Give Me a Riddle

Sort of a Magic Lantern 

On the eve of the 1967 Nigerian Civil War, filmmaker David Schickele arrived in a remote village for a multi-year stint courtesy of the Peace Corps's diplomatic relations and cultural exchange program. Give Me a Riddle [1966] employs a direct cinema method that focuses on Schickele's friend Roger Landrum, who is teaching (and frequently meeting with) the work of Chinua Achebe, author of the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart. Remarks one of the villagers near the end of the film: "Things are really falling apart now." Something's astir in the air...

Another friend of Roger's is one Paul Okpokam, to whom the former suggests an extended stay in the United States — the places he might go, taking up employment in the modern capitalist society... (Though comradely, Roger still exhibits an ironic difference with his friend.) Landrum asks Achebe, "Where do you see Nigeria 100 years from now?" to which the Nigerian immediately responds, "It will be an industrial society." And if tradition holds decades on, Nigeria will continue its rich tradition of storytelling, taking up place in the mind, in darkness, a small lantern barely burning brightly.

Give Me a Riddle continues its narrative and the adventures of Paul Okpokam in the Bay Area of the United States inn the film Bushman. As excellent as that movie is, Give Me a Riddle strikes me as the superior work, Schickele's masterpiece. •

Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of David Schickele:

Give Me a Riddle [1966]

Bushman [1971]

Tuscarora [1992]

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