Dambe – Elephant Food Is For The Strongest Teeth
Elephant Food is For the Strongest Teeth is a passion project born out of two friends shared love of film, music and boxing.
From The Filmakers
After coming across our subject, some more research revealed it had seldom before been represented in moving image, and never in a way that brought the nuance, emotion and spirituality of the sport to life.
From the outset we wanted to foreground local voices, so working closely with Kano’s community of fighters, trainers, musicians and fixers helped to tell an authentic story from the perspective of the people who live and breathe this ancient sport. An awareness of African narratives being overshadowed in the media led us to aspire towards a compelling film that would cross boarders, to shine a spotlight onto this spiritual martial art.
We began scanning the internet for more information on the sport- trying to highlight some figures who may help us get an ‘in’. One contributor continually emerged. Some more research revealed that he was not only a fan of the sport, but Author and journalist Abdulaziz Abdulaziz. It was obvious to us that he would be a valuable asset to the team and very fortunately he was willing to collaborate with us.
Having written a list of primary characters that we wished to find, Abdulaziz reassured us that it would indeed be possible and that he was in fact, friends with the most famous fighter ‘Ebola’.
But the next steps were not so easy. Apart from the film starting off as completely self-funded, in 2018, the Nigerian army was back on the offensive against Boko Haram. The heartlands of Dambe, in Nigeria’s north, sat in the middle of this conflict and kidnapping was now rife. After some weighing up of the security risks, we put down our own money on the cheapest flights we could find and travel there against all sensible advice!
Will’s family ties to west Africa led us to reach out to Daniel Israel, an ex BBC Hausa cameraman, now an engineer, who was central to our ability to criss-cross our way between Kano, Abuja and Kaduna. Israel, would also link us with a retired Major in the Nigerian army, who looked out for us by providing daily security updates.
The sport is interwoven with religious practices that are somewhat private to outsiders. We knew this meant we had little time to gain Ebola’s trust. Our final day of filming culminated in proof that our contributors had every faith in us and our vision. We had been granted access to witness some of these more private spiritual practices. A pre-match ritual in which, Ebola, guided by an animistic priest inhaled snake venom off the horns of a goat.
Additional materials were sourced from the many vendors that frequent the Dambe events, including DVDs with fights dating back half a century. These helped provide another texture that helped to build an arresting multimedia opening sequence.
We loved the energy and virtuosity of the drumming and singing that accompanies every Dambe contest. Upon our return to the UK and once a rough cut had been created, we partnered with local musician Yusuf Musa to create an original score. These compositions also serve as the film’s narration. Enabling the film to become co-authored with the very people we were documenting. To foreground the local voices. These songs were recorded by producer Mohammed Abdu with singer Yusuf Musa. Musa responded to our written questions with improvised lyrics as he would have on the ‘battlefield’ when praising fighters or commentating on a fight.
The resulting film, shot with borrowed equipment, around our day jobs, was picked up by Punderdons Gardens within a week of our return home to London. Now, four years later, we’re excited to share it, and the beauty of Dambe, with the world.
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