Director

Ngozi Onwurah

Cast list

Azikiye

Monday Moses

Florence

Credits

Producer: Lloyd Gardner

Narrator: Caroline Lee Johnson

Photography: Alwin Kuchler, Simone Horrocks

Consultant: Titus Anyanwu

Anthropologist: Ibi Derekafa

Film Editor: Rod Iverson.

Synopsis

This documentary follows the lives of two Waikiriki women from the Niger Delta; Azikiye and Florence, as they undergo a traditional five-week long “iria” ritual. Whilst Florence is keen to participate in the ceremony, Azikiye, is continuously defiant, expressing her discontent with many aspects of the ritual. The film explores the girl’s contrasting responses to the rite of passage ritual, revealing many implications of modernity and its intersection with stagnant tradition, coming of age, and the subsequent contentions that develop as a result. Through narration and interviews, Onwurah affectingly depicts the multidimensional reality of the lives of African women in a way that is remarkably genuine by giving both girls a chance to speak for themselves, highlighting their agency.

Reviews

Savory, E. (1997). Review: African Women's Voices on Film. NWSA Journal , 99-106. JSTOR. here

Anderson, M (1996). Review of Becoming a Woman in Okrika by Judith Gleason, Elisa Mereghetti and Monday’s Girls by Ngozi Onwurah. African Arts vol. 29 no. 4, (pp. 76-78, 96). JSTOR. here

 

Academic Articles

Amadiume, I. (2016). Bodies and Choices: African Matriarchs and Mammy Water. In K.-K. Bhavnani, J. Foran, P. A. Kurian, & D. Munshi, Feminist Futures: Reimagining Women, Culture, Culture and Development (pp. 89-106). London: Zed Books Ltd.

Onwurah, N. (1997). A different concept and agenda. In G. A. Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora (pp. 24-42). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

 

Entry published by: Reem Bushara