Last year, Nigerian director CJ Obasi got his name in his country’s history books when his film Mami Wata entered and won a prize at the Sundance Film Festival. That was a big film at a big festival. But about 10 years ago, he had a smaller film at a smaller festival. Titled O-Town, the film premiered at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) to an audience of his peers, many of whom were unimpressed.
Obasi has now remastered it and presented it at the 2024 S16 Film Festival, cutting its original over 120 minutes to under 85 minutes.
The story remains the same. In Owerri, the place that gives the film its title, the ironically named street hustler Peace (Paul Utomi) is well-known for his capacity for violence, alongside two friends/henchmen. In fact, the film opens with a beating being dished out by the three men. One night at a club, Peace sees The Chairman (Kalu Ikeagwu) talking to a musician known as The Artist and has a thought.
He has big dreams and understands that getting those dreams to reality would require the endorsement of the Chairman. But the big man is inaccessible as all big men are. But by Peace’s calculation, The Artist is reachable. It’s easy math: if he can convince or coerce the Artist to set up a meeting, his dreams will be within his grasp.
As you can imagine, nothing is that straightforward, especially not on the streets of O-Town, where knowing your place is vital and violence is viral.
Almost a decade after its original release, O-Town remains an enjoyable advertisement for CJ Obasi’s overflowing talent and a forecast of his international success. Efiko Score: 7.8/10
Obasi pads this central story with interviews conducted by a narrator who’s initially presented as a mostly dispassionate presenter. But that framing becomes its own conceit as the story goes on, so that by the third act, the film’s narrator has collided with the story he’s telling. The collision was messier in O-Town’s first iteration; it is a lot cleaner now. This is neither praise nor condemnation.
Why is it not praise?
Well, that’s because part of Obasi’s powers as a younger filmmaker was his exuberance. Even with a barely existent budget, he was doing things nobody in mainstream Nollywood was even thinking of at the time. He inserted wacky interludes into his story, his artificial rain was convincing, his use of light and shade were impressive, his camera was highly motile, his soundtrack was unusual, and, maybe above all else, he inserted himself into the story he was telling.
Considered in isolation, some of these things were nonsensical. But presented in the film, together they indicated a filmmaker with imagination, a filmmaker with an ambition that his country’s mainstream could hardly understand—let alone withstand. The film never got a wide release in Nigeria.
So, why is the higher hygiene of the new version not condemnable?
Well, that’s because it’s a lot less tasking for audiences that would prefer a lean tale told clean. The new version is the work of a mature filmmaker; the original is the work of a maverick young man. Both films are alive but the original was furiously alive. What both versions lack in visual sophistication, they make up for with the commitment of the cast and the clarity of the directorial vision.
O-Town almost certainly owes a debt to City of God and its small-time characters with big-time viciousness. It is also indebted to Scorsese’s gangster pictures—although one shot, featuring the floating head of a character, recalls Spike Lee’s signature dolly shot. All of this—plus the use of just one actor (Ikeagwu) familiar to Nollywood watchers—suggests that for Obasi, anything more than a cursory similarity to the main cinematic tradition of his country was accidental. As an auteur, Obasi was always based outside of Nigeria. And even before he went big internationally with Mami Wata, O-Town showed that Obasi’s sizable talent was only matched by his obvious ambition.
The key flaw—an eccentric flaw not a damning one—remains the somewhat surrealistic inclusion of the director playing himself performing actions that don’t quite jell with the rest of the film’s gritty realism. But while this may be unconscionable for a seasoned filmmaker, for a young director intent on making his mark, it is merely a quirk.
You may roll your eyes when Fiery (Obasi’s real-life nickname) appears on the screen, but you may also smile at the indulgence. Virtuosity and vanity are not mutually exclusive, after all.
