Mami Wata + Drexciya

Waves smack across the shore at night as a young woman silently knots her braids, rises, and walks into the ocean. She has given herself to Mami Wata, the water goddess. So begins Fiery Obasi’s tremendous, dreamy fable, shot in inky, lustrous black and white and playing out an elemental tale of magic, devotion, and generational restlessness. In this matriarchal village, Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) is the priestess and power broker, but there is a growing unease among the people, a suspicion that the old ways no longer hold sway…

Celebrating Black Futures is co-presented with the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Kika Memeh.

+ short film Drexciya

(Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2011, 12 minutes)

A portrait of an abandoned public swimming facility located in Accra, Ghana set on the Riviera. The Riviera at one time was an upscale development, consisting of luxury high-rises and five star hotels. Since the 1970s, the Riviera has fallen into a disheveled state. This short documentary was inspired by afro-futurist myths propagated by the underground Detroit-based band Drexciya. They suggest that Drexciya is a mythical underwater subcontinent populated by the unborn children of African women thrown overboard during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. These children have adapted and evolved to breathe underwater.

Manages to distill themes that are at once primal and complex with virtuosic simplicity via the film’s arresting score, its refined story and dialogue and its black and white cinematography, which is more striking than most any modern Technicolor fantasy.

Brandon Yu, New York Times

Unspools like a mysterious dream. It’s both inscrutable and hypnotic, delivering indelible images.

Murtada Elfadi, Variety

This is a work in the tradition of David Lynch, Jane Campion (particularly The Piano and Power of the Dog), Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo), Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man), and, in the framing of some the dialogue scenes, Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story). But the movie has its own unique life force, and such confidence that if you’re tuned into its wavelength, you’ll forget to speculate on what will happen next.

Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com

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