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Leila Afua Djansi | |
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| Born | Leila Afua Djansi 17 July Bangalore |
| Occupation | Filmmaker [1] |
| Known for | Like Cotton Twines (2016) |
Leila Afua Djansi is an American and Ghanaian filmmaker who started her film career in the Ghana film industry.
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Leila Afua Djansi | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | Leila Afua Djansi 17 July Bangalore |
| Occupation | Filmmaker [1] |
| Known for | Like Cotton Twines (2016) |
Leila Afua Djansi is an American and Ghanaian filmmaker who started her film career in the Ghana film industry.
Leila Afua Djansi was born on 17 July. [2] Her father was a pilot and her mother a senior nursing officer. Djansi grew up in India and Ghana. Although acting and writing were her hobbies, her career ambition was to become a gynecologist, a plan that later changed when she developed an interest in forensics. While studying criminology, another career change occurred when she met the Ghanaian actor Sam Odoi, who convinced her to write a script for him. She was 19 years old when her script Babina was made into a movie by producer Akwetey Kanyi. [3]
Djansi attended the Kabore Primary and JSS, Mawuli School for primary, junior and secondary education respectively all located in Ho, in the Volta Region of Ghana.
She began her film education at the National Film and Television School, but left Ghana for the United States to continue her Film and Television Degree at Savannah College of Art and Design on an artistic honors scholarship.
President of the Ghana Library Board Readers Club for three years, Djansi began her career in the entertainment industry in 1998 when she was a runner-up in a regional beauty pageant in junior high school.
Djansi began her filmmaking career in Ghana at the age of 19 with the Ghana Film Company. Djansi worked with the state-owned Gama Film Company, where she wrote and produced Legacy of Love.
Her directorial debut I Singof a Well in 2009 netted an unprecedented 11 nominations at the Africa Movie Academy Awards, winning the Special Jury Award for Overall Best Film. In addition, the film was presented with the BAFTA/LA Choice Award at the Pan African Film Festival for excellence in filmmaking.
Djansi followed with the advocacy film SinkingSands which supports the Say No to Violence Against Women Campaign for UNiFEM Ghana. In 2011, Djansi's TiesThatBind won Best Diaspora Film at the San Diego Black Film Festival, it also became an official selection to AFI's New African Films Festival in 2012. The film's star, Kimberly Elise, was nominated for Best Actress at the American Black Film Festival. The film was also nominated for Outstanding Foreign Film at the 2012 Black Reel Awards.
Djansi's Like Cotton Twines was an official selection to the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival under the World Fiction Section. The film shot entirely on location in Ghana explores issues of modern-day slavery when an African American volunteer travels to a rural community in Ghana to teach and discovers one of his students, a 14-year-old girl, has to become a religious slave.
Her other credits include Where Children Play with Grammy winner Macy Gray, the LA Film Festival Best Episodic Television Show 40 and Single for AMC's Urban Movie Channel, and All The Men in my Life starring Rochelle Aytes.
Djansi has been recognized by various international organizations for continuously using filmmaking to bring light to women's issues, and she has consistently made movies for women and about women while employing diversity behind and in front of the camera. She is also lauded for revolutionizing Ghana’s film industry with I Sing of Well, whichmarked the onset of a unique narrative style never before seen in West African storytelling. Her work also inspired Ghanaian filmmakers to return, contributing to the telling of African stories. Djansi continues to receive acclaim for using film to narrate stories of black women.
Djansi's first film was awarded a 2009 worldFest Platinum Award; the film, Grass Between My Lips, is a story of female circumcision and early marriage, set in a northern Ghana village.
In 2010, her debut feature, I Sing of a Well was nominated for 11 Africa Movie Academy Awards. The film won 3 awards: Best Sound, Best Costume, and the Jury Special Award for Overall Best Film. In 2011, Djansi was presented with the BAFTA/LA Pan African Film Festival Choice Award for the film I Sing of a Well.
Djansi's 2011 film Sinking Sands received 10 Africa Movie Academy Award nominations, with Ama K Abebrese winning the Best Actress Award and Djansi earning the Best Original Screenplay Award.
