—————an INK BARROW dispatch—————-

Here’s the first of many dispatches by our fearless reporter and social observer, Ink Barrow, the wayward niece of Ed Coaster.

On a gorgeous October day in the Virginia countryside, Ink sat on the porch with Suzanne Stroh, screenwriter of OKA!, the African feature film that opens October 14th in New York and Los Angeles.

Ink: How does it feel to have your first feature in theaters?
SSS: Fantastic. It’s a dream come true for any writer.

Ink: How did you get on the project?
SSS: It grew out of my friendship with the very talented filmmaker, Lavinia Currier, who is also a poet. I think we were talking poetry and poems over drinks in New York when she mentioned her work in CAR [Central African Republic]. She was so passionate about raising awareness, through film, about the plight of the Bayaka and other endangered species in the deep forest. She had two stories in development at that point. She’d gotten pretty extensive coverage, I think, but she still wasn’t sure how to proceed. She invited me to read both screenplays. I remember thinking that somewhere deep down in both stories, each beautiful in its own way, was the tale she wanted to tell. The job, I thought, was to imbue the funny misadventure of the hapless musicologist, Larry Whitman, with the pathos and mystery of OTA BENGA, the unproduced screenplay Lavinia had written with the novelist Rikki Ducornet.

Continue reading “Fifteen Minutes with Suzanne on OKA!” →