Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000.
Interview held at the 15th FESPACO, February 1997, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
I saw your film Deluge at the Ethiopian Mini-Film Festival in Washington, D.C. in 1996. I found it very intense and engaging. It is also being screened here at FESPACO. Could you talk a bit about your film?
The film is titled Deluge in English, it is called Ye Wonz Maibel in Amharic. It is a sixty-minute documentary, a personal story talking about an historical event. I finished it a year ago, but then I re-cut it so that it could be transferred to film so that it would be shown in festivals. It is on 16mm film and that is how it is being screened here.
You narrate the film and you talk about your own personal process and how you felt while making the film. You also talk about going to Ethiopia to do the research and the shooting. Could you talk about your experiences while making the film?
In the film, the story that comes through is a personal journey. The time line of the story is from the end of the Haile Selassie era to the end of the military dictatorship, which happened between 1974 and 1991. But the making of the film itself has its own time line.
I started working on it in 1991, right after the fall of the military dictatorship, at which time I went home deliberately to make a film about that period. Basically, I started researching and filming at the same time because I didn't know exactly when the military dictatorship was going to end and how or what I was going to do about it, although that thought was in my head for most of the time since my brother disappeared.
When I went home in 1991, I took my camera with me and started talking to people. I really didn't know exactly what I was looking for or what I was going to end up doing. And so for three years, basically, I went back. Twice I went with a crew and started talking to everybody I could find who was willing to talk about that experience. Then I would come back and start to edit it. My initial thought was to make this big official history: this happened, this happened to so and so. But it became so unwieldy; every time I would come back and put together a rough-cut of some sort, I couldn't stand it myself, let alone other people who were not as close to the story as I was.
Eventually, after a lot of cuts, after a lot of thinking, then I realized that I was not really looking for the official story, I was looking for that personal story, what happened to my brother. And what happened to my best friend. So with the help of my daughter, who could see a lot clearer than I could at the time, because I was too overwhelmed with the magnitude of this story, I realized that that was what I wanted to do.
Eventually the final product came through as both a journey for me, in terms of trying to discover what happened—although I don't discover exactly what happened—but also as a personal journey as to how I understood this story, what my part was in it, what my brother's part was in it, and how that fit into the big official story. That really was what eventually came out.
Did the impetus for the way you tell the story come out of your being, I don't know if I could say, in self-exile, or as an Ethiopian diasporan?
Part of the difficulty in telling the big story was that I was not there when it happened. So, as a distant observer, I had a lot of discomfort in saying this happened and this happened. It was just too distant for me. Part of it also had to do with my feeling, "Who am I to tell this official story when I was not even there?" So yes, part of it was being away from it, although I didn't call myself or consider myself an exile, because it wasn't something I wanted to identify with. I always dreamed about going back the next year and the next year. So exile would mean, sort of saying, "I am here" and I still don't admit to that, I guess that's my difficulty. But yes, it had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't there. It wasn't a story that I had the authority to tell.
I finally got closer and closer to that thing that really concerned me, that was the impetus in the first place for me to want to do something about it, which was the disappearance of my brother. Then I discovered the relationship between my brother and my best friend, in terms of the movement and the revolution, and what happened to the two of them who ended up on opposite sides, basically, and eventually they both died, fighting on opposite sides. That, to me, made it my story. I was capable of telling that story.
Fortunately, my brother was a great letter writer. He wrote me everything he thought, everything that he saw happening, so that dialogue was already there, with my brother. During our letter writing I asked my brother questions and he gave me some of the answers I did not have because I was not there. That enabled me to have a certain perspective and I got rid of the problem of the exile telling that story.
I also incorporated my daughter, who was born in the United States, and grew up in the United States, and really had no direct connection to that story. Through her need to know about my brother, I was able to bring her into it, too. So it became a family history.
There is an English and an Amharic version of the film. How has the reception been of both versions?
Many Ethiopians who have seen both versions tell me that they have a different relationship with the Amharic version. The emotional relationship has a lot more depth in the Amharic version than in the English version. The English version is closer to sort of an official history. The Amharic version is more personal, they say, because it incorporates that connection to the language, the culture. There are some phrases I could not translate into English correctly, to elicit that emotional attachment. In Amharic it was there, there was no need to struggle to make sense: "What is she saying?"
I also eliminate the tension between the subtitle and what the people are saying. There is always that. Even when I am watching the English version I tend to struggle between not seeing the subtitle and just hearing the people; that was eliminated. So they had a lot more direct connection with what was said. They said they were much closer to the Amharic version. I am myself much closer to the Amharic version.
