Coconut Head Generation (Alain Kassanda, 2023)
Added 2023-04-16 02:22:41 +0000 UTC
I don't have a lot to say about Coconut Head Generation, an informative but flawed documentary about activism at Nigeria's University of Ibadan. At first, it centers on the university's Thursday Cinema Club, a student-run group who screen provocative films and hold often raucous post-screening discussions. Showing works by the likes of Med Hondo, John Akomfrah, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun, and others, the group's taste (aesthetically and politically) is first rate, and the discussions we hear demonstrate just how engaged these students are.
CHG drifts away from the cinema club, shifting its focus to the #EndSARS movement, an anti-police brutality protest whose violent outcome (dozens of young Nigerians killed by cops) the government continues to deny. Kassanda, a first time director, doesn't do a great job connecting the issues specific to the University (shitty housing, obsolete degrees, top-down corruption) with the broader crises facing contemporary Nigeria, and so its message gets a bit diluted. But this is a film that taught me about struggles that I was not previously aware of, and that in itself is reason enough to have watched it.
Note: it seems Kassanda has cited the Congolese documentarist Dieudo Hamadi as an inspiration, but this isn't as rich or multi-layered as Hamadi's films. CHG more closely resembles the somewhat pedestrian work of Jean-Marie Teno of Cameroon (who is thanked in the credits).
