Akosua Adoma Owusu

Akosua Adoma Owusu (born January 1, 1984) is a Ghanaian-American avant-garde filmmaker and producer whose films have screened worldwide in prestigious film festivals, museums, galleries, universities and microcinemas since 2005. “Owusu uses various production techniques to visualize a state of triple consciousness,[1] a term she coined in reference to a central tenet of the sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois’s landmark text The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Du Bois' double consciousness accounts for the experience of black Americans negotiating a sense of selfhood in the face of discrimination and cultural dislocation. As part of the first generation in her family to be born in the United States, Owusu extends Du Bois’s concept to speak to the crisis of heritage and assimilation for African expatriates and their US-born children." Owusu has stated that “instead of ‘Africanizing’ Western stories, I’m interested in reclaiming African history rendering them into what is happening in the present day.”

Early life and education

Born to Ghanaian parents, Akosua Adoma Owusu grew up in a working-class immigrant community in Alexandria, Virginia. She is the youngest of three siblings to Grace and Albert A. Owusu, Sr. She was the first baby born in Northern Virginia on January 1, 1984. Owusu holds MFA degrees in Film & Video and Fine Art from California Institute of the Arts and received her BA in Media Studies and Studio Art with distinction from the University of Virginia, where she studied under the mentorship of prolific avant-garde filmmaker, Kevin Jerome Everson.[2]

Career

Named by Indiewire as one of the six Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema,[3] and one of The Huffington Post‘s Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know,[4] Akosua Adoma Owusu is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. Founded in 2007, her company, Obibini Pictures, LLC has produced award-winning films including Reluctantly Queer and Kwaku Ananse, which received the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Short Film. Reluctantly Queer was nominated for the Golden Bear and Teddy Award at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival.[5]

Moving between the worlds of experimental film, African cinema, and fine art, Owusu established her presence in the fine art world with her showing in 30 Seconds Off an Inch at the Studio Museum in Harlem. At 25, Owusu was the youngest artist to be included in this exhibition of 60 distinct artworks by 42 established artists at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art screened Me Broni Ba, which “contemplates the obsession with white standards of beauty,” in its Documentary Fortnight program.

In 2010, Owusu was a featured artist at the 56th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Artforum listed Me Broni Ba as one of 2010’s top ten films [6] In 2011, Owusu exhibited work alongside her University of Virginia mentor Kevin Jerome Everson in Cusp: Works on Film & Video by Kevin Jerome Everson & Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Luggage Store Gallery. Called the “intimate and the ideal realization of the vision of a valuable genius",[7] this show included Revealing Roots, a silent reenactment of one of the most dramatic scenes from the television version of Alex Haley’s Roots combining found footage and scenes that star Owusu along with other African actors.

Owusu has also been featured in major exhibitions including Modern Mondays: An Evening with Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Museum of Modern Art; L'évènement Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Centre Pompidou; America Is Hard to See and Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016 at the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Art of Hair in Africa at the Fowler Museum; Two Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu at Art+Practice [8] in association with the Hammer Museum; Existential Crisis at the Rochester Art Center; Prospect.3: Notes for Now New Orleans Biennial; [9] Do/Tell at the Institute of Contemporary Art; Fore, VideoStudio; and Bearden Project at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Fowler Museum, Yale University Film Study Center, and Indiana University Bloomington, home of the Black Film Center/Archive.

In 2015, Owusu's production company Obibini Pictures, LLC optioned the exclusive rights to produce "On Monday of Last Week", a film adaptation of a short story in renowned author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection, "The Thing Around Your Neck."[10][11]

Rex Cinema

In 2013, Akosua Adoma Owusu launched a crowdfunding campaign to ‘Save the Rex’. The Rex Cinema [12] is one of Ghana’s oldest cinema houses. Political insecurity in Ghana in the 60s, 70s and 80s led to a decline in the Arts which also affected cinema houses. All of them closed down in the wake of military coups and curfews. At the time, there were only few modern cinemas in Ghana’s capital Accra. Owusu sought to change that statistic by reviving the Rex to its former glory. Her crowdfunding campaign was a success.

