Content area
Full text
Kenneth Gyang, director. Confusion Na Wa. 2013. 105 minutes. English, Pidgin, and Hausa. Nigeria. Cinema Kpatakpata. Streaming on Dobox.tv.
Confusion Na Wa is great fun to watch-a blast of fresh, keen air in Nigerian filmmaking and out of the ordinary in several dimensions. It comes from Nigeria's Middle Belt. Violence in Jos, where the director, Kenneth Gyang, lives, shifted the production to Kaduna. Its two big stars, Ali Nuhu (from the Hausa film industry) and Ramsey Nouah (from Nollywood), appeal to Nigeria's cinematic north and south, while the ambience is that of the complex cultural mosaic of the country's center. The film is full of new talent: other members of the uniformly excellent cast are relatively unknown, as are Gyang, who is also the cowriter and coproducer, and Tom RowlandsRees, who produced and cowrote. (The director of photography, Yinka Edward, the third member of the production company, has shot several films for the leading directors Kunle Afolayan and Izu Ujukwu; he was a classmate of Gyang's at the National Film Institute in Jos.) The production is strikingly young in its personnel, subject, and outlook, and it springs from a novel constellation of resources and strategies. It grew out of the friendship...