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Fighting Giants: a short film about the power of voice and protecting Black women
Filmmaker Oluwaseun Babalola shares her experience searching for her missing sister in new project
As a visual storyteller, my first inclination is to paint you a picture. Therefore, I invite you to imagine that one evening, you’re home alone at your apartment in New York. Your sister has been missing for weeks: you’re confused, desperate, and worried. You call your local police station, in the hope that they might be able to help you. Instead, the conversation goes like this:
‘Fighting Giants’ and The Art of The Pivot
I’m the pivot queen. Do I have an award or crown for it? No. It’s self-proclaimed, but I have proof to back it up.
My name is Oluwaseun Babalola. I am a director, writer, and producer. For the past decade, I have been working as a documentary filmmaker. I have faced production hurdles such as a surfing film in Sierra Leone with no waves, a day of shooting musical performances in Botswana with no sound recorded, an interviewee in Ghana becoming a no-show after hours of telling me “I’m on the way!,” a drive-by shooting on Skid Row in California, rain starting before a filmed outdoor dinner in Oklahoma, many passport altercations at borders, shooting a feature film during the height of the pandemic and much more.
You could say pivoting comes with the territory. Every scenario I’ve encountered has prepared me for the next. My most recent project, “Fighting Giants,” a narrative short film I wrote and directed in Sierra Leone, needed all of my experience.
Here’s How You Can Support “Fighting Giants,” the narrative debut by Oluwaseun Babalola
Oluwaseun Babalola is a force. I met her in 2019 when we talked about her docuseries “ṢOJU,” which focuses on a different niche of the African community around the world. She is multi-faceted as her work as a producer (“Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches,”), director, and founder of the organization Kosinima, Inc., a nonprofit that provides funding and career support for African and African diaspora creatives.
We talked about her newest project as she embarks on her narrative debut with the short film “Fighting Giants.” The film has been through production, and now she is raising funds for post-production. Donate, and help Oluwaseun reach her goal of $10K. Learn more how you can support this project: https://seedandspark.com/fund/fighting-giants#story
Co-Productions within Africa and its Diaspora Can Encourage Self-Reliant and Sustainable Film Economies - written by Oluwaseun Babalola
Never make a promise you can’t keep. This is wise advice for networks and streamers looking to invest in African content.
Imagine the excitement when Netflix and Prime Video, in particular, announced their expansion and investment in Africa. Since 2016, Netflix is said to have spent $175 million on its investment in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, creating and releasing originals such as “Jiva!,” “Queen Sono,” “Blackbook,” “King of Boys: The Return of The King,” “Blood & Water,” and more. Prime Video’s exact number of investments has not been confirmed, but a number of films and series have already been teased, including the first Amazon Prime Video original from Africa, “Gangs of Lagos,” along with “She Must Be Obeyed,” and “Ebuka Takes Africa.” This was the start of more accessibility and, of course, more African stories. They promised to showcase the depth and breadth of our livelihoods! Our beauty! The colors!
DOC NYC reveals annual 40 Under 40, Documentary New Leaders lists
Ahead of DOC NYC 2022 kicking off on November 9, festival organizers have revealed the fifth annual 40 Under 40 list that spotlights young documentary filmmaking talent, as well as the list of Documentary New Leaders, celebrating individuals working in documentary distribution, sales, marketing and festivals, who are bringing greater inclusion and equity into the field.
DOC NYC 40 UNDER 40
40 Under 40 celebrates emerging talent in the documentary world, including directors, producers, cinematographers, and editors. This program is co-presented by HBO Documentary Films.
“We are part of anything that is possible and imaginable”: Directors Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams on “Neptune Frost” - written by Oluwaseun Babalola
Africa’s cinematic history is as diverse as its people. There’s our Senegalese cinematic “father” Ousmane Sembène, the post-colonial emergence of Nigeria’s Nollywood (the largest film industry on the continent, and second-largest in the world in terms of volume), the indigenous cinema from Egypt or Tunisia dating back to the late 1800s…you get the picture. Granted, many of the continent’s film industries are still young– shifting, shaping, contorting (sometimes flailing) into cinematic languages that are influenced by social, economic, and political powers.
Nowadays, when I hear the term “African cinema,” its definition is nebulous and laden with subtext, much like the word “urban.” With a majority of Africa’s cinematic funding coming from co-productions in Europe and its global distribution relying on streaming services like Amazon and Netflix, one can’t help but worry that current film democratization is being sifted through a bland, standardized, one-note filter to be funneled onto our screens, only discernible by its connection to the same gigantic land mass.
