Bushman
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
David Schickele
Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam
Mike Slye
Elaine Featherstone
Lothario Lotho
James Earl Garrison
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
While hitchhiking in San Francisco, Gabriel, a Nigerian student attending San Francisco State University, gamely identifies himself as a "bushman" when a motorcyclist offers him a ride and queries him about where he is from. As Gabriel climbs the stairs to his girl friend Alma's apartment, he reflects on his life in Nigeria, where the end of the rainy season signaled a week-long feast. While talking on the fire escape with Alma, Gabriel mentions that he has had a letter from home, an infrequent occurrence because mail delivery had been suspended since the start of the Nigerian Civil War, which began in 1967. Later, as Alma and Gabriel walk along a street, Alma tries to teach Gabriel how to talk using American black slang. At the bar where Alma works, Gabriel silently muses about how Nigerian boys were initiated into manhood by spending five days alone in the bush. Based on his experiences as an African, Gabriel concludes that everything about American blacks is white but the color of their skin. Alma, who is a political activist, then complains that all the best people are in jail because they spoke out against the status quo. Alma, who has decided to leave the city to advocate for activism, chides her brother for his lack of interest in black power. After Alma leaves for the airport, Gabriel reflects how difficult it was for him as a boy to square the dictates of Christianity with Nigerian customs, such as young girls going bare-breasted. He also laughs at the idea of a priest declaring that fornication is a sin. At a bar, Gabriel meets a naïve, liberal white woman, who rants about what "my people have done to your people." The next morning, however, after making love to Gabriel, the woman awakens and begins criticizing and ordering him around, prompting him to leave. Gabriel then reflects about how his love of reading led him to dream about traveling to see some of the magical things he had read about. Gabriel tries to supplement his income by answering an advertisement in the newspaper classifieds, which to his surprise, was placed by Felix, a homosexual in search of an exotic relationship. Felix's overtures cause Gabriel to reflect on the time a Catholic priest invited him to a "private visit" in his office. After leaving Felix's, Gabriel reflects that his experience as an African makes it difficult for him to feel comfortable in American society. While spending some time in the mountains with friends, Gabriel, feeling like "an animal with people staring at you," recounts American misconceptions about Africans eating roots and later remarks that his spongy hair breaks flimsy American plastic combs. Back in San Francisco, as Gabriel shows slides of his family in Africa, he recalls that after Nigeria achieved independence from the United Kingdom and he went off to college, he came to realize that the study of African history and customs were absent from his high school curriculum. He also remembers becoming a student activist to protest the corrupt elections that followed the British exodus. After Gabriel concludes that he wanted to come to American to see democracy, the screen goes black.
Director
David Schickele
Cast
Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam
Mike Slye
Elaine Featherstone
Lothario Lotho
James Earl Garrison
Ann Scofield
Shermane Powell
Jack Nance
David Schickele
Donna Mikhelson
Timothy Near
Patrick Gleeson
David Major
Curtis Branch
Florence Schwartz
John Dotson
Crew
David Ames
Ralph Arlyck
Jennifer Chinlund
Arnie Cohen
Mary Colwell
Margo Davis
Gene Doherty
Cindy Harwood
Stephen Lighthill
Dan Loewenthal
Peter More
Michael Murray
David Myers
Paul Oppenheim
Rick Paup
Pat Riley
David Schickele
David Schickele
David Schickele
Kirk Smallman
James Spears
Ken Valentine
David Wax
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Onscreen credits feature a dedication to Ginna Frank and Ethan. Bushman opens with the following written prologue: "1968 Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight." Bobby Hutton, a seventeen-year-old teenager and a member of the Black Panther Party was killed in a shootout with the Oakland police on April 6, 1968. Many of the film's scenes begin with voice-over narration by "Gabriel" as he reflects on his life in Africa. Often, scenes end with Gabriel speaking directly into the camera. After Gabriel declares his wish to see democracy in America, the screen goes black. An onscreen narrator explains that the actor who played Gabriel, Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, was arrested and deported before the film could be completed. The narrator continues that the film was intended to end with Okpokam's character getting into trouble, being arrested and sent away.
The narrator then remarks that in the case of Okpokam and Bushman, "truth was faster than fiction." Another narrator explains that in 1968, the year the film was made, Paul was attending San Francisco State, teaching African history and working toward his master's degree. When the students went on strike, Paul joined the demonstration and was later stopped by the police who planted a bomb on him, then arrested him. After Paul was bailed out of jail, he was arrested twenty days later for a trumped-up armed robbery charge. Even though the arrest was thrown out of court, the immigration department ordered him to leave the country within ten days. Because the bomb charge was still pending, the judge deemed that if Paul left the country, he would be jumping bail, and so ordered him jailed. According to the narrator, the district attorney offered to free Paul if he would plead guilty to the burglary. When Paul refused, he was found guilty and sentenced to three to five years in prison. Paul was deported in December 1969, after spending nearly one year in jail.
According to online biographical sources, filmmaker David Schickele met Okpokam, a student at University of Nigeria in Nsukka, while Schickele was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching at the university from 1961-1963. Schickele returned to Nigeria in 1965 to make the film Give Me a Riddle, a documentary that traced his former students to their current locales. At that time, Okpokam was working as a teacher in a small Nigerian village. According to Schickele's wife Gail, some time after Give Me a Riddle was completed, Okpokam decided to come to the United States to study at San Francisco State University and Schickele seized upon the opportunity to tell his story. The title Bushman comes from Okpokam, who in Give Me a Riddle describes himself as a "man of the bush." As shown in Bushman, during a student uprising at the university, Okpokam was arrested on a bomb charge and once convicted, was imprisoned and finally deported. Upon his return to Africa, Okpokam resumed his career in acting and theater management.
To make Bushman, Schickele was awarded a $15,000 grant from the American Film Institute under the Institute's "Independent Filmmaker Program." The historical period referred to in the film dated from 1960, when Nigeria declared its independence from Britain. This was followed by political unrest climaxing in 1966 with a military coup in which the prime minister and the premiers of the Northern and Western regions of Nigeria were assassinated. By 1967, the Eastern Region of Nigeria seceded, proclaiming itself the Republic of Biafra. The country then plunged into a civil war in which an estimated 1,000,000 people were killed.
Miscellaneous Notes
Best First Feature prize at the Chicago International Film Festival.
Shown at FILMEX: Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Contemporary Cinema) November 4-14, 1971.
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