Djansi's third directorial effort Ties That Bind received a Black Reel Awards Nomination in 2012. The film also won the Best Diaspora Film at the 2012 San Diego Black Film Festival.
In 2016, Djansi directed Like Cotton Twines, an exploration of the practice of Trokosi in her native Ghana. The film was nominated for "Best World Fiction Film" at the Los Angeles Film Festival. ‘’Like Cotton Twines’’ also secured the Best Narrative Feature award at the 2016 Savannah Film Festival, clinching the same honor at the Riverbend Film Festival in 2017.
Her other credits include Film Independent Best Episodic for 2018 40 and Single which was created for AMCs' Allblk
Suzzy Williams was a well-known Ghanaian television and film actor. She starred in films such as Bloody Mary, Calamity, The Comforter and Mother's Heart. Her career as an actor was launched through the African hit film Together Forever, with a screenplay by US-based Ghanaian producer and screenwriter Leila Djansi.
Ama Konadu Abebrese is a British-Ghanaian actress, television presenter and a producer. She was born in Ghana and raised in West London in the United Kingdom. She won the 2011 Best Actress in a Leading Role at the AMAA Awards for her stellar performance in Sinking Sands. Her film credits includes Azali, the first Ghanaian first nominated for an Academy Award; and the 2015 Netflix movie Beasts of No Nation. She is listed among Africa's Top 20 Actors and Actresses by FilmContacts.com. She is the narrator and a producer on the Blitz Bazawule film The Burial of Kojo, which was acquired by Array and was released on Netflix.
Black women filmmakers have made contributions throughout the history of film. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. In 2020, 74.6 percent of movie directors of theatrical films were white, showing a small decrease from the previous year. In terms of representation, 25.4 percent of film directors were of ethnic minority in 2020. Of the 25.4 percent of minority filmmakers, a small percentage was female.
Sinking Sands is a 2010 Ghanaian drama film written, produced and directed by Leila Djansi, and starring Jimmy Jean-Louis, Ama Abebrese, Emmanuel Yeboah A. and Yemi Blaq. The film received nine (9) nominations and won 3 awards at the 2011 Africa Movie Academy Awards, including the awards for Best Screenplay & Best Makeup.
Chinyere Yvonne Okoro is a Ghanaian Nigerian actress. Born to a Nigerian dad and Ghanaian mother, Yvonne Okoro is of mixed lineage and calls herself an African. Yvonne Okoro is from Koforidua in the Eastern Parts of Ghana. She received Ghana Movie Awards Best Actress Award in 2010 and was nominated for Africa Movie Academy Awards Best Actress twice in a row in 2011 and 2012 for her movies Pool Party and Single Six. She has also received four Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Award and in 2012 was honoured with a Distinguished Achievement Award at the Nigeria Excellence Awards.
Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker and producer. Her films explore the colliding identities of black immigrants in America through multiple forms ranging from cinematic essays to experimental narratives to reconstructed Black popular media. Interpreting the notion of "double consciousness," coined by sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, Owusu aims to create a third cinematic space or consciousness. In her work, feminism, queerness, and African identities interact in African, white American, and black American cultural spaces.
Noella Wiyaala Nwadei is a Ghanaian Afro-pop singer-songwriter who sings in her native language Sissala and Waala dialects and English, often combining all three languages within her songs. Wiyaala means "the doer" in the Sissala dialect. She has attained public renown with her single "Make Me Dance" and her androgynous image. After making her name in reality shows in Accra, she established a solo career in 2013 with the hit single "Rock My Body",(Dance move was initiated by Van Calebs) which won her two awards at the 2014 first edition of the All Africa Music Awards, the Most Promising Artiste in Africa and Revelation of The African Continent. Wiyaala is also associated with UNICEF Ghana and the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection of Ghana in campaigns against child marriage, child poverty, health and sanitation. She headlined the 15th London African Music Festival in London. In March 2021, she was among the Top 30 Most Influential Women in Music by the 3Music Awards Women's Brunch.
