More than a few who have attended college will tell you that education is less likely to happen in the classroom than outside of it, a feeling that’s already pervaded the student body at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria as director Alain Kassanda settles in for his latest film “Coconut Head Generation.” The oldest institution of higher education in the country can inherently be viewed with some suspicion by its current class when it once served as an extension of the University of London in its early years, still connected in some people’s minds as a reminder of the country’s colonial past, but there are more pressing concerns now when lectures about sentence structure seem woefully inadequate for the times and students have convened a film club as much for reasons of cinephilia than the medium’s ability to take on just about any subject.
Through the power of film, Angela Davis can be seen sparking a conversation across time and space at the Thursday Film Series via a screening of “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” hardly feeling as if she’s speaking in the past tense and her revolutionary spirit is right at home at Ibadan amongst a student body seeking answers when the future looks bleak. When the value of a degree is an open topic of conversation in a country where there are few jobs and government officials are known to send their children abroad for their education, the power cord that connects the projector on the second floor of a humble building to a ground-level generator seems like a lifeline and debates about films can keep electricity going on in the room long after they’ve gone dark.
The movies may be used by the students to process their reality, but reality starts reflecting what happens in the club when the budget allocated to the colleges has led to teacher strikes across the public university system in Nigeria in which the protests become a flashpoint for a number of other social movements in the country, as if the door opens to questioning everything from seeing a single example of resistance. By referring back to newsreels of Ibadan’s origins as the school changed from British to Nigerian hands, Kassanda illustrates a tension that has never gone away for the whole country when some colonial attitudes remains in place as the institution seems aligned with police, who come to tamp down demonstrations, and ultimately of little priority when it’s starved of resources.
What does appear to have changed is the students’ willingness to accept the premise of many things that are a part of their experience on campus and look to eventually be a part of their post-grad lives, from the notoriously crummy dorms that lead to the enrichment of private developers offering better accommodations to the ingrained patriarchal beliefs that female students can be seen calling out even amongst their seemingly progressive male cohorts. Movies may be opening up the minds of the students at Ibadan to consider alternatives, but “Coconut Head Generation” is bound to inspire contemporaries across the world to think a little differently about Nigeria and the state of the world they currently find themselves in.
“Coconut Head Generation” is now open in Los Angeles at the Monica Film Center. It screens on May 7th in New York at 6 pm at the People’s Forum.