Baby Girl

Shot in Alief on the outskirts of Houston, TX, Baby Girl is based on the narrative structure of a soap opera and Nollywood films.

ABOUT Baby Girl:
The piece moves through Houston into an empty apartment in Alief where myself, my sister Ashstress and my father Okechukwu Alex, perform a scripted dialogue. The script is a montage of text from various sources including the film Baby Boy, news from CCN Africa, and the band Radiohead. My sister and father rewrote parts of the script, which were then montaged within the found text. The script is configured in an arbitrary order, allowing the statements to be independent from each other. The text and image are not embedded together, thereby disrupting conventions of narrative flow and social assumptions about the characters.

TEXT SOURCES:
Baby Boy, by John Singleton, Columbia Pictures, 2001
CNN Africa News clips, 2008, 2012
Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, by bell hooks, New York: Routledge, 1994.
BBC news clips, 2008, 2012
Video Tape, by Radiohead, 2008
Original words by Ashstress Agwunobi, Okechukwu Alex Agwunobi, and Danielle Dean.

PERFORMERS:
Ashstress Agwunobi, Okechukwu Alex Agwunobi, Danielle Dean

PRODUCTION:
Sean Grattan – co-director, camera, lighting, editorial advisor
Ashish Dha – sound mix
Francisco Janes – sound work

LOCATION LIST:
View from Hilton Hotel, Downtown Houston, Texas
River Oaks, Houston, Texas
Windmere apartments, Hayes and Richmond, Alief South West Houston, Texas
Foreclosure apartment, Alief South West Houston

SHOT REFERENCES:
Nigerian films (Nollywood):
Blackberry Babes, by Obong Bassey Inyan, Simony International Ltd, 2011.
Living in Bondage, by Chris Obi Rapu, 1992.