Producer Oluwaseun Babalola on her powerful HBO doc “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches”
I met Oluwaseun, also known as ‘Seun, a couple years ago when I interviewed her about her series “SOJU”. Each episode zeroes in on a different niche of the African community around the world. What ‘Seun is doing for African culture is so important, and equally important and exciting is what she is doing for the history of Fredrick Douglass. ‘Seun produced “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches” that premieres on HBO on 2/23. Her ways of flipping the documentary script and lens is brilliant, along with bringing on women like actress Nicole Behrie, artist Bisa Butler, and poet Nzadi Keita onto this project. As an American History geek I was in love with this doc, and I’m so excited for everyone to see it and to share this interview with you.
The film industry has a gatekeeping problem
How the KOSINIMA, Inc. fund is opening doors for Black womxn creatives
At shado, we’ve been following the work of US-based film producer Oluwaseun (‘Seun) Babalola since she released her film series ṢOJU (meaning ‘represent’ in Yoruba) which spotlights youth culture in African communities. She’s now going one step further to support the representation of Black stories by setting up KOSINIMA, Inc., a non-profit organisation that provides career support and funding for Black creatives. The KOSINIMA Short Film Grant is a grant fund for Black womxn filmmakers in Africa and the African diaspora to make their first or second short film. We sat down with ‘Seun to further understand her motivations behind the grant and her hopes for the future of the film industry.
CINEMA AS A TOOL TO PROMOTE AFRICAN HERITAGE
Given your international experience, vision and know-how, how can we create a network of international actors with a focus on promoting African heritage and society through the seventh art - cinema?
Each country has to do its part in promoting its cultural heritage and this requires a strategy. In Africa, we have so many different infrastructures, I don't believe that we can all promote heritage and society in the same way. That said, I believe that, to ensure that any strategy is beneficial and sustainable, there are specific areas that require attention…
Seun Babalola: A catalyst for hope and change in the presentation of Africa to the world
“SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE:
Founder and executive producer of Do Global Productions, Oluwaseun ‘Seun’ Babalola, is the filmmaker behind the youth documentary web series SOJU Africa. She is also a consultant for Collective Industry Conventions Africa (CICA), which will soon be launching the first UNICON Africa event – a creative convention that Babalola will be co-hosting in Nigeria.”
The Dawn of African Superheroes
“In the fall of 2017, Marvel Studios released the teaser to end all teasers- Black Panther. 24 hours after it went live, it had racked up 89 millions views on YouTube . Immediately, two things became clear: 1) Marvel was not ready for what it would mean to bring an Afro-superhero to the big screen, because 2) Black Panther was going to take the world by storm, then usher in the age of African superheroes. The question then was, would African creatives be ready for what comes next?”
BOTSWANA’S DEATH METAL SCENE IS CELEBRATED IN DOCU SERIES
“Death metal is alive and well in Africa. Winter Metal Mania Festival is quickly becoming one of the biggest heavy metal fests on the continent and will celebrate it’s 8th anniversary this year in Ghanzi, Botswana.
ṢOJU, my ongoing docu-series about youth culture in Africa, caught up with cousins and bandmates Tshomarelo Mosaka /Vulture Thrust and Shalton Monnawadikgang /Spencer Thrust. The two are members of the band Overthrust, and began the festival to create a space for the growing metal scene in Botswana.”
Rotterdam, Sundance Team With Realness to Support African Producers
The Rotterdam Film Festival’s facilitation and talent incubator wing IFFR Pro has teamed with the Sundance Institute, European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs and the Realness Institute for Creative Producer Indaba, a year-long professional development initiative aimed at supporting producers from Africa.
The inaugural batch of 17 emerging producers was announced Monday. They will participate in online workshops running Aug. 28-Sept. 11 that will cover project development and planning, project financing, PR and marketing, company strategic planning, leadership and advocacy.
A key aim of Indaba is to help African producers build financial instruments for co-production where they do not currently exist and forge new models of financing that could lead to the next wave of African cinema.
African producer empowerment scheme selects first wave
A new initiative to develop and empower African producers has selected its first intake of talent.
Seventeen producers have been selected for the inaugural Creative Producer Indaba scheme, which has been developed by Realness Institute in partnership with Sundance Institute, International Film Festival Rotterdam and European training outfit EAVE.
FEAT:HER Filmmaker and Producer Oluwaseun Babalola, Creator of SOJU Docuseries
“DS: Hi Oluwaseun! We are so excited to get a chance to speak with you and learn more about your work! Can you give a brief introduction of who you are and what you do?
