Akosua Adoma brings Bus Nut
HAVING tackled African folklore and European colonialism in her previous projects, award-winning filmmaker, Akosua Adoma Owusu, has turned her attention to the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s.
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Her current project, Bus Nut, produced by her film company, Obibini Pictures, takes a look at a well-known narrative – the 1955 Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
The boycott was sparked by the simple, but brave action taken by Rosa Parks, who famously refused to give her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.
Parks was subsequently arrested for defying Alabama’s laws regarding segregation. She quickly became a symbol of the civil rights movement, and the bus boycott remained in effect for over one year – until the Supreme Court determined that Alabama’s segregation laws were unconstitutional.
Bus Nut chronicles the events leading to the famous riot that sparked the debate on racial discrimination in America.
Currently, Bus Nut is competing for awards at the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany and at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival.
Akosua Adoma Owusu is a filmmaker of Ghanaian parentage whose films have been screened worldwide in prestigious film festivals, museums, galleries, universities and microcinemas since 2005.
Her previous short film, Kwaku Ananse, was the sole winning award for Ghana at the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Awards for Best Short Film.
Akosua Adoma is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the Creative Capital Grant, ARTE France International Prize, the Berlinale World Cinema Fund, and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship.
Her films, Split Ends and I Feel Wonderful, received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2013.