by Amuna Wagner

“Ampe is a place of feeling”, explains documentary filmmaker and writer Claudia Owusu in an interview with Amaka Studio. “Super heightened emotions are invited — Black girls don’t often get that opportunity.”

Ampe: Leap into the Sky, Black Girl (Official Trailer) from Claudia Owusu on Vimeo.

Owusu is a MFA candidate at Ohio State University who blends documentary filmmaking with writing. In the summer of 2020, her friends planned her a surprise party in Columbus, Ohio. Amidst the heat of the celebrations, the young women soon found themselves engulfed in a heated session of Ampe, a game from Owusu’s childhood both in her native Ghana and her second home, Columbus. 

In the game, two teams of girls, ostraighti and okonto, face off against each other. Two players begin a dance, each meeting their opponent with a challenging gaze. Two claps followed by a jump, legs kicking, arms twisting. The ostraighti team wins when the feet of opposing players align after the jump: the left foot on one side meeting the right on the other or the right meeting the left; the okonto team wins when the feet don’t align across the divide. The winner continues dancing her way down the line until all players on one side are defeated. The winning team receives a “bomb” and ejects a player from the opposing team. Then it begins again. 

Ife Oluwamuyide, Owusu’s Nigerian-American friend and longtime creative collaborator, was introduced to Ampe that day. A phone call and trips around Ohio and Accra later, the energy that both filmmakers felt translated into Ampe: Leap Into The Sky, Black Girl, a short film capturing how Ampe connects Ghanaian women and girls with their counterparts in the diaspora. It is a vibrant love letter to the community's dreams, memories, sounds, and emotions through a game that offers young Black girls the care they deserve.

Re-creating space

“It’s always been a goal to film on the continent”, says Oluwamuyide. Shooting across the diaspora allowed the co-directors to define what Black girls want to be known for; their strength, creativity, and joy, freed from societal restrictions and responsibilities. In their film, they effortlessly bleed Accra into Ohio, Columbus, the home of 10,000 people of Ghanaian descent, showing the love Ghanaian girls have for Ampe across space and time. 

“A lot of what we’d learned and witnessed in Ghana became important in Columbus”, recalls Owusu whose work often engages the spaces that Black women and girls occupy. “Ampe is for us by us. It’s the game girls were pushed towards playing growing up. And we made it our own.” The question of hierarchies offers an interesting lens to understanding the freedom of Ampe: Samuela, a protagonist in Accra, asserts that “In Ampe, everyone is equal because anyone at all can have the magic thing everyone is looking for. So there’s nobody that’s higher than the other. There’s no rich, there’s no poor, there’s no class.”

“Mother, Mother Do Something Before you Die”

The leader of each team is called the mother. She starts the game and encourages players to compete at their best; she sets the pace, takes responsibility for her players, and protects them from the bombs. “In taking on the role of the mother, they get to express their love and tenderness for each other free from the influence of external forces”, explains Owusu. “The concept of the mother is central to Ghanaian Girlhood in terms of care.” At the end of the game, when all the other players have been eliminated, the mothers are usually left competing, energised by their team’s chants “Mother, mother do something before you die.” These chants vary from generation to generation; when protagonists remember them in the film, they do so with a certain nostalgia. 

The film’s co-directors understand Ampe as a coming-of-age ritual. Oluwamuyide explains, “When we get older there are a lot of responsibilities for girls to take on. Nives [a protagonist in Columbus], talks about having to grow up too quickly when you no longer have free time to play Ampe.” Norkos, a protagonist in Accra, says that she misses being able to be free and to have courage. In a society that demands everything from its women, Ampe is one of the joys they feel that they have to give up in adulthood. The communities of care that girls build live on in the women they become. “I always call back to our screening in Columbus when somebody asked Nives if she still plays Ampe“, Owusu recalls. “She answered ‘You never stop, you just need somebody to ask you’.”

Sharing Joy

Ampe: Leap Into The Sky, Black Girl bursts with bright colours and shows off the beauty of Ghanaian women. Its carefully shot scenes bring out their joy as a community and the heritage that lives in their clothes, hair, and skin. “Our main goal was that we wanted it to feel like summer, warm, bright, exciting, in the same way that the game is”, shares Oluwamuyide. “Nostalgic in a way. We’re always chasing summer because of the freedom that comes with it.” One scene, shot in a hair salon in Accra, shows the protagonists reminiscing about the days when nothing was as important as playing Ampe. “It’s like another spirit takes over you”, says one protagonist, to the agreement and laughter of the others. 

But the two co-directors are, by no means, leaving Ampe in the past.They are taking their film to Ghana for screenings in schools and hosting storytelling workshops. “We want young girls to be inspired by the narrative in their community”, says Owusu. Ampe: Leap Into The Sky, Black Girl reminds us that Black girls have immense capacities to create support systems that are rooted in playfulness, care, and joy. “Ampe allows girls to grow into selves that they may be too scared of”, asserts Olumawuyide. “Black girls can come and be themselves entirely. You can be yourself, you don’t have to hide.” 

In April and May 2023, Ampe: Leap Into the Sky, Black Girl will be screened at the following venues: 

APRIL 17TH - 8:30 PM, REGAL WINTER PARK VILLAGE, FLORIDA, FLORIDA FILM FESTIVALAPRIL 18TH - 3:45 PM, ENZIAN THEATER , FLORIDA, FLORIDA FILM FESTIVALAPRIL 22ND - 30TH, LANGSTON HUGHES PERF. ARTS INST., SEATTLE, SEATTLE BLACK FILM FESTIVALAPRIL 29th at 7PM, COLUMBUS, OH, CINEMA COLUMBUS, DREXEL THEATREAPRIL 29TH - 9 AM TO 12PM, COLUMBUS, OH, WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTSMAY 16TH - 21ST - 3:30PM, BIRMINGHAM, ENGLANDFLATPACK FESTIVAL

If you would like to organise a community screening of Ampe: Leap Into The Sky, Black Girl, contact the co-directors or through the film’s insta page @ampestudyfilm