OB: Hello! My name is Oluwaseun Babalola, I’m a filmmaker of Nigerian and Sierra Leonean descent. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and my work in documentary focuses on identity and culture. I’ve traveled to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Botswana, Spain, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Ghana to showcase a slice of life in those countries, from a young African perspective.”
Guest Post: How Making a Doc Series Helped Me Preserve My Identity - written by Oluwaseun Babalola
“Creative content, like film or television, is integral to identity and cultural preservation. Have you ever heard of “Cool Japan”? It’s a reference to Japan’s quest to become a cultural icon. The idea was to export their pop culture to other parts of the world in hopes of rebuilding their reputation and boosting their economy after World War II. Now we have anime and J-pop. Thank you, Japan.
Content can also serve as a time capsule: In Hollywood, the 1940s saw an increase in war movies post-WWII, while the ’70s had a slew of films experimenting with sex and violence, due in part to the activity surrounding the Vietnam War.
Whatever you’re watching, the storytelling you’re consuming helps you make sense of a culture and an era.”
SOJU AFRICA: Waiting For The Moment
“This world is full of people doing amazing things, so I’m often inspired. I’m especially motivated when I can relate to the person. Not too long ago, I watched Issa Rae launch The Mis-adventures of Awkward Black Girl on YouTube. As I watched, it was an “a-ha” moment, an affirmation that there can be an audience for self-made content (by and for people like me), and that perhaps I could do the same.
How many of us are still waiting for that moment? “
Visual Stories for Nonprofits: Foodies Without Borders
“Oluwaseun Babalola is the founder and executive producer at DO Global Productions. DO Global Productions is a video production company specializing in documentary media and providing positive narratives of people of color since 2015.
How were you connected with Foodies Without Borders?
I connected with the founder of Foodies Without Borders, Anthony Njigua, via an online non-profit message board. After a few conversations about entrepreneurship in Africa, we both decided to work on this project together in Malindi, Kenya. The company didn't have a large budget, so I agreed to do the project under the condition that all of my expenses were paid (my flight, food, and accommodation) and that I maintained ownership of all of the footage captured. In exchange, I delivered the final video. I believe that if you're passionate about a project, you can determine what conditions you agree to and can balance that with the amount of work you put in. Just make sure that whatever you decide, you're comfortable.”
Africa doesn’t care about its women - written by Oluwaseun Babalola
“I remember it well. One afternoon, in an immigration office in Freetown, I applied for my Sierra Leone passport. It was difficult because the officials would not believe that my mother was my mother. The birth certificates and family photos were insufficient, my Yoruba name threw them off—my dad was born and raised in Nigeria—and they thought I was a scammer. I was exhausted from an afternoon of arguing, to say the least.
My mother, small, thin and powerful, was fed up. I’m sure, as she cast her threats, she managed to make the four grown men in the room feel like children. But her presence was only making things worse, so I pushed her out of the room and pleaded with the men.
In my (broken) Krio, I asked, “Sir, wetin na problem? Ah nor sabi.”
INTERNATIONAL PODCASTS - SEUN BABALOLA: DOCUSERIES ON AFRICA
Oluwaseun Babalola is a Sierra Leonean-Nigerian-American filmmaker. She founded DO Global Productions, a video production company specializing in documentaries. Her focus is to create and collaborate on projects across the globe, while providing positive representation for people of color. She is a co-founder of BIAYA consulting, a consulting firm that bridges resource and knowledge gaps for African entrepreneurs in emerging industries. BIAYA’s first project was a convention in Lagos, Nigeria to help build a sustainable creative industry that can grow and export content.
CLICK below to hear podcast…
In Conversation with Oluwaseun Babalola
shado caught up with documentary filmmaker Oluwaseun Babalola to talk more about her aims, process, motivations and, in particular, how she use her film series ṢOJU as a platform for self-narration in order to challenge the stereotypes associated with the African continent.
#Crucial21DbW: ṢOJU – “Mama Rocks Talks African Burgers and Business” directed by Oluwaseun Babalola
The ṢOJU episodes both demand and reward close attention.
In “Mama Rocks Talks African Burgers and Business,” an episode in the ṢOJU series by Oluwaseun Babalola, two sisters, Samantha and Natalie, co-founders of Mama Rocks Burgers, discuss challenging gender roles, the training of their food truck staff to recognize and champion gender equality, the importance of seeking out indigenous suppliers, and how they can support young business women. They explore all of this, as well as their future of expanding beyond food trucks to a flagship location and what their overall legacy obligations may be, in just under a distilled five minutes of screen time.
