19 Oct 2014

DAD’S WAR, Director’s Statement

CAMEROONIAN FILMMAKERS PRESENT TWO EPIC FILMS IN LOS ANGELES, CA

DAD’S WAR, A film By Martin Fusi

Two former friends, immigrant African fathers in America become mortal enemies and fight each other using strange methods.

TIM, Heritage

Martin Fusi

The theme of the displaced African migrant in contemporary western society is one that has not been deeply explored by artists. African migrants started trickling to Europe and America sometime in the mid-1960s. By the 1970s the trickle had increased and by the 1980s there were mass migrations of Africans to countries like France, England, Germany, Italy and the United States. Early African migrants came either because they came to pursue studies to return home to their newly independent countries to practice what they had learned in the west, or some came for economic reasons because they felt life in the west was better than what their countries afforded them. Some others came for political reasons when the atmosphere in their countries became too tense and draconian for them survive. In recent times the DV lottery by the United States has seen an increased African presence particularly in the Unites States.

Whatever the reasons for their migration these African migrants, have become permanent residents of their various western countries. Though they mostly still believe that they would return to their countries of origin, most of them have become stalwarts in the country in which they reside. Though most still dream of returning home they never do. They do not identify with their new countries and increasingly have become isolated from their original cultures in Africa. They have become like pelicans in the desert. Most of the Africans who came in the 1960s, the 1970s, and the early 1980s have gotten married in the west, and have children who were born in the west and who know little about their parents’ countries of origin except maybe the names they carry.

Most Africans tend to stay in their new countries but do not live in it. As an African migrant in the United States I am working on the hypothesis that African migrants though they live here do not really know much about the United States or become a social and cultural part of the country and the country does not really know much about African migrants nor does it incorporate them into major studies. As a screenwriter most of my research is creative and this forms a major part of my thesis. What becomes of the displaced African migrant in the west and how has this new African migrant redeveloped, recreated, and redefined African cultures to suit his new environment and how is this new hybrid culture far removed from the original cultural forms from which it is derived? The neo-African migrant in the west has morphed into a new “species” incorporating elements of western technological and futuristic culture and an African agrarian culture rooted in elements of colonial and post-colonial atavistic traditions as he survives in the western concrete jungle.

Please relax and have great laughs as you explore the minds and lives of our Africans in the diaspora!

REFERENCES:

FILMS BY MARTIN FUSI

Trailer from Dads’ War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_h55KJVNOM

Trailer from The Outsider

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5UGdD6kB74

Trailer from Morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYOc15-gPzE

Trailer from Lake God

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGGEXzQEBas

http://www.davidmoodydesign.com/SwampDwellers.html