Pyrolysis or Paralysis dir. by Tunde Kelani (review)

Much revered for his serious feature films, Tunde Kelani, in his latest work, Pyrolysis or Paralysis, has created a documentary concerned with Nigeria's environmental issues. Featured prominently at the 2016 IREP Documentary Film Festival at Freedom Park, Victoria Island, Lagos, this short film centers on the production of charcoal, which in Nigeria and many other parts of Africa is used mainly as domestic fuel. With stills and moving still-photographs, the filmmaker presents figures who make their way into the forest with tools and machines to hack down trees. These are then hauled into an open area, cut into large stumps, covered with dry leaves, and set on fire. After several hours, buckets of water fetched from a community hand-pump borehole are poured over the large mass of burnt stumps, which have been transformed into pieces of light black charcoal. The product is then stacked in large sacks and hauled into massive trucks, pickup-cars, and motor-bicycles to be sold. The end sequence reveals a depleted and barren land, stripped of its growth and natural beauty and with the remains left to rot, with birds trying to navigate through this transformed terrain.

Pyrolysis or Paralysis is both timely and significant, as it touches on a sensitive environmental issue. It differs from conventional documentary filmmaking in its use of composite media accompanied by a melange of diegetic sounds that accentuate the affecting images of fallen trees, tree stumps, and smoking embers; we hear the chattering voices of people talking and laughing, the sounds of the machines, the rustle of dry leaves, the splash of water, the sound of car engines, motor cycles, and trucks. The use of soft music also accentuates the sombre mood and need for reflection about the devastation of the land. It is probably relevant that several years ago the former governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, initiated a program that was intended to educate the people of Lagos about the significant environmental functions of trees and how protecting them is a crucial task of citizenship. Nevertheless, although the film draws audiences' attention to the process involved in charcoal production and devastation of the land, it cannot be viewed as any kind of agit-prop.

Indeed, the valuable lessons offered by the film are as much artistic as they are environmental. Kelani's uncommon visual technique—the use of moving still-photographs as the narrative tool—offers genuine lessons to African filmmakers, notably that inexpensive methods can be employed successfully. The film also demonstrates that a successful documentary does not need to be lengthy. In some of his previous full-length features Kelani also addressed issues of environment concern; in Arugba (2008), for example, the source of the votary's power lies in the water, and in the three-part Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (1993) the crimes surrounding land sales and purchases send a few dubious men to early graves. But the narrative of Pyrolysis or Paralysis is equally powerful, and the film represents a significant innovation in African documentary filmmaking.