Retro Nolly: Zeb Ejiro's 'Domitilla' is an Invitation to a Fleeting Past.

Domitilla hints at a filmmaking era when unruly female leads casually dominate the screen.

Retro Nolly is a weekly series of retrospective reviews of classic Nollywood films by Seyi Lasisi. We will be looking at these films with modern eyes, dissecting what made them unique and how they speak to today’s filmmaking, culture and society.

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Directed by Zeb Ejiro in 1996, who had previously made Nneka the Pretty Serpent and will go ahead to direct another female-driven story, Sakobi: The Snake Girl, Domitilla hints at a filmmaking epoch when unruly female leads casually dominate the screen. In these films, we see female characters navigate society, but more, importantly, female actresses make a name for themselves. 

In Domitilla, four girls — Domitilla (Anne Njemanze), Judith (Kate Henshaw), Anita(late Ada Ameh), and Jenny(Sandra Achums) — navigate life as sex workers. Though the film appears to tell the stories of these quadruples, it is the journey of the titular Domitilla, who often goes by many names due to the nature of her job, that the screenplay devotes attention to.

Struggling with providing for an ailing father whose unnamed sickness gulps her income and two siblings with demanding needs, Domitilla turned to prostitution to shoulder her responsibilities. However, her family’s penury is not her only source of concern. She moonlights as a secretary during the day, and her nagging boss constantly gives her questioning looks.

The film tries to spotlight how dangerous prostitution can be, and in one of its emotionally disturbing scenes, we witness how two men callously hack one of Domitilla’s friends, Jenny, to death. What is mentally damaging isn't only the unjustified killing of Jenny but the countenance of the killer. There is a deep hatred, extending beyond the horrific act he has committed, that securely sits on his face. This facial expression, a manifestation of his inner belief, represents not just his but the societal condemnation of prostitutes. Watching this film made in 1996 in 2024, it is sad to realise that, in present-day Nigeria, women are still being illegally killed under the guise of religion and tradition. 

With limited cinematic exposure, the audience demands weren't much during this period, and that much is evident in Domitilla, a film bereft of technical excellence. The soundtrack often defeats the characters’ dialogue into oblivion and editing is distastefully done,  but the story’s verisimilitude is enough to hold attention. Despite the truism in the preceding sentence, this does not mean that Old Nollywood filmmakers did not strive for artistic excellence. With limited funds and technical knowhow, they still found creative ways to tell their stories that were both enjoyable and socially conscious.

Watching the film, though, a sense of sorrow embraces one’s consciousness about how backward and stagnant Nigeria's economy is. In one of the office scenes, Domitilla asks the office messenger to get her rice of 40 Naira and I inwardly yelped in surprise that there once existed a time when one could eat a meal with such an amount.

This shock aside, this aspect of the film shows what cinephiles and film archivists understand about the enduring power of cinema. Beyond its entertainment value, old films provide access to long-lost information and archive the fleeting past in a secure medium. Not only do these old films breed and rekindle a sense of familiarity for older viewers rewatching them, but we also see the world from the filmmakers’ point of view. Quoting Mstyslav Chernov, who delivered one of the better speeches at the just-concluded Oscars ceremony after winning the Best Documentary Feature category  for 20 Days in Mariupol, “Cinema forms memories, and memory forms history.” Unmindful of how evasive history presents itself or how Government institutions tend to bury history, cinema will always stage a coup d’etat. 

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