Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, Mike Slye, Elaine Featherstone
This restored docu-fiction – which should take its place alongside Killer of Sheep as one of the great documents of black life in the United States – is the story of Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, a Nigerian wandering the streets of San Francisco having left the Peace Corps. The Civil Rights movement is reaching its peak, but few Americans Paul meet know of Nigeria’s raging civil war. Paul’s outsider status in America’s racial politics offers a rich, humorous, thought-provoking disjunction as he navigates romance, friendship and the law.
Shot in 1968, completed in 1971, it is a document both of the tumultuous moments we know, but also the specifics of individual lives that resist the sweep of history. A black and white marvel, with cinematography worthy of the fine art photography of Roy DeCarava or Carrie Mae Weems, it also reflects the vitality and texture of the streets of pre-gentrified San Francisco. Ending in a moment as honest as it is jarring, Bushman is compellingly complex as the moment that birthed it.