“I visited the Rex after she and her team had begun work – the exterior had a bright yellow new coat, the chairs within the interior compound were a shiny blue. I listened to Adoma describe the kind of films and events that could take place at the new Rex and felt excited about the future of filmmaking and the arts in Ghana. Just as the new Rex was close to being re-launched, Adoma started facing all sorts of challenges and blocks from civil servants. Rather than feel demotivated she decided to return to the States and create a new body of work.”[13] Despite Owusu’s best efforts, the process was extended and the project was stalled.

Awards

Her forthcoming feature, Black Sunshine received support from Creative Capital, Tribeca All Access,[14] IFP, ARTE International Award [15] and the Berlinale World Cinema Fund.[16] In an interview with South Africa's Elle Magazine, Owusu said "I began filming in Ghana as a way to find a place in my Ghanaian heritage. I often refer to myself as a Ghanaian-American, but I do consider myself to be an American filmmaker of Ghanaian descent. When I am in America, I feel very Ghanaian and when I’m in Ghana, I feel more American. I started traveling to Ghana with my friends from America to help me with the trauma of dealing with blackness both in Africa and in the African diaspora. My love for Africa was informed by romantic ideas about the continent as a home awaiting my arrival. Filming in Ghana, forms part of this journey." [17]

In 2013, her film, Kwaku Ananse received a Golden Bear nomination at the Berlinale and won the 2013 African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria for Best Short Film. Kwaku Ananse participated in Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma - César Golden Nights Panorama program of Best Short Films of the year, a program that selects notable short films awarded in 2013. Her film, Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2013.

Owusu’s short work, Me Broni Ba exhibited in 100 international film festivals and museums around the world and won Best Short Film awards at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Athens International Film Festival in 2009. [18]

Following the success of Me Broni Ba, Owusu's next short work, Drexciya, was inspired by a myth of the Detroit-based techno band. It was praised at the 2011 Tarifa African film festival for its 'radical nature’ and ‘poetic insight’ and went on to win Best Experimental Film at the Guanajuato International Film Festival in Mexico.

In 2016, Reluctantly Queer a film directed and produced by Akosua Adoma Owusu won the Best International Short Award at the Baltimore International Black Film Festival. Reluctantly Queer previously screened at New Directors/New Films,[19] the BFI London Film Festival [20] and also the Berlinale.

Filmography

Further Reading and Viewing

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Akosua Adoma Owusu.
  1. ↑ "Two Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu". Jamillah James. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  2. ↑ Kevin Jerome Everson
  3. ↑ Page, Aubrey. "6 Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema". Indiewire. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  4. ↑ "30 Black Artists Under 40 You Should Know". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  5. ↑ Berlinale, Berlin International Film Festival
  6. ↑ "Me Broni Ba (My White Baby), 2009". Artforum.com. Retrieved 2010-10-10.
  7. ↑ Swanhuyser, Hiya. "Whip My Hair". SF Weekly. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  8. ↑ "Akosua Adoma Owusu / Critics' Picks". artforum.com. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  9. ↑ "Prospect.3". ArtForum.com. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  10. ↑ "Another Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Story Is Being Adapted Into a Film". Essence.com. Retrieved 2016-10-18.
  11. ↑ "Meet the Ghanaian filmmaker who's adapting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie". True Africa.co. Retrieved 22 June 2016.
  12. ↑ "Filmmaker hoping to rejuvenate Ghana's dilapidated old cinemas". AFP news agency. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
  13. ↑ "Akosua Adoma Owusu: From 'Kwaku Ananse' to 'Bus Nut'". This Is Africa Lifestyle. Retrieved 2016-02-18.
  14. ↑ "Fifteen Projects Selected for Tribeca Film Institute All Access Grants". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  15. ↑ "Durban FilmMart Winner Touts 'Sunshine,' Ghanaian Cinema". Variety. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
  16. ↑ "Akosua Adoma Owusu's 'Black Sunshine' is a Berlinale World Cinema Fund Selection". Indiewire. Retrieved 2014-07-11.
  17. ↑ "Meet Akosua Adoma Owusu". Elle Magazine South Africa. Retrieved 2015-09-12.
  18. ↑ "40 Festivals and Counting: Me Broni Ba (my white baby) on the Film Circuit". 24700 News From California Institute of the Arts. Retrieved 2010-07-21.
  19. ↑ "The Best of New Directors/New Films 2016 Might Be These 3 Documentary Shorts". NonFics.com. Retrieved 2016-03-31.
  20. ↑ "Every film by a black director at the 2016 BFI London Film Festival". Little White Lies. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
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