Ishaya Bako is the director of the movie Road to Yesterday among others. He speaks to Daily Trust on Saturday about his love for filmmaking, meeting Ms. Nnaji and being influenced by masters like the late Amaka Igwe.
Weekend Magazine: What is it about a movie that draws you to it?
Ishaya Bako: I think all aspects of a well-crafted movie draws me to it. From the performances and production design to the camera work and sound use, when every aspect, every component of a film comes together it’s magic! It becomes good cinema. Working in film, I have an appreciation of the vision, hard work and dedication it takes to make a good film and so when this is translated well on screen, it’s gratifying for both the audience and filmmaker. When this doesn’t go so good, it’s painful for the audience but hopefully the filmmakers can learn from the experience.
WM: You have directed a number of movies; which has been your most challenging so far?
Bako: It’s difficult to mark one project as most challenging because each project I’ve been fortunate to work on was a different experience and each presented its own challenges from both a creative and technical standpoint. Also, I think making both fiction and non-fiction films and also recently trying out different genres, adapting and improving on my skill set has been really crucial for me and while not particularly a challenge, it’s what I’ve most struggled with.
WM: Please share with us how you ended up directing Genevieve’s ‘Road to Yesterday’?
Bako: I met Ms. Nnaji through my friend Uzo Iweala, the author… doctor… filmmaker and all-round over-achiever. We talked about developing a TV drama series and I guess our views on the type of content we want to make aligned and I want to say ‘…the rest is history’ here. But this happened late 2014; it hasn’t been that long. Ironically the TV series we started to develop never quite came to fruition (it was a pretty decent story too). But we had an hour-long conversation out of the blue one day in February 2015 where Ms. Nnaji told me the idea for the film that would become ‘Road to Yesterday.’ I wrote a treatment for the story. She and the other producers, Chinny Onwugbenu and Chichi Nwoko liked it and quite quickly we went into production. It was a brutal shoot but thank God and the hard work of the cast and crew, it all came together.
WM: Was there a particular event or time when you realised that filmmaking could be more than a hobby?
Bako: Filmmaking has never been a hobby. It is (quite painfully) my bread and butter.
WM: You had a near fatal car crash which changed the direction of your career path. Please share with us how that happened.
Bako: It was a rainy day in Port-Harcourt on the 30th of October 2006. I had just finished the three-week orientation camp of my NYSC service year and was going back home to Abuja, or was it Kaduna. The airport in Port Harcourt has always had issues and it was shut down during that period and flights were diverted through Owerri. In any event, that fateful, rainy morning I started on the trip to Owerri and ten minutes into the journey, the driver of the car (a Peugeot 504 station wagon) lost control of the car at over 100km/h and parked the car under a trailer. It was my first serious auto accident and strangely I didn’t really have a ‘near death’ experience as such, I knew I wasn’t going to die; I remember just before the collision thinking ‘oh shit, this is going to be inconvenient.’ Thankfully and thank God the car crash didn’t break anything but I did have a nasty gash on my cheek right below my right eye, the wound literally got to the edgeof my eye. Now I’d like to believe it’s a cool scar.
After that accident I asked myself hard questions of what I want to do with my future and in my final year in university (Covenant University) I had fallen in love with theatre and was very active in our drama group, Eden family. It was something I believed I’d be good at and something I thought I’d be able to do and love doing for the rest of my life. Now that I say this, it sounds incredibly naïve but I think sometimes when you follow your dreams, there has to be a certain amount of naiveté in it. That uncertainty that is often times unsettling but can also be very rewarding.
WM: What’s the most difficult part of directing – getting started or keeping it going?
Bako: I think both are equally important. I don’t know about directing being difficult. I believe if you love what you’re doing and you’re open to growth there are no limitations to what you can achieve. That said, the value of discipline is very important. Starting out as a young filmmaker or director has its tests and challenges like with any other professional and independent endeavour. There’s a lot to manage and you are ultimately creating a piece of work whether it’s a short or feature, documentary or narrative fiction and you have to collaborate with people and find the right balance between the creative and technical elements in your artistic expression. When you’ve made a couple of films and they don’t suck, you have to improve on that which comes with its own set of hurdles. Do you stay with tried and tested and risk being boring or do you try something new and risk failing woefully. Obviously as you know, the higher you climb the more visible you are and the more careful you have to be of not making shit work. But then again, no one in their right mind ever sets out to make a bad film, sometimes it just happens. What’s important is that you gave it your all and you’re willing to learn from the lessons of working on the project and hopefully make amends on the next one.
WM: What movies have been the most inspiring or influential to you?
Bako: This is tough to answer because I find quite a number of films inspiring to me. But I will start with Amaka Igwe’s ‘Rattlesnake.’ The film tells the story of a young boy, Ahanna and how he falls into armed robbery to support his family when his father dies and a relative takes over their mid-income properties. It stars Francis Duru and Nkem Owoh and it wasn’t until watching it about a year or so ago that I realized the film is predominantly in Igbo which I don’t speak or understand. I think this is the beauty of film, it has its own language. I first watched the film in 1999 and the narrative and performances stuck with me and I think made an impression on the possibilities with filmmaking in the country. I’ve also been influenced by films from Jean Renoir, Guillermo Del Toro, Pedro Almodovar, Sam Mendes, Mike Leigh and Abderrahmane Sissako.
WM: What sets you off when you get angry about a movie?
Bako: I think I get angry when there’s no respect given to the audience in both form and content. That is the narrative of the film and how it is presented. When filmmakers forget they have a responsibility to the audience in entertaining them if not intelligently at least in a way that tells us that you put some thought into it. And it cuts across all genres from comedy and thrillers to horror and even musicals. You can tell when a film is shabbily made or put together, and there is no greater disservice to the audience and to the filmmaker themselves when this happens.
WM: Do you use social media in your work?
Bako: I’m embarrassingly nonchalant with social media, I really need to improve on this. I guess I’m a little paranoid of the amount of personal information that is shared online, how this data is used and how it is archived. But I’m also aware of the essential part social media plays in not just promoting your content but also in locating and developing your audience which was your previous question. However, I am going to improve on this especially as it relates to audience engagement. Some of the work I do are social impact films that critically examine some of the more pressing issues in society and garnering conversations around the topical issues that matter cannot be done without the access, immediacy and network that social media provides.
WM: As a creator how does this affect the stories you tell and how you tell them?
Bako: As a creator I don’t think social media changes the narrative of the story or how it’s being told. I do think it provides an ever-increasing space to showcase your work and also have dynamic and immediate engagements with your audience but I don’t think it largely affects long form storytelling in either film or television. The process of developing the script and story, casting for it and finding good locations to shoot, filming it and then stitching it all together in post-production has pretty much remained the same for the better part of a century. However, who knows what the future holds with AI, augmented reality and the shifting focus to developing alternate user experiences.
WM: Would you say filmmakers have any responsibility to culture? Do you feel that being a creative person requires that you give back or tell a particular story or not do something else?
Bako: In his book ‘There was a Country,’ Chinua Achebe says “…the role of a writer is not a rigid position and depends to some extent on the state of health of his or her society. In other words, if a society is ill the writer has the responsibility to point it out. If the society is healthier, the writer’s job is different.” I think this encapsulates the responsibility of the writer, filmmaker and storyteller in Nigeria and by extension Africa. I do believe that the better works be they plays, novels, poetry or films resonate better when they have a significant and identifiable cultural identity. And when you are creating in that space, you need to be true to the story and by extension the culture.
WM: There was news making the rounds that you and Genevieve were to get married. We’d like you to tell us about it.
Bako: No Comment.