Yoruba Richen is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Her work has been featured on PBS, New York Times Op Doc, Frontline Digital, New York Magazine's website -The Cut, The Atlantic and Field of Vision. Her film The Green Book: Guide to Freedom was broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel to record audiences and was awarded the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking.
The 2010 Ghana Movie Awards was the maiden edition of the ceremony to reward cinematic achievement in Ghana Film Industry. The event was held at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Accra on 25 December 2010. Sinking Sands, Juliet Ibrahim, Nadia Buari, Yvonne Okoro, Majid Michel, John Dumelo & Genevieve Nnaji were among the winners.
Juliet Yaa Asantewa Asante is a Ghanaian film actress, producer and director, and philanthropist. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Film Authority (NFA). Her latest film, Silver Rain, was nominated for "Best Film in West Africa" and "Best costume" for 2015 in the Africa Magic viewer's choice awards (AMVCA) and also 2015 "Best Overall Film In Africa". In 1999, Asante started the production house Eagle House Productions. That same year she also started "Save Our Women International", a non-profit entity focusing on female sexual education and launched an innovation that makes short movies for the mobile phone in Africa in 2014 called Mobile Flicks. She is also the Founder and executive director of Black Star International Film Festival. Eagle Productions has helped train some actors and actresses in Ghana through its training arm, the Eagle Drama Workshop.
Cinema of Ghana also known as the Ghana Film Industry nicknamed Ghallywood, began when early film making was first introduced to the British colony of Gold Coast in 1923. At the time only affluent people could see the films, especially the colonial master of Gold Coast. In the 1950s, film making in Ghana began to increase. Cinemas were the primary venue for watching films until home video became more popular. The movie industry has no official name as yet since consultations and engagements with stakeholders has been ongoing when a petition was sent to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture which suspended the use of the name Black Star Films.
Claire Prieto is a Canadian film director and producer, known as one of the first black filmmakers in Canada. Along with Roger McTair, Prieto was a partner in the Toronto-based production company, Prieto-McTair Productions, which operated from 1982 to 2007.
Akofa Edjeani is a Ghanaian veteran film actress, producer and entrepreneur. Her short film, Not My Daughter, won Best Short Film award at the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in 2008, and I Sing of a Well, the movie she starred in and co-produced, won three awards and the Best Jury Award from Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2010.
Babina is a 2000 Ghanaian film written by screenwriters Leila Afua Djansi and Ashangbor Akwetey Kanyi. The film tells a story about a conflict between a witch called Babina, who was sent to the world to destroy the life of man, and the men of God who oppose her. It is an African horror film. Babina is played by actress Kalsoume Sinare.
Veronica Martha Agowa Quarshie is a Ghanaian veteran producer, director and screenwriter, known to have changed the then status quo of storylines where women were portrayed as back benchers. She changed the narrative of women from an obscure, stilted and gender imbalanced story lines to women who owned their space.
Like Cotton Twines is a 2016 film written and directed by Ghanaian-American filmmaker Leila Djansi. The film was an official selection to the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival under the World Fiction section. It went on to win the best narrative feature at the Savannah Film Festival in 2016.
John Osei Tutu Agyeman also known by the name Jot Agyeman is a Ghanaian author, actor, playwright and television personality.
Comfort Arthur is a British-born Ghanaian animator, graphic designer, visual artist and editor. She is best known for the animation works such as Black Barbie, The Cursed Ones and Children of the Mountain. She is the founder of "The Comfy Studio" which is a multimedia studio based in Ghana.
Zoe Ramushu is a South Africa based Zimbabwean writer, director, producer, actress and multimedia journalist. Her debut film, It Takes A Circus was nominated for the Student Academy Awards. Zoe Ramushu is co-founder and former spokesperson of Sisters Working in Film and Television. She also chairs a committee for the South African Department of Sports, Arts and Culture.
Afua Owusu Asantewaa Aduonum, better known as Afua Asantewaa, is a Ghanaian media personality, journalist, and entrepreneur. She is the chief executive officer of Askof Productions Ltd, organizers of the Ghana Outstanding Women Awards, the Pose For Africa Models Reality Show, and Miss KiDi Ghana.
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