janet, New York Times, "Movie Review: Ashes and Embers", November 17 1982.

External links

Sankofa Official Site
Biography at blackfilmmakers.net
Haile Gerima at the Internet Movie Database
Sankofa at the Internet Movie Database
Adwa at the Internet Movie Database
An interview with Haile Gerima
Teza Official Site

Persondata
NAME	Gerima, Haile
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Ethiopian director, film professor, philosopher, and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 4, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gondar, Ethiopia
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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