Like Cotton Twines tells the story of Tuigi (Ophelia Klenam Dzidzornu), a 13-year-old girl who is forced into sex slavery as payment for father’s mistake. An American volunteer named Micah (played by Jay Ellis from HBO’s Insecure) takes on tribal culture, religious customs, and the state itself in an effort to save her from a cruel fate. The movie was written and directed by Ghanian filmmaker Leila Djansi, and it premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival. She also produced it alongside Akofa Djankui and Whitney Valcin.
I spoke with Djansi about her moving film, which touches on topics such as the subjugation of women and critiquing religious practices. We also got into a discussion about black unity among African Americans and native Africans, as well as diversity in Hollywood.
The Mary Sue: You tend to cover heavy topics (The Sisterhood tackles gay/lesbian rights while Grass Between My Lips centers on female circumcision and early marriage). Does it ever take a toll on you?
Leila Djansi: I’m beginning to think that it does take a toll on me, because I get very irritated very quickly. (laughs) The slightest thing gets me very upset. So I think I am getting to my breaking point. But it’s also very important to tell those stories because these things are happening and somebody needs to be that voice and I believe that if you have that platform, if you have that opportunity to have a voice that resounds, then it is your responsibility to contribute your quota to the society.
TMS: Is Tuigi based on an actual person or collection of stories you’d heard?
LD: Tuigi’s story is the story of every single Trokosi girl that exists or that have existed or that will exist unfortunately. It’s a particular pattern that they go through. The only thing that I will say differs is how they each handled it internally. Those that fight vividly and those that fight silently, but at the end of the day, they all fall into that same cycle of losing who they are and becoming somebody’s sex slave and forgetting their futures pretty much. And not of out choice—they actually have no other option but to forget whatever they wanted to be when they were younger.
TMS: How do you tread the line of critiquing aspects of a religion while remaining respectful?
LD: It’s very difficult to do that, because then you are riding that line of, are you condoning what is going on? For example, when we did Where Children Play (about a girl who returns home to care for her sickly, abusive father), there was a scene where the girl flashes back to when she had good memories of her dad and a lot of people said that exonerated the father, which was not the case. You’re just trying to humanize him because…these people are human beings, first of all, before they become whoever they became due to culture or anything else. So it’s actually very very difficult. For this particular project, I just let it go. I just told it as it is exactly and allowed the chips to fall in place without me doing too much or manipulating too much.
TMS: What do you want people to take away most from this film?
LD: First of all, that these women exist. It’s really also an ode to the women, because it takes a lot of guts and courage to say “okay, I will do it.” You can look at courage differently, because you could say the women who managed to run away are the ones who are courageous, because if you run away, you are pretty much cutting yourself off completely from your family. And in Africa, family is everything. When you get married, it’s two families that are getting married; when you die, it’s your family that is going to bury you; when you have children, your children need to have a name. Without a family, you’re tossed anywhere people want you to go. So to run away means losing all of that. You could call women who run away and have to start [from scratch] the courageous ones.
And you could also call the women who stay courageous, because I can’t imagine being at anyone’s beck and call. Add sex without consent to that, and that is a recipe for suicide. It’s really your perspective, how you want to look at it, that you apply the word. But I do want people to know about the courage of these women, whether they stay or run. And then also, to talk briefly about the issues of subjugation of women and the limited rights of women and the limited privileges of women and how we have to bear the brunt all the time…as well as issues of race. I mean, we do not dwell too much on race, but we came at it slightly with how a combination of all of the things affects the world in one way or the other.
TMS: The film lightly tackled the issue of African Americans whose roots to the continent were severed so we don’t feel that same connection to Africa. Do you plan on exploring that more in the future?
LD: I definitely want to explore that. I’m working on a script which will be a completely independent story of going back. Even though we’re very similar, we’re also very different and somehow we have managed to build walls between each other. As Africans in America, we say that we feel like “African Americans do not like us!” That’s one thing that we always say, but I think it’s just that we do not understand each other. I read a book recently called Homegoing (by Yaa Gyasi) and it was about two sisters—one who was taken away as a slave and one who was a wife to one of the governors in the castle.
There was a point in time where one sister was enjoying the breeze with her husband on top of the castle while the other sister was down inside the dungeon with other people on top of her waiting to get onto the ship. It was such a powerful image. You realize that it’s a lot of things that we do not understand about each other…that really we are cut from the same cloth. We wake up to the same problems everyday. Whether there or here, our freedoms and our identities were taken away. So there is nothing for us to be different about. We’re actually supposed to unite because in unity, we have the numbers and if we can unite the entire black race, we’re talking about a huge number. Box office, votes, economics.
TMS: With that kind of unity, there’s no telling what can happen.
LD: There would be no stopping what we would be able to do. And I think that is why some of these devices exist because in unity, there’s strength. And so it’s better to divide, isn’t it?
TMS: There’s a lot of discussion right now about diversity behind the cameras, especially for black women. How do you feel about this talk of diversity and how can we make things better for women of color?
LD: Personally, I think we’re having a good conversation but I do not think we should just sit down, fold our arms and be whining. And I’m using the word whine because sometimes the talk becomes too much. And when there is an opportunity to go out and support films made by women of color, we do not. We’d rather sit on Twitter and Facebook and tweet and complain but we do not take that step to contribute to what these women are doing. There are a lot of black women directing and producing but we only know of a few. So to say that there is no diversity, I think there is no attention on those other women. That is what it really is. So if you know somebody who is in her own little corner doing something, shine a light on her. Let us take practical steps at recognizing each other’s talent and supporting it rather than just talk shop. Let’s talk about Heidi Saman right here in America or Kafui Danku in Ghana.
Like Cotton Twines premieres on the streaming platform Urban Movie Chanel on January 20.
(image via screencap)
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Published: Jan 20, 2017 11:37 am