What’s it all about?

The Reel Dialogues project aims to explore how Hausa and British media can work together to create a basis for further co-operation and understanding. It seeks ‘’to provide a training and production environment which encourages dialogue between filmmakers in Northern Nigeria and the UK, supports the development of the Hausa film industry, and produces films that express the Hausa culture accurately and creatively to a national and international audience.”

The journey so far…

Over the past seven months, the British Council Kano, in partnership with ScriptNet UK, has conducted a scriptwriting training programme in a series of three workshops:

Round 1: These workshops saw 19 writers from Kano and 19 from Jos undergo training sessions and tutorials with a view to developing the first draft of their scripts. Judy Holland, a UK-based film academic, was charged with the task of introducing our budding scriptwriters to the fundamentals of scriptwriting for short film drama and also held one-on-one tutorials with each participant.

Participants were made up of young scriptwriters and small-time producers as well as creative writers who had an interest in writing for the screen.  Both sets of participants were impressed with the quality of the training sessions and held lively discussion sessions analysing films such as Monsoon Wedding, Casablanca and Stephen Spielberg’s directorial debut, Duel. Judy described the participants as ‘Terrific. They were very enthusiastic, wanting to see films again and chatting about the topic of the morning among themselves through lunch

So involved were they that they formed a Scriptwriters Forum which will meet every month to serve as a platform for sharing ideas and experiences.

The participants (Kano and Jos) were given a three-week deadline to hand in first drafts of their scripts. A 5-man Selection Panel, made up of members of the Hausa film industry, met in October to select those 20 scripts that made Round 2.

Round 2: Instructing the group was Nell Smith, a successful director from the UK who has won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for one of her films, ‘Secrets’.

Nell adopted a practical, hands-on approach to her sessions. The group viewed lots of feature length films to get some ideas and inspiration for their own stories. She also organised team-lead activities for the participants to partake in.

Apart from the crucial one-on-one tutorials with each participant, another important element of this round was a chance for each writer to share his/her script with the other members of the group and get comments and feedback from the collective, as well as the trainer’s professional opinion. These sessions were made more interesting by participants role-playing specific characters from the different scripts.

Round 3: 11 scripts were chosen by the selection panel for the final round of workshops in Kano which were conducted by Rosie Cullen, a senior lecturer at Bournemouth University’s Media School.

As well as the usual film viewings, team exercises and elaborating on concepts learnt in round 1, Rosie spent a lot of time on the individual scripts holding up to three sessions of tutorials with each participant and helping them develop their all-important final drafts.

A field trip to Aminu Kano International Airport’s Domestic Terminal was arranged as an ‘observational research exercise’. Participants learnt to ‘soak in’the atmosphere and character of a location and use the information gathered as ideas and/or inspiration for their scripts.

At this stage, the dialogue between the Hausa and UK scriptwriters is set rolling; the 10 writers have been paired with 10 students on an undergraduate course at Bournemouth University’s Media School. There is now a collaborative effort between each pair of writers (via e-mail) on the development of the final draft.

What’s next?

A selection panel consisting of the local panel and a UK Advisory board (reputable members of the UK film industry) will select 5 scripts that will go through to phase 2 – technical training and production. The aim of this phase is to produce five short films after a series of workshops in directing, performance, technical training and producing drama.

We wish all our future, home-grown, Spielbergs good luck and encourage all those who have participated so far to keep working on their craft!

For further information write to info.kano@ng.britishcouncil.org