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Nonso Christian Ugbode's Shortlist

Published on February 19, 2008

The Shortlist article series is your opportunity to learn about the films that inspire intellectual, artistic and activist leaders—leaders like filmmaker Nonso Christian Ugbode. We asked Nonso to share his favorite films and his thoughts on the power of documentary to change the world. So what films make Nonso Christian Ugbode's Shortlist? Keep reading to find out.

Nonso Christian Ugbode

Who is Nonso Christian Ugbode?

Nonso Christian Ugbode is a writer, producer and web conceptualist. He works as the new media coordinator for the National Black Programming Consortium in Harlem, NY where he oversees content and style for NBPC's Black Public Media website. His recent works include a documentary on black painters entitled Colored Frames, which is currently screening at festivals. His writing can be found online at Blackline, a satirical news and current affairs project, where he is the Executive Editor for the online video and audio blog. Nonso received his BFA in Film & Television Production at New York University.

He recently served on the jury for the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival.

Nonso Christian Ugbode on the Power of Film

Documentary film is life as it is lived, often glossless, and always revealing even in the most elementary way, this is why it is an art form, which will forever be relevant. To find a documentary film, filmmaker, or story style that inspires independent thought is often like finding something priceless within oneself—illuminating, and eternally useful.

Nonso Christian Ugbode's Film Picks

Black Is, Black Ain't: Often people see documentary filmmaking as a linear, almost artless interpretation of real life, Marlon Riggs is one of the filmmakers who takes documentary and rubs it against poetry, song, dance, and theatre. The result is always a priceless and unique experience. Black Is, Black Ain'tmixes a lot of his style into a narrative of discussing blackness in a very direct experience-based method.

Beyond Beats & Rhymes: Byron Hurt confesses to being a student of Marlon Riggs, whose work is very direct and bold, which is why this piece is quite excellent. Hurt tackles a lot of the topics which make discussing Hip Hop too often a no fly zone—misogyny, hyper masculinity, homophobia, materialism etc—but he accomplishes this without preaching, or being condescending, frame for frame he is in direct contact with real people whose lives are affected by all that Hip Hop has become and is evolving towards.

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela: It's hard to make a film about your family, no matter how much you see in the story, there's always that little bit of doubt that no one will get your point. Thomas Allen Harris has no such worries in this film, you're hooked from beginning to end, a member of the family so to speak. He uses 8MM and home video footage in such an engaging way that it calls an almost universal memory from this one story of a man (his father) and his new found family. Harris deftly explores his father's legacy as a freedom fighter in South Africa and his expatriation into the Diaspora. He creates a living breathing vision of the effects that expatriation had on his family, his father's life and on fellow freedom fighters.

Handsworth Songs: This film is the ultimate experimental/new media film in my mind, very much ahead of its time. It is a telling of the inner life of the urban world through a well crafted sound track and visceral imagery, using protest, and riots as its central spine of exploring societal discontent. It is set against the tumultuous background of a UK rampant with riots by a very discontent working class. It expertly tells the story of a faulty system at the very moment of its explosion, or rather implosion. The way sound is used in here makes it a character all its own, telling an adjacent yet very complimentary story to the main tale of urban unrest.

Looking for Langston: Isaac Julien's sometimes-fictional account of the poet Langston Hughes life, is a very loving and innovative portrayal of a complex life which thrived on poetry. As a testament to that living poetry Julien approaches this piece completely without convention, he insinuates a feeling of such valiance in the face of uncertainty, that one can only watch in awe hoping another Harlem Renaissance is coming.