The South Africa-based Nigerian filmmaker, writer and actor plumbs the blurring line between science and the supernatural in his directorial debut, Ẹ̀jẹ̀, reports Vanessa Obioha
Do flying saucers exist (The US may have an answer soon)? What about the great Yoruba pantheons? Do people have spirit lovers? These are some of the mythological and scientific experiences that intrigued the South Africa-based Nigeria filmmaker and actor, Fabian Adeoye Lojede.
For as long as he could remember, the supernatural fascinated him such that when he discovered Yoruba pantheons as a teen, he found himself falling deeply in love as he did with Greek mythology.
“As Africans, the kind of stories we always end up telling each other has some kind of mystical or spiritual element to them. So you can’t really be African and be connected with your African way of thinking narratively and not necessarily look towards that parallel world,” he told me in a recent chat.
In his directorial debut as a filmmaker, Ẹ̀jẹ̀ (blood in Yoruba), Lojede introduced that parallel world to his audience, arousing curiosity on the Rhesus negative blood type — a blood type which origin and immunity against parasitic ailments is a mystery to scientists as well as the myths about it belonging to aliens and gods — while using blood as a connecting dot between myths, science and facts.
Ẹ̀jẹ̀, a sci-fi experimental film, tells the story of Lara (Nqobile Khumalo), a young unemployed woman who lands a babysitter job after responding to an online ad. She arrives at her new employer’s house to resume duties but after a few minutes in the house, Lara, alone with a seven-month-old baby, hears terrifying noises seemingly coming from upstairs. Fear, entangled with curiosity, guides her feet to the direction of the sounds. The next time we see Lara is in the hospital where her befuddled mind works desperately to piece together her assault at the house and the disbelief spread on the faces of the detectives and the doctor did little to help her situation.
With striking imagery, Lojede takes our sensory organs to a world where the line between reality, science and supernatural can be easily blurred as seen in a sex scene, where the filmmaker used artistic colours and objects to deliver his message on these realms.
“The imagery was very important to me,” he said. “Creating a sex scene isn’t that challenging per se, but for what I wanted and how to achieve it, it was very complex. I love visual representation and I knew I wanted to make the journey a visual experience for the audience, so artistically, everything was very well thought out in terms of colour scheme, art direction and grade. Nothing was left to chance. I spent more time planning the film than actually shooting, and we spent over a year in post-production to get everything right.”
Luckily, he was done with shooting before the pandemic struck hard. Although the film is titled in Yoruba, its characters are predominantly South Africans. Lojede, who kicked off a Pan-African initiative a few years ago, explained his decision this way:
“The first working title was Blood Link but I took a step back and thought it best to title it in Yoruba. Personally, I think in Yoruba and Pidgin. I speak in English at times but my mental language is Yoruba and Pidgin. Even when I saw blood, it always came to me as Ẹ̀jẹ̀. So, I decided to be true to my creative thought pattern.”
However, he added, that the myths explored are universal. “Mythology to a certain degree might belong to a particular country or region but the stories tend to have universal appeal.”
A critical question raised by Lojede in Ẹ̀jẹ̀ is if there is a meeting ground for science and myths. His response was instructive.
“It’s all a matter of perspective. One of Oscar Wilde quotes in the film was that religion dies when it’s proved to be true. What that line is saying is that mythology is something that some people believe is not factual, but the minute it becomes factual to them, then it ceases to be mythological.
“For instance, white people thought us to be ignorant at first when they saw that we took Agbo for malaria treatment but then they discovered that Dongoyaro (neem) contains quinine. We didn’t necessarily need the labs to prove that this thing was effective for us.”
He continued: “I believe there’s a meeting ground to a certain degree, but where that meeting ground is, is still a matter of perspective. The atheist who does not believe in God believes it was the Big Bang that caused the creation. One who does believe in God will also look at the sky and say God is up there. If an alien came down and looked at both the believer and the non-believer, he’d probably laugh at us.
“So there is a meeting point in terms of what we believe in, and the belief in nothing is a belief system in itself. It’s about just having an open mind and realising that the fact that we can’t prove something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” he concluded.
He noted that the short film will be going to festivals and hinted at plans to turn it into a series. Other actors featured in the film include Nigerian actor Akin Omotoso, Elizabeth Phoolo, Deborah Lettner among others.
