This month’s Jammer of the Month is Destiny Ekaragha, a London-based director whose works include the shorts “Tight Jeans” and “The Park” and the recent feature film “Gone Too Far!”
Destiny Ekaragha, born in London in 1982, is one of the brightest young stars working in the British film industry today. A versatile talent who has worked on a variety of short films, TV productions and her very own feature film, Gone Too Far, Destiny is certainly one to watch in the coming years.
After studying film in university, Destiny got her first job as a runner on the film Wimbledon. After that, she worked for a while as a runner for BBC Films, before writing and directing her first short film Tight Jeans in 2008. The short focused on three black teenagers who dive into a heated discussion about race and culture upon seeing a young white guy pass by wearing incredibly tight jeans. Hilarious and thought-provoking, the short would be the start of an excellent career for Destiny that hasn’t let up since.
Since Tight Jeans, Destiny has directed a variety of shorts, includingThe Park (2009), a coming-of-age story also about three teenage boys from London, Chance Meeting (2013), a short commissioned by the BFI, and A Bloody Muddle (2014), a charming 5-minute short about a man and a woman who switch shirts after he accidentally flings his nosebleed blood onto her. Along the way, Destiny has picked up plenty of awards, including the BAFTA LA Prize at the Pan-African Film Festival for her 2013 feature Gone Too Far!
In October 2014, Destiny was selected as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, and in that same month Gone Too Far! was released in cinemas. With the release of Gone Too Far!, Destiny became only the third British black woman, after Ngozi Onwurah and Amma Asante, to receive theatrical distribution in the UK. Hopefully many more will be able to follow in her footsteps.
Gone Too Far! is a comedy based on the Olivier Award-winning play of the same name by Bola Agbaje, and focuses mainly on two teenage brothers, Yemi and Ikudayisi, who meet for the first time and bond with each other over the course of a single day. Yemi, a British teenager from Peckham, is surprised when his brother Ikudayisi comes to join him from Nigeria, and upon seeing his sock-and-sandals fashion style questions his African heritage.
Destiny was drawn to Gone Too Far! after watching the original play, and upon seeing the script was thrilled to adapt it into her first feature film. Part of the power of the script, for Destiny, was its warmth and optimism. Questioning the darker moods of a lot of recent films, Destiny told me that “dark and depressing is only right when it works for the film. I don’t think it’s right to be dark all the time”. So, despite some heavy themes, Gone Too Far! is a light-hearted comedy at the end of the day, a celebration of youth and culture.
The dialogue and character-driven nature of Gone Too Far! also spoke to Destiny. When talking about inspirations, she mentioned a lot of the dialogue masters of the 90s; Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater were part of the discussion, but it was Kevin Smith that she cited as one of her biggest cinematic influences. “I really loved Clerks,” Destiny said, “I liked the focus on character and dialogue as opposed to just the plot”.
It shows, too, as Destiny’s films are most notable for their witty dialogue, strong performances, and warmth. In less than 9 minutes in Tight Jeans, a short that Observer film critic Jason Solomons hailed “the best short film of the last decade”, Destiny is able to familiarize us with its three lead characters to the point where we feel as if we’ve been sitting on the wall with them our whole lives.
Destiny brings the same familiarity with her characters to films she didn’t personally write, as well. Gone Too Far! was adapted for the screen by its playwright, Bola Agbaje, who worked closely with Destiny throughout the production.
“I know some writer/director relationships are strained, but it wasn’t like that with me and Bola. We worked closely throughout filming,” Destiny told me. I wondered if she took a different approach to the film because she wasn’t directing her own original characters. “No,” she responded, “if I pick a script to direct it’s because I feel a connection to it in some way, and that connection is the same whether I wrote it or not”.
And, besides the longer time commitment and the increase in resources, Destiny found directing a feature to be business as usual. She cited the financial side of things as the hardest part of being a professional freelance filmmaker, and said that the best part was that “you get to be a filmmaker for a living.” And, as someone who often finds it hard to put the power of filmmaking into a limited number of words, I don’t think a better answer could’ve been given. “Being a director is hard, because there’s always something else you have to do,” she admitted. “But it’s great fun as well.”
Destiny is currently at work on a couple of projects, but for confidentiality reasons was unable to disclose any details. The future certainly looks bright for her, and Cinema Jam is thrilled to have supported her through her impressive journey (“I was a part of Cinema Jam before it was even called Cinema Jam!” she said to me enthusiastically). I asked where she’d like to be ten years from now, and she said she’d like to have made a few more features and “created at least one TV show”. Whatever that show may be, I can’t wait to watch it.
You can follow Destiny on Twitter @Destinyfilms.
