Ngozi Onwurah
Ngozi Onwurah was born in Nigeria in 1966. Her familiy fled Nigeria becuase of the civil war when Onwurah was nine years old. They settled in Britain where she studied film at St. Martin's School of Arts and the National Film and Television School. She makes films in a variety of formats. Short films, documentaries, and feature length narratives. Onwurah's first short length film (an under graduate senior project) COFFEE COLOURED CHILDREN won first prize in the BBC Showreel competion, jumpstarting her career. She has won four other awards.
Onwurah has over a dozen directorial credits. A few of her works include: Shoot the Messenger (2006), Mama Africa (2002, also the only one of her films available on Netflix), Welcome II the Terror Dome (1995), The Body Beautiful (1991), Coffee Coloured Children (1988).
Reading about her work, especially The Body Beatiful and Shoot the Messenger, definetly made me want to see it. The ideas she addresses in her films, anti-imperialism, the construction of race, and the many cultural constructions of the body are all very interesting to me. However, her films seem to be very difficult to obtain in this country. I gather in the UK she is better known, but here only one of her films is readily available over the internet. Others are available on Women Make Movie's website– which is where I started my inquiry into Onwurah. Unfortunately, her work rarely shows outside of film festivals. I couldn't find a personal webpage but her IMDB page is: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0648937/