BUSHMAN (David Schickele, 1971) is a real discovery, already the subject of much excitement when shown at Ritrovato in Bologna, and now made available to us through Cinema Re-Discovered this coming weekend, where it is being screened Sunday 30th of July at 18.30. Set in 1968, in the context of the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, with the Nigerian Civil War in its second year, the film centres around the experiences of Gabriel (Paul Eyam Nzie Opokam), a Nigerian graduate student also teaching at San Francisco State College, the cross-cultural experiences he’s afforded, and the different types of racism he encounters. In the accompanying podcast, we discuss the film’s beauty, its politics, how it fluidly seems to condense so many of the burning issues in Black American cinema in the following four decades, and the important shifts in register near the film’s end. A really great film, so far little known, in a superb restoration by Milestone Films, that’s bound to encourage much discussion, as indeed it did with us.
The podcast may be listened to here:
The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT
and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546
The Cinema Re-Discovered Program may be seen below and also accessed here: wat_cr2023_a4_schedule_online_web (1)
For those interested, this is an interesting article on a film David Schickeles made earlier for, and during his time at, the Peace Corps:
Making David Schickele’s (Nigeria) Peace Corps film “Give Me A Riddle”
José Arroyo