Louise Lockwood on her film Bel: 'It’s about a life lived, so big, so brilliantly'
The tragically short life of Beldina Odenyo is the subject of a documentary which closes this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Claire Sawers talks to its director Louise Lockwood about the poignant journey she embarked upon to gather up material and the searing power of Odenyo’s art
There’s a moment in the documentary Bel where concert promoter Gráinne Vedamanikam is describing the chills she felt watching Beldina Odenyo sing at the 2021 SAY Awards in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. Vedamanikam speaks of the glowing energy that Odenyo had, the magic that she radiated. By that point, Odenyo had been named one of Scotland’s 30 most inspiring women under 30 and won Celtic Connections’ Danny Kyle Award for stand-out emerging artists. The Kenya-born, Glasgow-based singer-songwriter had built up a reputation as a mesmerising, haunting performer with her stage name Heir Of The Cursed and collaborated on projects with National Theatre Of Scotland.
Watching Odenyo stalking the stage barefoot that October night, swirling a dark satin cape around, her voice was transfixing, warbling with raw emotion. Vedamanikam, like many others who witnessed it, knew this was a breakthrough moment in her career. ‘She is never gonna play on a small stage. This is it. It’s happening. The train is leaving the station,’ Vedamanikam remembers in Bel, which will get its world premiere as it closes the Edinburgh International Film Festival. ‘The name on everyone’s lips right now is Heir Of The Cursed. Beldina.’
Two weeks later, Odenyo was dead. She had taken her own life at the age of 31. The music world was stunned. Odenyo was one of 14 siblings and her sister, Leah McAleer, grieving and in shock, was determined that Odenyo’s artistic legacy would endure. She decided to release a posthumous album of her songs. McAleer’s close friend Louise Lockwood, who happens to live in the same Renfrewshire village of Lochwinnoch as McAleer and had met many of Odenyo’s friends, suggested that they also make a documentary. The serendipity of Lockwood being a documentary maker can be added to many of the coincidences, some very dark and uncanny, that occurred in Odenyo’s life.
Lockwood has directed documentaries on Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett and artist Frida Kahlo as well as the BBC drama adaptation of Cora Bissett’s play Adam. ‘At first Leah asked me to make a short video to be shown at a tribute concert for Beldina,’ recalls Lockwood. ‘She gave me Beldina’s phone with all her selfie footage on, her hard drive and everything. She said, “just make me something nice, but also edgy and a bit dark, because that was Bel”. I said ok. That’s when I saw footage of her for the first time.’ Lockwood watched a self-made video of Odenyo singing her song ‘Hold The Mirror’ while playing a guitar, full of reverb. The song soars with lyrics of self-doubt, encouraging an imaginary listener to ignore the internal chatter and embrace self-acceptance. It’s a spellbinding, pin-drop performance and Lockwood was floored.
‘I was sobbing in my shed office, going, “oh my god”. I can still feel it now. Just, what a fucking tragedy. What an absolute loss. For her, the whole family, everything; but also, this can’t go unseen.’ Lockwood went on to assemble a pretty stunning collection of talking heads for the documentary to reminisce on the bewitching, warm, strange character that was Beldina. Poet Jackie Kay, playwright Hannah Lavery and singer-songwriters Kathryn Joseph and Emma Pollock are among the creative artists who pay tribute alongside Odenyo’s family and friends, including her younger sister Aurelia from Kenya. ‘Aurelia is just so poetic, so beautiful,’ says Lockwood. ‘You can hear the love in her voice; just pure love. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s kind of what you get in Bel’s music. Everyone we spoke to had a closeness that was genuine and very deep. They were smart, piercing, understanding.’
Lockwood used Odenyo’s music and lyrics as the spine of her insightful, moving documentary, adding in these emotionally articulate voices to tell the story of her life, from being suddenly uprooted from Kisumu, Kenya, aged six, and taken away from her mother to live with her previously unknown father in Scotland, without real explanation. This early, traumatic experience appears to have left a deep wound with Odenyo, who would also be impacted by the death of her mother and oldest sister during her teens.
Her music became a soulful channel for pain, sounding like a rich, visceral blend of Nina Simone and Anohni, plumbing the depths of sorrow with her captivating voice and evocative guitar; or as her sister Leah puts it, ‘the purest expression of what it means to be broken and what it means to survive.’ Odenyo was able to distill her grief into resilience, exploring identity not only through her own music, but her collaborative work as composer and sound designer on Lament For Sheku Bayoh. Hannah Lavery’s play focused on the death of the 31-year-old black man from Kirkcaldy, violently restrained by nine officers while in police custody. Bel includes Odenyo describing her own experiences of violent racism in Scotland.
The documentary also touches on Odenyo’s preoccupation with death and dark themes, and what her sister Leah describes as a ‘foreshadowing’ of her own tragic death. Lockwood was keen to handle Odenyo’s suicide sensitively and consulted with Andrew Eaton Lewis from the Scottish Mental Health Foundation to make sure her story was told responsibly. ‘I left a lot out, actually,’ says Lockwood. ‘I didn’t want it to become a film about death. It’s actually a film about life, about a life lived, so big, so brilliantly. But troubled. All that went into her music. I wanted to let her music speak for itself.’
Bel closes Edinburgh International Film Festival on 19 August at Cameo, 9pm; Filmhouse, 9.30pm; Cineworld, 10pm.