Instant Success!   

Published on August 23, 2010 by TheNEWS   ·   No Comments

Ije: The Journey, an international film premieres in Lagos to critical acclaim

The buzz is not over yet, and movie buffs simply can’t get enough of it. This is the story of  Ije: The Journey, an international film which took the country by storm when it was premiered at the Silverbird Cinemas, Victoria Island, Lagos on 31 July.

The interesting thing about Ije is that, not only was it produced and directed by a 26-year-old Nigerian international film maker, Chineze Anyaene as thesis for a Masters degree at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, it stars Nollywood success stories, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Genevieve Nnaji and Clems Ohameze. Ije also features other internationally renowned actors and actresses such as Odalys Garcia, Ulrich Que and Jeff Swarthout.

Ije is on a rollercoaster ride. Less than a year after it was produced, it has garnered numerous awards and nominations in film festivals across the world. The awards include Excellence in Filmmaking, Best Feature Film and Best Editing. It has earned nominations such as Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Feature Film Screenplay. Some of the film festivals in which the movie has made appearances and received accolades include the Swansea Bay International Film Festival, International Youth Film Festival and Boston International Film Festival.

Yet what thrills movie lovers about the movie is not just the awards and nominations it has garnered and the festivals graced but the sophistication, the sense of  professionalism and the dexterity which the production crew and the cast displayed while on set. Most importantly, the producer shocked not a few movie aficionados by bringing Omotola Jalade-Ekehinde and Genevieve Nnaji together. In Nigeria, somehow, the notion that the two actresses are bitter rivals who do not see eye to eye had been promoted for quite some time. It was even claimed that Omotola would reject a movie just because her rival, Genevieve, is on the cast and vice versa. It has taken Ije to combust this erroneous notion created and wildly spread by Nigeria’s soft sell magazines.

Shot on 35mm, in Nigeria and the United States, Ije tells the story of the bond and loyalty between two sisters, Anya, played by Omotola and Chioma, played by Genevieve. Both sisters grew up in a Nigerian countryside with an overprotective father, played by Clems Ohameze. While growing up, Anya nurtures the dream of relocating to the United States to live the good life. Despite her younger sister’s warnings about the ugly side of the American dream, Anya finally relocates to the United States and starts a musical career. But that dream finally ends when, buoyed by “drugs, sex and Jazz” she is accussed of murdering three men, including her husband; and she has to wriggle out of a flawed judicial system by hiring an attorney.

The major strength of the movie lies not just in the fact that it is about the immigrant experience but in the use of flashback technique, twists and turns. To achieve a contrasting effect, the viewer is transported between the scenic village life when the sisters are young, exuberant and full of dreams and the reality of urban life in the United States.

Still, Anyaene was right in her choice of cast. The movie is heavy on characterisation. The characters are distinct, rounded and unforgettable. Viewers will never forget Anya’s exuberance and deep sense of remorse, the naivety that Chioma displayed on arriving in the United States as well as the the young attorney’s unbrided enthusiasm.

Anyaene attested to this when asked why she decided to feature Omotola and Genevieve in the movie. “As a director I have watched over 2,000 Nollywood movies. When we started work on Ije, everytime I read the script, Genevieve would keep coming up for Chioma and Omotola for Anya. When you read a script, you just start seeing a particular character. And as a businesswoman and producer, you need to look for those that will be able to give you your money’s worth,” she told TheNEWS.

A unique aspect of the movie which gives it an edge over other films recently produced in Nigeria is the director’s use of the Rashomon Effect, a modern film technique popularised by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in his award-winning movie, Rashomon, a Japanese crime mystery based on a short story, In a Grove, written by another Japanese writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The Rashomon Effect is the outcome which the varying views  of observers of the same event have on solving a mystery behind that event. The similarity between Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Anyaene’s Ije is that both stories unfold in flashbacks and four people give different accounts of the events that led to the murder. “In this story we take it from different people’s point of view. And the tag line is that truth has many sides. We get the story from Omotola’s point of view and three other characters’ point of view. So if all that adds up to the end of the story, you will find out what really happened during the murder,” Anyaene said.The movie also reminds one of the story of the six blind men and the elephant.

The film maker, who spent two years on the project, said she had a Herculean task trying to convince Omotola and Genevieve to take  part in the movie. While Omotola was sceptical because Ije was Anyaene’s first feature film, Genevieve was hesitant about going abroad to make the same kind of films that are made in Nigeria. “I just kept calling and convincing them, showing them my past work and everything. We changed schedules because of them. It took a lot of convincing,” the film maker remarked.

Omotola in an interview confirmed Anyaene’s statement. “I was approached, read the script but I requested to see what jobs the producer and director had done in the past. I saw a couple of her works and I was blown off and decided that I was giving it a shot. I was busy for most of the time that the negotiation took place, but when I was done with what I was doing, I agreed to be part of it, and thank God we are done,” she said.

Paula Moreno, co-producer of the movie, told TheNEWS about the discrimination she and Anyaene faced on account of the colour of their skin before the movie could see the light of day. “When people ask me what was the number one challenge in the making of this film, I always say it was doing such a large project in so short a time. But in reality, if you go behind the scenes, we did face a lot of discrimination mainly because we are minorities and are young. Chineze is African and I am Hispanic. Whatever supporters we had, they really believed in us. And whatever people that didn’t want to believe in us, they discriminated against us. It even got to the point where the white folks never thought we were ever going to have a screening in the Warner Brothers. The school did not back us up with equipment,” Moreno regretted.

Moreno, however, said Panavision came to their assistance. “Panavision read the script and they believed in it.

“They normally give 1.38 mm cameras but they gave us 2.35mm. And six months later we had to go shoot an exterior scene and they gave us a camera again. And then Kodak backed us as well,” she enthused.

Why then is the movie such a success, given the challenges that they faced? Anyaene hinges it on hardwork and hardwork. “Success comes with hardwork. We worked hard, very very hard. For two years we were still working. If you work hard in whatever you do, even if it is selling groundnut, you will be successful. Film making is team work. The camera was just a fraction of making the project a good one, but there was a team of like 10 people behind that camera that had to make it come out,” the film maker who got the funds to sponsor the project from her mother, said.

Asked why she chose the title Ije, which in Ibo means the journey, Anyaene told TheNEWS it was actually Genevieve who suggested it during a brainstorming session over lunch. “We chose the name Ije because the characters in the film went through a long journey, their journey from Nigeria to America. There is a lot of journeys in the story. Genevieve’s character goes from Nigeria to America as a first-timer. And because of her character, she is naive. And Omotola, being an American citizen, shows a lot trying to fit into the American system. As she tries to fit into the system, she gets into trouble. And she gets out of that problem only when she resorts to her cultural values and an incident that happened in the past when her father did not just rescue her from an attacker/rapist but also killed him. We the film makers behind the film also went through a long journey. It took us two years to produce the movie,” she revealed.

Anyaene believes the journey was worth the while. “It’s been an interesting one. It’s being hectic. We cried, laughed, played, joked. But it’s been fun,” she enthused.

—Nehru Odeh & Kemi Akinyemi

Tags:  Filmmaking, Ije: The Journey, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, rollercoaster ride