Abstract :
If all ethnic groups were allowed to found their own sovereign units or join those of their ethnic brethren, then the tragedies of Bosnia, Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, and many other strife -torn peoples and countries would not have occurred. -John T. Rourke (151). In his book, Film in Nigeria, Hyginus Ekwuazi recognises that though there are various dimensions of censorship exercised by the Armed Forces on films that have security implications for the army, “wars have a perennial and irresistible attraction to filmmakers; time cannot stale this action” (166). Thus, beyond the fertile imagination on the screen, which the world wars have brought to bear on the consciousness of filmmakers, Ekwuazi notes that even an event as relatively remote as the American Civil War “continues to be revisited and reinterpreted by American filmmakers” (167). Of course, if films can be made about wars in antiquity such as those of Troy and Peloponesia, one can then appreciate why it is contended that war has a serious attraction to literary people and filmmakers. Ekwuazi’s assessment and prediction at the end of his study that “as of now the Nigerian civil war may be something of a taboo subject, but a safe prediction is that this will not always be the case”(166) are crucial to our understanding of not only Simi Opeoluwa’s The Battle of Love but also Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April, both films based on the internecine conflicts between ethnic groups that have resulted in a majority of the numerous civil wars and genocides in Africa.
