This is a sample of questions and comment asked to the Director of Hawa during the various Festival and persentation of Hawa:

 

 

Middle aged African American lady:

• I’d just like to say I really enjoyed your film. It was too short, you know,  I was expecting her to go on with her life you know, and I mean it’s there, you know I see it through out he film, but I just needed her  to see more of that,  her freedom so to say, And hopefully she will find a way

 

Caucasian lady:

• Do you think that the larger role for women or more choices for women is very often a source of friction in couple that have both come from African in the immigrant community, is this sort of unfortunately a source of problem that could come up?

 

African immigrant descendent:

• First I want to say congratulation with a very poignant film; I thought it was very much to the point. Coming from the Nigeria Diaspora, all the characters I saw, the major characters are things that I’ve seen in my life. I think Abel the mechanic is a very small role yet very revealing of the reality. You have people like him who say we here in United State we are not going back. You have gentlemen like the husband who have a longing to go back, who want to be there, but what sacrifices have to happen when you go back. I think you really did a great job weaving the different characters different stories different tapestries and to show that it is not easy moving from one country to another,  and there here is idealized but also back home is idealized weather it is Cameroon Nigeria or Ghana, so very well done.

 

Lady:

• I love the scene where she was with the poupee doll, and the whole…the color…you really did a great job bringing the culture of fertility into that piece.

 

Old lady:

• What’s going to happened next now?

 

Old man:

•  I wander if you can say a little bit about where the characters come from. Hawa and Kader I guess there is a reference to Cameroon but also a reference to Ethiopia, the dance instructor is from Nigeria, but clearly where did Hawa and Kader come from?

 

Old lady:

• I think it is a wonderful movie. It is full of so many promises. Those characters in such a short time you develop them so fully. That image of Hawa at the end, loosening her scarf, you know as if she was loosening a noose around her neck even though it is an iced cold day is such a powerful image. You create such a painful, heartbreaking sense of the difference of her experience as a young woman versus his as a more middle aged man, it seems to have an age difference between them that is part of it. He was clearly successful back home and came out of love for her and it is been obviously kind of a disaster. It would be interesting if you were to expand the film to know what we learn about that; is it different for man and woman coming here from Africa. But it is so so strong and the compositions are so eloquent, very good.

 

Old man:

• You said that a lot of the couple you know separated once in US, is this a common pattern that the man wants to go back to Africa and the woman wants to stay?

 

Lady (Festival Director):

• The end credit music is it original music or commercial? Because it is truly beautiful.

 

Middle aged lady:

• What inspired you to do this film, how long did you work on it, and did you shoot everything here in New York?

 

• Most of the couples you knew who separated once in US were they from other countries?

 

Young man:

• How did you manage to get the inspiration, the drive to complete this film in such a short time?

 

Old man:

• Trying to compare these African couples is it possible to consider a reunited ending? Or is that reflecting the experience…is the experience different from the African or the American couple?

• If the couple had stayed in Africa would they have split?

 

Old  lady:

• Did your wife have any input in the story at all?

• The waist bids, the incense,  it all brought me back to Senegal .

 

Young man:

• After what I have seen, to me it seems that this couple was a couple who got along somehow to extent,  but the struggle to make it in America here got them separated. I have the impression that the lady was stressed out, she did not have any social life, and the husband was probably busy working also, he was more concerned about raising their financial stand so it kind of diverted them from their original purpose coming together. I can testify from what I have heard and also seen that this can become a problem once immigrants get here and do not get an opportunity or if they don’t have the right community that allow them to socialize and to feel like they are not in the mission of making money but it is also life because in most cases you got to start from point zero, it does not matter if you were a doctor or whatever you were in the past. This hurts a lot of people and when you think to time it takes to come back up, people put so much time to work instead of living because they want to get back to where they were at before they got here.

 

Young man:

• This being your thesis, where you want to go from here, and what type of story do you want to tell going forward?