You Matter to Me, 2022 (film) 11 mins
Rising Star Award, S16 film festival 2023 🌟
Logline:
A young Nigerian artist in Enugu, Nigeria explores her parents’ understanding of joy and community through everyday rituals around food, music, religion, work and play.
Synopsis:
Now in their middle age, my parents’ experience of joy is complicated by the tensions and grief that has marked their Nigerian lives. Through casual banter and observation, I explore what my parents think of joy and how they find it, particularly in community and everyday rituals around food, music, religion, work and play. I composed the film’s soundtrack in the spirit of ‘00s Nollywood dramas that remind me of home and my parents when I’m away from them. It is a plain story from my heart about how we still carry on and what matters in the end.
The film was made with a grant from the ‘Creating Joy: Art, Refusal and the Worlding of Black Lives’ project- a radical digital space that explores Black diasporic life through artmaking.
Credits:
Director: Immaculata Abba
Writer: Immaculata Abba
Cinematography: Immaculata Abba
Music: Immaculata Abba
Sound design: Kene Amaonwu
Editor: Kene Amaonwu
“After watching the work of younger filmmakers like Dika, Sasha, Immaculata and others it’s safe to say the future of alternative Nigerian cinema is in good hands and to God be the Glory #happysurvival.”
- Abba T. Makama, co-founder S16 collective & director of Juju Stories. 2023
“I was so moved by it. It was nostalgic and warm and honest.”
- Dika Ofoma, director of A Quiet Monday. 2023
Nourishment film club’s crowd favourite at the Wahala Dey showcase, Film Africa 2022
Festival Screenings:
S16 Film Festival (Nigeria) - Dec 2023
‘HOME: A Piece of Us’ film exhibition, Exmouth Film Festival (UK) - Nov 2023
‘Love and War’, 27th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (Switzerland) - Nov 2023
Enugu International Film Festival, Viva Cinemas (Nigeria) - Nov 2022
'Beyond Nollywood: Wahala Dey' at Film Africa festival, BFI London (UK)- Oct 2022
Program Screenings:
The African Contemporary Narrative at Fenmore Studios x Institut Français du Nigeria (Abuja, Nigeria) - Feb 2024
OTO film screening at Sowing Watermelon Seeds/CBN (Lagos, Nigeria) - Feb 2024
Film Diary NYC III (New York City, USA) - Dec 2023
Joy & Memory Day at the Library of Africa & the Africa Diaspora (Accra, Ghana) - June 2023
Mindful Pictures by Pynk Prysm x Covent Garden’s The Garden Cinema (London, UK) - May 2023
Film screening and talk - ‘You Matter to Me’ by Immaculata Abba at Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, UAE) - May 2023
Africa Film Society’s Classics in the Park (Accra, Ghana) - Feb 2023
Family Film Club (Lagos, Nigeria) - Dec 2022
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA) - Dec 2022
“One final difference involves the pipeline for newcomers. Informal apprenticeships and theatre departments once fed Nigerian cinema; today, foreign film schools have become a major source of behind-the-camera talent and training. And when foreign tutelage isn't accessible, watching and imbibing doctrines from western films will do.
And yet, the commercial and cultural dominance of 1990s Nigerian cinema has left a lingering aesthetic mark. In Immaculata Abba’s documentary «You Matter to Me», the old Nollywood aesthetic shows up in the film’s texture and its setting in a village in Eastern Nigeria. The short also discusses family, one of the main concerns of traditional Nollywood.”
at film events (UK, Ghana)
Unless otherwise stated, all images and writing on this website was made by Immaculata Abba.
Copyright: Immaculata Abba (2017 - 2024)
Copyright: Immaculata Abba (2017 - 2024)