Jude Idada’s got stories to tell

The story of ‘The Tenant’ is not your regular story. Its plot and twists left many an audience holding its breath for 90 minutes and then rising out of their awe to deliver a standing ovation to the cast and crew. This story of betrayal, displacement and distress was the invention of Nigerian-born Canadian screenwriter Jude Idada. After marking time studying Medicine and Agricultural Economics in two Nigerian universities, Idada decided to grab hold of his destiny, probably not unlike the protagonist in ‘The Tenant’, and study Theatre Arts at the University of Ibadan, despite his parents’ refusal.

Trying times

After graduating with the best grades in his class, Idada began work with Arthur Andersen. Everybody believed he had sold out on his filmmaking dream. “I told them this is part of life. When I’m writing the part of a businessman, I need to have observed it, to have lived it, to be able to depict it correctly.” He left Nigeria for Canada in 2001 to pursue a master’s degree in Human Resource Management. Numerous jobs and a novel later, Idada decided to get back into artistic mode. “That was when I wrote a script called ‘Faces of a Coin.’” His experiences on the MNet New Directions project and a series of awards also encouraged him to rediscover the artistic instinct that had been lost in the corporate world.

“As a writer and producer on ‘The Tenant’, it was just me writing. It was fact and fiction threaded together for the cinematic end. We (himself and business partner, Lucky Ejim) had to sell our cars, sell our houses. We were shooting with a hundred and something thousand dollars. It was risky because my parents thought I was mad to do all that kind of stuff.”

“As a producer, it was so trying because we didn’t have the money to have a huge cast and crew. I had to do everything. Post-production has been more calm, but I’ve needed to go out for more money to do stuff. It’s been a trying experience all through. But of course I believed in my dream and in my vision. I knew that making this movie will be a calling card and it will take us places, which it has rightly done.”

Making the story

“The incest was fact. The other part is a collage of little dramatic moments like the immigrant story in America or in Canada. There was an Igbo guy who was to be deported, in the midst of the winter, he jumped into Lake Ontario. I was trying to ask that question, that ‘What is it about Nigeria that is so scary, that you are prepared to lose your life?’ There are people who have sold their houses and land to come to Canada and when they get to Canada, in three months they deport you. What are you going to come here and say? So some people just believe either you leave for another country or just end it all.”

Does the suicide option then inspire the idea of being a tenant in one’s own existence? “Yes. It’s more like a message. ‘We are no longer tenants; we are the landlords of our lives.’ We should be able to make decisions. If you are the tenant you are at the receiving end. He’s in a country where they want to deport him. He has no power over whether he wants to stay or go and when he goes, what is he going to? To him, suicide is an easier way out.”

With an incest-centred film in the bag and a horror film in the works, Idada might be up to something with the dark and scary. “Dark, itself, is instructive. I don’t do dark for dark’s sake. I do dark to send a message across. There’s no need to compare dark with lightness if I don’t put off the light.” The horror flick, Idada says, is cultural, “I’m just trying to hold brief which says our symbols are real. I’m a Christian, but I also believe the religion of our fathers had some truth in it.”

Telling Nigeria’s stories

Despots, immigrants and ‘ne’er-do-wells’ seem to populate the Nigerian story. One wonders if the stories could be told with a more exemplary cast. “We first and foremost have to be true because when you are not true it becomes propaganda. As an artist I want to make films that in its reality it passes a message. Yes, this is what is wrong with my country. Yes, these are the issues, but even in that, this is also what is wrong with your own country. I’m not going to gloss it over because, at the end of the day, art should enlighten; it should teach by showing that which is reality. In my films, if I show a Nigerian policeman taking bribe, it’s not a lie. Art is great. Art is supposed to be a reflection of life but the whole thing you should remember is that what is the message the person goes home with?

Idada is particular about writing stories that inform, build bridges and enlighten people in the Diaspora. “I also want to tell stories that portray and can build up Nigeria in the global scene as a vibrant country with multitalented people.” His aim is not only to change the international opinion about Nigeria but to make sure Nigerians are themselves enlightened enough to no longer suffer and smile.

He condemns the continued abuse of Nigeria’s cultural heritage, blaming it on brainwashing and a lack of exposure. The same thing, he says, is happening to our stories which he believes should be told in a way that improves global impression about us. Idada points out the difference in how the gravesites of Fela and Bob Marley are being preserved in Nigeria and Jamaica respectively. “We don’t celebrate our own.”

Ironically, for one so concerned about his culture, Idada speaks only English because his father believed it was civilised to speak and behave in a certain way. “That age has passed. Culture has changed. Before, we celebrated the West, but now I think developing countries are realising that there’s a whole lot we can be proud of. America now is struggling for relevance. I think, culturally, economically, politically, socially, the world is now becoming more balanced.”

Two minds working as one

On the path to creating this balance with Idada is Lucky Ejim, lead actor and director of ‘The Tenant’. Both run Broken Manacles Entertainment, producers of ‘The Tenant’. In the course of their journey with ‘The Tenant’, American film producer, Monty Ross, has described them as reminiscent of his own early days with maverick director, Spike lee. Ejim and Idada met six years ago when Idada was looking for a formidable hand to direct ‘The Tenant’. “I’ve always believed in collaboration; you need added vision. If I write and also direct, there’s no added value. I watched his work for a few minutes and said ‘let’s work’. I needed someone who shared my vision and I had seen that he had the technical knowhow that I needed. It started on a work basis but now we are very good friends. That’s Lucky and I’s genesis.” And the genesis of more ambitious ideas from the production outfit.

The best is yet to come

From the man, who has worked with the crew of productions like Incredible Hulk 2 (he calls this “the good one”), American Gangster, Repossession Mambo (now Repo Men) and Legends of Afrobeat, there are promises of “incredible cinematic masterpieces that will make them (Nigerians) proud of being that which they are, that will break the shackles that hold them from that cultural captivity.”

The company is now working on producing a musical drama, starring Joke Silva and Dejumo Lewis, and an epic horror flick.