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This fascinating documentary, by the filmmaker of The Body
Beautiful, follows two young Nigerian women’s different experiences of a
traditional rite of passage. Young virgins, irabo, spend five weeks in
“fattening rooms”, emerging to dance before the villagers and to be married.
The girls wear heavy copper coils on their legs to enforce inactivity as they
are waited on and honored by their families. One of the young village women,
Florence, is keen to take part. But Akisiye, who returns from the city at her
father’s behest, is not certain she wants to. Combining voice-over and
interviews, Monday’s Girls documents tradition, modernity, dissent and
contradiction in African women’s lives.
A Women Make Movies film by Ngozi Onwurah. 1993. 53 minutes.
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