It’s almost five years now since the suicide of the Kenyan-Scottish artist-musician-singer, Beldina Odenyo, on 5 November 2021. At the time, she had seemed poised for a major international breakthrough. She was one of those performers with an uncanny power. Admirers talk of the way her voice “spoke to the soul” and how listening to her almost always made the hairs on the back of your neck stick up, “more than just goosebumps.”
Louise Lockwood’s feature documentary Bel, closing the Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 19 and sold internationally by Cargo, is bound to boost interest in Bel’s posthumously released album, Heir Of The Cursed, which her older sister Leah McAleer lovingly put together using tracks (“passable demos”) that Bel herself had recorded in her own makeshift home studio.
Director Lockwood and McAleer both live in Lochwinnoch, a small village 15 miles outside Glasgow. Their children are in the same year at school. McAleer is a GP while Lockwood is a very distinguished documentary director who has made a wide range of TV projects, including films on Amy Winehouse and Frida Kahlo as well as several projects for Alan Yentob’s Imagine strand on the BBC.
“We’re just family friends in the village really. Our kids play, all that sort of stuff. We go on holiday together,” Lockwood notes.
The director always knew that McAleer had a sister who was a brilliant singer-songwriter but had never seen her perform. Bel had been due to come to a fundraiser in Lochwinnoch but then “the terrible tragedy happened.” Lockwood was very aware of the impact on McAleer’s family and did everything she could to support her friend in the aftermath of Bel’s death (“helping out with the kids, trying to do a bit of cooking”).
Initially, McAleer asked Lockwood to make a short memorial film “with some of the footage that came off her phone and other bits of footage that friends and family had.” At the time, Lockwood was busy editing another project. One weekend, she sat and watched the footage.
“And I was just utterly blown away. Also, it was weird not knowing her but I was feeling very heartbroken – what a tragedy that she has gone too young…”
Lockwood also recognised the “value of that footage.” She made the short film as requested. Then, a year or so after Bel’s death, McAleer told the director about her plans to release Bel’s album.
At the time of her death, Bel had been working on Tero Buru, a play with the National Theatre of Scotland. McAleer became involved in getting this staged. Lockwood realised that her friend was “ready to do something now, and was not in the depths of grieving.” This was the point at which she broached the idea of a documentary. McAleer said yes immediately.
When it came to structuring the film, Lockwood looked to the music. “You don’t have to listen to the music long to realise that it is very autobiographical, albeit poetic in many ways. Once you learn more about her life, the songs open up even more. Very early, we realised the music could be a spine for the whole film.”
The documentary features music that Bel wrote when she was a young teenager as well as a remarkable piece of video diary footage she shot as a kid on her phone in which she talks about her love of music and her desire to “show the world my skills and just rock their socks off.”
Lockwood follows a broadly chronological path, taking us through Bel’s difficult childhood in a small village near Dumfriesshire, where she faced racism and bullying, to her emergence as a prodigiously talented young singer and artist.
Bel was made through Hopscotch Films with support from BBC Two and BBC Scotland as well as backing from Screen Scotland. Sarah Howitt is the producer and Hopscotch’s John Archer executives produces alongside Nancy Bornat and Mark Thomas. NTS (National Theatre Scotland) also supported the project. Hopscotch is handling the UK distribution. The BBC transmission is set for October.
“I’ve known John [Archer] for years. I used to be in the BBC arts department. We’ve all been around a while. I haven’t actually worked with him before this but I knew his thing is to give the filmmaker the space and the support to make the film they want to make – which is quite rare!” Lockwood says of the Hopscotch founder.
Ask Lockwood if she sees parallels between Bel and Amy Winehouse, the subject of her earlier BBC documentary A Life in Ten Pictures (2021) and she immediately acknowledge the kinship between the two women. “One of the biggest things with Amy was what an utter tragedy. Imagine an album from her at 40 or at 45. Imagine the tours she would have gone on. Imagine what, working with different producers, she could have made. It’s the same with Bel. What an utter tragedy that that talent has been stopped. It’s obviously heart-breaking for the family, a human loss, but that raw, raw talent was totally the same. Bel and Amy were very similar in that respect.”
The filmmakers accompanied McAleer and her three kids on a visit to Kenya to learn more about the family heritage. It was a chance for Lockwood to see where her subject spent her formative years. “It was a very moving and profound trip, and very exciting as well – Kenya is an incredible place. What an energy!”
McAleer has worked hard to promote her sister’s album – but she is a practicing GP, hard pressed for time, and doesn’t have the resources of a record label. “That’s where I had always hoped the documentary would help,” Lockwood suggests. She hopes the film will give the LP added visibility.
The director, who is from Nottingham, has been living in Scotland since her student days in the early 1990s.
“I’d love to do more feature docs with even more room to dome own things,” she says after her experience on Bel. Her next likely project is a documentary film based on the book, The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes, about a famous trans rights case, which will be made through Synchronicity Films. (Synchronicity is also developing a drama based on the same material and that would be directed by someone else).
One unusual challenge with Bel was working so closely with McAleer, her friend and neighbour. The secret, she suggests, was establishing clear boundaries at the start between family time and their work. “Our kids hang out and we were meeting up all the time. I said to Leah very early doors, whenever the kids are around, no shop talk!”
The Edinburgh premiere this week will bring together many of Bel’s closest friends and colleagues.
“I am very grateful that they have given us, and Bel, that platform. It’s a real honour. I am thrilled for the film and really thrilled for Bel. It just generates more attention for her, which is what she deserves,” Lockwood ends.
