To Be or Not to Be Surreal?

Abba T. Makama is a Nigerian writer, director, visual artist and filmmaker. He is a Surreal16 Collective co-founder, alongside fellow filmmakers, C.J. Obasi and Michael Omonua. All three had been inspired by Danish filmmaking movement, Dogme 95, and moved not only to develop a new kind of cinema, but to also diversify production practices in Nigeria’s thriving film scene. Makama and I initially planned to meet at Orchid Bistro, Ikoyi, but that Lagos morning proved to be a logistical nightmare and we both decided it would be easier to speak over a Zoom call.

While waiting for the Zoom meeting to begin, I glossed over the notes I’d made about his and Surreal16’s achievements. In 2021, their Juju Stories, a three-part anthology exploring magical stories rooted in Nigerian folklore and urban legend, made its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and won the Boccalino d’Oro for best film. The project also won the best director award at the 2021 African International Film Festival.

Makama eventually joined the call and we made small talk about our inability to meet in person. These were mostly apologies but offhandedly he said he’d preferred a virtual interview over one that would have required sitting in traffic. It was December 2022 and he planned to escape Lagos State and return to the relatively easier pace of Jos, Plateau State.

In December 2022, Surreal 16 held the second edition of the S16 Film Festival, celebrating cinema and showcasing filmmakers from around Africa. The festival’s line-up offered classic African films and presentations of upcoming projects to the growing film community. The event also had an exhibition dedicated to veteran filmmaker, Tunde Kelani.

‘We decided to do a film festival, which is an extension of the Collective, a group of three filmmakers who have mutual admiration for each other and considered ourselves artists before anything,’ Makama told me. ‘We started out really small, but we partnered with some of our friends, and we were able to bring this to the underground film community. What we thought was going to be a festival with maybe 50 people in a room ended up having over 200 people in attendance. Last year, we did a tribute to Tunde Kelani, so I’d say the ministry is ministry-ing.’

Makama described the 2022 S16 Film Festival as a ‘great success’, telling me about how the festival series was birthed in the high of the group’s filmmaking success. It was 2021 and they—Makama, Obasi and Omonua had just returned to Lagos from the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where their anthology Juju Stories had won a critic’s prize. After asking themselves what they should do next, they decided to start their own festival.

While the first festival saw twelve films—including the collective’s Juju Stories, the 2022 S16 Film Festival saw 14 films—ten short films and four feature-length films by directors from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Rwanda. I asked if the collective would consider expanding and accepting other filmmakers following the festival’s success.

‘As of now, we are still building our foundation,’ Makama said. ‘Though we have affiliates; anyone who works with us is an S16 affiliate. The movies we are making right now are collaborations between us three. The film festival is independent of the Surreal 16 collective, but as we build and find filmmakers who really understand the ethos of what we’re doing. Of course, we’re going to expand.’

Surreal 16 was founded in 2016 to encourage a new type of cinema. On A Fiery Film—a website detailing the collective’s feats—it is said that the goal was to ‘to push a new kind of Nigerian film. Encourage genre films such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Crime as well as push and promote more artistically minded films.’ In 2017, the collective announced a 16-rule manifesto listing the guidelines that shape its filmmaking process. These guidelines included notes like no cliché looking witch doctors, no fake British or American accents, no ‘To God be the Glory’ at the end of films and no establishing shots of the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge. The collective also urged filmmakers to avoid making wedding films, romantic comedies, slapstick and melodrama, among others. Makama alluded to the group being anti-mainstream industry, ‘but not in an adversarial way.’

I asked if their stance on filmmaking had changed since 2017, or if there had been any additions to the rules (for instance, did they still oppose shots of the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge?).

He paused before saying, ‘so far, it is still the same thing, but it might change’. He then commented that new Nollywood releases were catching up to some of those ideals. He mentioned seeing tweets that said Netflix’s Far From Home lacked a longshot of the popular Lagos landmark.

In a February 2022 review of Juju Stories, Makama’s Yam—a movie about a character who turned into a tuber of yam and was then eaten by a friend—was described as being ‘incongruous with reason.’  I asked if he thought filmmakers have (or need) to guide their audiences to understand their films.

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