I Am Fortunate Enough To Create Content For A Living —Babalola, Producer Of SOJU Series
Seun Babalola is a Nigerian-Sierra Leonean-American content producer. Founder of Go Global Productions and producer of award-winning ṢOJU series, she has travelled to nine African countries, changing African narrative through documentary films. In this interview by Kingsley Alumona, she speaks about her triple national identity, the Ṣoju project, her passion for telling African stories and the things she likes about her three countries.
SHADO mag - Global Womxnhood Issue 02 - Print
Black Talent TV’s 10 Best Producers List of 2019
Oluwaseun Babalola is a Sierra Leonean-Nigerian-American filmmaker who founded DO Global Productions, a video production company specializing in documentaries. Her focus is to create and collaborate on projects across the globe while providing nuanced representation for people of color.
Oluwaseun Babalola explores modern day Africa through her web series ‘SOJU’
My conversation with Oluwaseun Babalola—”Seun” for short—was empowering. We are both women who have a passion for what we are doing, and we are both doing all that we can to make our dreams a reality. Each episode of her series, “SOJU,” zeroes in on a different niche of the African community around the world. What Seun is doing for African culture is so important, and I’m so happy I had the privilege to share her story.
OLUWASEUN BABALOLA USES DOCUMENTARY TO CULTIVATE COMMUNITY
A documentary is an opportunity to expose society to something they may not have known. A chance to paint a stunning picture, the brush being these honest and real lived experiences. There is a dark beauty that runs in the veins of documentary filmmaking, and it takes a strong creative to bring that beauty to light. Oluwaseun Babalola is that creative. There is no blurring the lines or manipulating events—simply the story and the subject and the reality that comes with it. Oluwaseun is dedicated to telling stories about black identity and experiences throughout the diaspora and telling them with a sensitivity that is as honest as the experience itself.
Her docuseries SOJU tells individual stories from various countries in Africa, allowing lived experiences to be the portal to worlds unknown to most people. Throughout the series, she makes us feel like friends just dropping by for a cup of tea as we regal stories from a full and lived life. That is the power of SOJU; it is a vessel into the diversity of Africa, and the beauty that comes with those different experiences. That is Oluwaseun’s calling card: showcasing the beauty in what makes us so different, yet so similar.
We talked with Oluwaseun about how she got started, the power of documentary, and where she plans to take her lens next.
This Young Filmmaker Is Aiming To Build Solidarity Within The Diaspora
For New York resident and Sierra Leonean-Nigerian-American Oluwaseun Babalola, finding content that represented all of the amazing things that the youth on the ground in Africa were doing, was hard to come by.
Growing up, she identified with both her mother’s Sierra Leonean roots as well as her father’s Nigerian roots. When she became older, she really wanted to explore the concept of identity as it relates to people of African descent.
So, she set out to create an original documentary series that focused on the topic.
Oluwaseun Babalola - Starting dialogues about a global Black identity
The homogenization of African culture in Western media is both a symptom of our location but also a lack of understanding about a part of the world that has been taught about through the prism of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Simply put, our knowledge of this vast continent is one of struggle and strife. But that does not define Africa nor those who inhabit this continent.
Realscreen, Everywoman Studios reveal finalists for inaugural Propelle program
The finalists for the inaugural edition of Realscreen and Everywoman Studios’ Propelle initiative, a female-focused accelerator program, have been chosen.
The program was created and developed by Everywoman Studios’ CEO Abby Greensfelder (pictured) and Realscreen, and was launched in January at the 2020 Realscreen Summit in New Orleans.
The Woman Encouraging a Fuller Perception of Africa Through Film
“Oluwaseun Babalola—or 'Seun, for short—is a Sierra Leonean-Nigerian America (her mother is from Freetown, Sierra Leone; father is from Lagos, Nigeria) who grew up and is based in New York City.
As an African who grew up in America, Babalola was exposed to more than her share of all-too-common Westernized misconceptions about her homeland. Stateside, and even worldwide, views on Africa remain decidedly misleading, mostly perpetuated by Western media and trickling down to "everyone else.”
Telling The Authentic African Story
“Have you always wanted to be a filmmaker? If so, how did you make it happen? (Please try to be as descriptive as possible).
When I was younger, I wanted to be a lot of things. There was a long time where I assumed I would be a doctor, but I also had dreams of being a choreographer, photographer or a musician. Filmmaking came naturally. My sister and I would always make home movies with our father’s video camera, editing the footage to make it look like we were completing magic tricks..”
Liberation after independence
On AIAC Talk this week, we mark Independence Day in Sierra Leone, and Freedom Day in South Africa—but what does freedom really mean on the ground in these countries? Watch the show live Tuesday on YouTube.