Ngozi Onwurah

“I’m going to start with Do the Right Thing. So Spike Lee always had this thing where he said that he never ripped off directors, he paid homage to them. And I have paid homage to this film so many times in so many of my films. His more important film to me, on one level, was actually She’s Gotta Have It, because that was the very first film that I went… very first Black film that I went into a movie theater and bought popcorn and was able to buy popcorn and a soda to watch it. Normally, Black movies, you see them in a university or an educational setting, or you see it in an art house, or you see it in an art museum. This was just a straight-up movie theater. Spike Lee gave birth to so many Black filmmakers you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Saint Omer. I mean, it’s dealing with a mother who kills her child, and it’s not even up for debate. It’s not a whodunit. It’s a courtroom, you know pretty early on that she murdered her child. And as a mother watching it, it’s, like, you want to hear some big reason that she did it, and you don’t get that. She’s not a sympathetic character. But she is, as well. It’s a very confusing film, and yet it stays with you, and it makes you think about your relationship with your mother, what being a mother is.”

“Oh, goodness, Raging Bull. Talk about unsympathetic characters that you can’t take your eyes off. And it’s so beautiful. I mean, I read at the time that he’s, Martin Scorsese isn’t a sports fan, and I think that did something to it, because it’s brutal and it’s absolutely a sport– it’s a boxing movie, but it’s also really balletic, and he makes it feel very operatic. That opening sequence where he’s… I’m not going to do it because I’m not that graceful, and it was in slow motion when it was done, which helped, but where he is in the ring, by himself, shadowboxing. It’s black and white. It’s absolutely beautiful. And yet it’s absolutely brutal at the same time. It didn’t turn me on to boxing, but it is a classic.”

“I mean, there are so many classics in here. Talking of classics, Imitation of Life. So, I… I saw this when I was really young, and I related to it so much. Two single women trying to raise their kids, if I remember rightly. But obviously I was locked into the story about the Black woman who has a child that passes for white. And there’s a scene quite early on where it’s raining and so the mother goes to the school, and the daughter hasn’t told anyone at the school that her mom is Black and she’s Black, and the mother comes in, and it’s just this moment that just takes over. It’s really visceral because the child is so upset, so ashamed, the mother’s so heartbroken. You feel for both of them. You’re angry at both of them. You’re angry at the system. It’s so moving. So I must take that one as well.”

“This, Black Girl, it is the most beautiful film that’s ever been made. So it’s about a woman from Senegal who is chosen by a white French family to come back with them, to work for them in Paris or somewhere. It’s such a story about colonialism and the aftereffects of colonialism and what the relationship… because she thinks by leaving Senegal to go there, she’s going to get a better life, and she ends up essentially in indentured servitude. And they brought back a Senegalese mask, and it’s hanging on the wall, and there’s a scene where she’s trying to talk to it. It’s so… It’s so beautiful, but it’s also really sad. Ousmane Sembène. He’s the godfather. He’s the godfather of African cinema.”

“So this is me being greedy, taking an entire box set. In the Mood for Love is one of the most sexy and beautiful films. The locations, the costumes, the interactions, this forbidden love. You want to push them together, but you don’t. The rain… I don’t know how he makes everything… I have seen In the Mood for Love maybe six or seven times. It’s almost like an album that I just put on sometimes. And I haven’t– There’s so many on here that I haven’t seen, so this is going to be… I’m not going to leave the house for about ten days or something. I might just sit in there watching all this stuff.”