"I get very suspicious about what I see in films," says Ayoka Chenzira. "You don't see movies that look at the grass-root issues of this country. Films that deal with the dreams and aspirations of blacks simply don't get made in Hollywood."
Chenzira should know. She's an independent black filmmaker whose new feature, Alma's Rainbow, is beginning to open doors in Hollywood. February 17, Chenzira hosts a screening of the film at the Drexel Theatre in Bexley as a fundraiser for the National Black Programming Consortium.
She's already scored impressive critical accolades with such short movies as Hairpiece and Zajota and the Boogie Spirit, and has earned the curious distinction of being a prominent "emerging" director — for nearly a decade. With Alma's Rainbow, Chenzira may finally get out of the gate. In fact, she's currently developing a new feature for Paramount Pictures. But she's not uncritical of the process.
"Hollywood chooses its people very carefully. There are people like Julie Dash
(director of Daughters of the Dust) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger) who are never offered a deal in the Hollywood industry."
Chenzira doesn't say this in anger. These are just the facts, the kind of facts that she knows all too well. She's able to reel off such facts with lightning-fast precision and a straightforward gaze that cuts through you with the cool efficiency of a laser. For some people, she can be as intimidating as a ruler-wielding nun, which may explain why she plays one in Alma's Rainbow. But she's also very funny.
The spine of Alma's Rainbow is about a mother-daughter relationship," she explains. "At first, it appears to be a coming-of-age film about the daughter, but it's really the mother who discovers that she's being anal retentive."
Chenzira's laughter is quick and tinged with a tacit acknowledgment of the personal concerns underlying Alma's Rainbow. She has a 13-year-old daughter (who also appears in the film) and admits that "children generally don't see mothers as people." In part, her movie is an attempt to bridge the inevitable gap that evolves between parent and child.
But the director is also concerned with how people — especially black people — view themselves through media. Film and TV function as a sort of mirror to society, and the media-drenched reflections that people absorb have, in turn, some influence upon their perceptions of themselves. And the reflections that people are seeing in many commercial movies disturbs Chenzira.
"The current trend of what Hollywood calls 'black film making' isn't really about African American culture. The primary interest in Hollywood are movies about urban black pathology — images of young black men playing gangsters. Screenplays that aren't about this aren't getting produced. That's one of the reasons why you don't have many films being released about black women."
Chenzira is concerned about the effect such limited images have upon society, black or white.
"There's a value system in America that's out of whack with reality. These films are emotionally exploitative by concentrating on the violent edges and not on the healing process. And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done in the community."
This healing is part of what Alma's Rainbow is about. It's also what Chenzira hopes to do in Hollywood. But it's very unlikely that she'll give up her independent base in Brooklyn for nothing more than pipe dreams in LaLa Land. This is one filmmaker who's too smart to get lost in the Hollywood shuffle.
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