Owen 'Alik Shahadah - Technique & African Aesthetic

Technique & African Aesthetic

Shahadah is seen as one of the next generation of African Diaspora filmmakers, who draws from the masters of African cinema. Shahadah believes that Africans must develop an authentic African aesthetic and bring this into film culture. He also stresses that all art in the traditional African senses is socially functional. As a filmmaker he is noted for emphasizing music to film synchronization. He stresses that African film, like African music (both of the continent and the Diaspora), has a rhythm which is the fundamental inner harmony that sets up a unique African sensibility. His documentaries never use narration and are driven my music, strong flashing images set to music and spoken word and rich color. Unique in documentary Shahadah uses heavy dramatic film scores, typical of epic movies. He says his films are a four part harmony of information produced by images, music, text and dialog. For Motherland Shahadah claims he created a new way of mixing music in Dolby 5.1 called split positioning.

He approaches cinema from a jazz paradigm and states: "If you want to understand the concept of a paradigm shift go and study jazz; it is the most perfect example of an African aesthetic. Because it has agency it can absorbs worldly influences but still expresses an African sensibility. Like a language, jazz is grammatically Africa while its lexicon is varied."