How about the non-Amharic speakers who had to rely on the English version?
Well, actually, nobody from the groups who do not understand Amharic, who are Ethiopians, has come to tell me the difference. Because when it was screened in Addis Ababa it was the Amharic version that was screened. And there were a lot of people who came from different groups, but they basically did understand Amharic.
But the emotional experience I am pretty sure is different for people who are not totally Amharic speakers from the beginning or people who learned Amharic in school and who are now Amharic speakers. I am sure it is different.
I suppose I was thinking about people like myself.
Oh, non-Ethiopians. Well, for them English is the only way that they can get into the story. It's been phenomenal, the response. I really didn't expect that it would touch in the way that people have told me they have been touched. I really didn't understand how universal this story could be, being told from a very personal point of view and I guess that is the answer.
It was a human experience it was a story of loss—you lose a brother, you lose a best friend. Your best friend and your brother fight against each other, they die eventually, and nothing was gained by it. Those kinds of stories are very universal. I didn't think about that when I was finally figuring out that that was what I wanted to do.
As an African woman filmmaker, would you say that you take on a certain role because of your gender? What role do you want to play as a woman filmmaker—or perhaps I should ask, do you see yourself playing a certain role as a woman?
When I'm working, I don't think necessarily that I would operate as a woman filmmaker. It's when I am in front of an audience that I know I'm being looked at as a representative of some rare sort, especially as an African woman or as a black woman in the United States, and I feel somewhat responsible, to be responsible. Because I think we have a lot of work to do, I feel that if I don't do well maybe others won't get the same chance that I have. I'm privileged in many ways, that I have been able to do what I want to do, and so I feel like I should be so responsible sometimes, to make sure that I don't destroy...that I don't burn bridges for other women coming after me. It's not an easy thing to be, and maybe because I am always the responsible sort, I don't know, sometimes I feel that there is a burden that I have to carry. But at other times I feel really terribly privileged to be doing something that I love doing.
At other times I feel like I have to focus on stories about women because there aren't that many films being made about stories about women, by women especially. It's a mixed bag. There is real happiness that I am doing this, and there's a certain kind of tension of whether or not I can chose to do anything I want to do. Do I always have to focus in areas where I feel there is a lack? Do I have to fill a vacuum? Those thoughts go in my head at times.
But I love doing stories about women. Even when it has nothing to do with women particularly. For example, in Deluge I gravitate towards including women, more women than men, getting stories from the women because I feel that their perspective is neglected. So I feel that is my role as a woman filmmaker. I also feel that I can do it better, because I feel that women open up more to me than they do to men, or they open up in different ways than with men. There is a certain comfort, there's a certain kind of shared experience, they don't have to explain to me. So I feel I have a better handle sometimes in getting some of the stories from women. I feel that is also a part of my role as a woman filmmaker.
How about as an Ethiopian woman filmmaker? Are there other Ethiopian women filmmakers?
No, but I think there are some coming up. And I am really looking forward to sharing my experience with them. In exile, in the large Diaspora, as far as I know, as a practicing filmmaker—and there are three or four films that I've made—I'm the only Ethiopian. But there are other women in Ethiopia who are employed in the government. Especially as an independent, there is only me.
But there are women in school now, there are women coming up. There are women who have just graduated who are struggling to make their first film. There is hope. One of the discomforts actually of being an Ethiopian, or African, or Black woman, is that you are sort of looked at as a rare bird. I am not the sort of person who likes the spotlight and when they push you in there I sometimes resent that. I am not rare, I just had the opportunity that I was able to grab and others were not. I was just in the right place when there were doors opened. That's part of the discomfort.
In 1991, there was a workshop for African women in cinema here at FESPACO, where women throughout the continent met for the first time. Were you involved in the meeting?
No; my first time at FESPACO was in 1993.
Have you been involved in the association that has been formed as a result of that? I know that there is an Eastern Africa regional branch as well.
No, it's very difficult. The distance, the lack of resources. We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have time. I'm teaching and making films and raising a child by myself. Also we don't know each other really, unless we meet at places like this. Some work in their homes, some work everywhere around the world. I have no way of being involved.
I am now really trying very hard, not only with women, but with other Ethiopian filmmakers, to set up some kind of structure so that we can communicate and share ideas, and perhaps even resources that we can share with each other, so that we can enable each other to work, and know about each other's work. I know that the first time that Ethiopian filmmakers saw my work was when I went back to Ethiopia last August. Before that I had made three films, they had never seen anything that I had done. It's really hard. In short, I don't know what's going on with the organization, if there is one.
