How I came by Green Passport —Ronke Macaulay

ON Thursday, organisers of the I-Represent International Documentary Film Festival (iREP) released a list of some 30 movies that would be screened at this year’s event happening from March 21 to 24 at Freedom Park, Lagos Island.

“We are very excited to present the carefully selected films representing some of the best new works relevant to our theme of Africa-in-Self-Conversation,” the organisers said in an e-mailed statement to arts journalists and film buffs.

One of the documentaries that would be screened at the fiesta is Ronke Macaulay’s Green Passport at France ‘98’ which captures the trip of a group of Super Eagles supporters from the UK to Paris, France to watch Nigeria play Denmark at that year’s Mundial.

However, the movie is not the first by the producer who has lived in the UK for many years. It is the third of the Green Passport series that Macaulay disclosed was serendipitous.

Speaking in a brief interview in Lagos, the producer explained: “I didn’t set out to make the series of documentary films called Green Passport.  The first one was borne out of the xenophobia experience in South Africa. I did some film studies in South Africa, and I decided to combine my studies in directing with documentary film production on Nigerians in South Africa.”

In Green Passport II: Nigerians in Ghana, Macaulay examines the quality of education in Nigeria and why people are flocking to higher institutions in Ghana. “The issue of Nigerian students paying school fees in dollars; I thought Ghanaians should also come to Nigeria to get an education. It should be a two-way traffic,” she disclosed as to why she made the film.

Explaining how she came about the third that would be screened at iREP, Macaulay said: “I made the third one from the materials we got from events of some years ago.  I love soccer. When I was in the UK, I organised a trip to France ’98 for Nigerian football fans to go and watch the Super Eagles. You can imagine a coach full of passionate fans, singing and cheering all the way from London to France. It was fun. It wasn’t a professional thing. But we had a camera which we used to record the whole experience. Last year, I saw the materials again, and I thought I should do something from them. It is a short documentary film, just 18 minutes long. I submitted it to iREP, and now it is one of the official selections.”

The documentary, she further explained, is unlike the previous ones in terms of narrative technique where she was the narrator and guide. “I’ve always been a storyteller before I got involved in documentary filmmaking,” she said, adding that, “I have always been a writer. I had a blog. And back then when I had a full-time job with an international organisation, I was still writing for Nigerian publications. I used to write for Nigerian Village Square about socio-cultural issues about Nigerians in the diaspora.”

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Before fully embracing documentary films, the CEO of Angel Works Media worked for Ben TV in the UK where she had a magazine show called People and Places. She also spent some years with Amnesty International before catching the documentary bug and attending a scriptwriting masterclass at the 2015 edition of the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF). She then did a course in directing at a film school in South Africa, honing her skills as line and associate producer on some projects before writing, producing and directing the first of the Green Passport series in early 2017.

“I applied for scriptwriting, and I got invited for the workshop. I was the mummy of the class, and that was my first introduction to filmmaking. Then I got involved in film production. I was learning on the job. Later, I did a course in directing at Johannesburg. It lasted four months and was very intense.”

It was in the City of Gold that she had an idea to make a documentary on Nigerians living in South Africa. Having overcome the initial reservations of her lecturer and others who thought that it was a sensitive area likely to re-open fresh wounds, Macaulay did a movie that all parties commended.

She said: “After the Green Passport was screened in Johannesburg, there was a town hall meeting afterwards with Nigerians in South Africa, Nigerian Consulate in South Africa and some legal experts to talk about some of the issues raised in the documentary, towards building bridges and finding solutions.”

With less than two weeks to the opening of iREP, film buffs are assured of a good time with the documentary and the other official selections that would be screened at Freedom Park and the Nigerian Film Corporation, Ikoyi.