to,     from,
Olivia Douglass, 2024, 1’20 min

Poet Olivia Douglass’s to,    from, gets to the heart of Bushman, exploring the tensions between the estranged and embodied experiences of the African diaspora.

Bushman
David Schickele, 1971, 73 min

Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part documentary, part imagined – poetic in its approach to real events. Through a blend of irony, poetry and nuanced storytelling, Bushman follows Gabriel (Paul Elam Nzie Okpokam), a young Nigerian, living in San Francisco. Lovestruck and culturally stranded he faces the harsh realities of life in the 60’s. Interwoven through his adventures in America are glances back to his African origins, and the dualities of the political and racial mood of the US alongside the terrible and elusive Civil War in Nigeria.

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Part of our Histoire(s) du cinéma series