Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Westminster
Joy, It’s Nina
34-minute experimental performative documentary. Shot in England and Nigeria, the film weaves together short stories that share the theme of the varied experiences of African women living in the UK, separated from their families, in order to search for a better life. Many suffer from isolation, misunderstanding and misdiagnosis of mental illness. The stories are based on news and court reports and Nigerian-born actress Joy Elias-Rilwan’s own life, including voice mails left on her answer-machine by the legendary singer Nina Simone, her friend and self-proclaimed ‘Spiritual Mother’. The project was researched, produced, directed, filmed and edited by Jane Thorburn.
Joy Elias Rilwan collaborated on devising improvisations and text, based on events in her own life and the lives of other African women.
Please see portfolio for full documentation of research dimensions.
The experience of female migrants from the African continent is rarely represented and the subject of their emotional life or psychological health is hardly touched on at all except in relation to men. This film sought to develop an appropriate contemporary visual language within which to explore how a woman of African origin inhabits an alien landscape. In addition, research sought to find a way to avoid aestheticising images of real people suffering and to avoid involving the actual women in the potential trauma of re-telling or re-enacting their experiences on camera. Working with Elias-Rilwan, as both subject and performer, Thorburn improvised camerawork around themes, landscape and character, producing a body of images from which narratives began to emerge. In parallel sequences, stories from Elias-Rilwan’s own experience, and from news and court reports, were collated. The voice recordings of Nina Simone were drawn upon as a sound archive to contextualise Joy’s life experience. Through editing, Thorburn built up a number of stand-alone scenes, capable of use in different combinations. The voice messages from Nina Simone were treated in the same way. Through performance and landscape, the film discusses identity politics, power relationships, modern-day domestic slavery and the place of a woman suspended between two different cultures. As a result of this process, the research produces a multi-threaded narrative form, capable of contrasting the different realities of rich and poor, and contrasting the experiences of isolation felt between Nigerian women in England and the rich cultural family life left behind. This multi-layered rendering of shifting realities was formally supported by the development of an improvisational way of working on camera that enabled subjects to participate in the shoot without distress or feelings of exploitation.
