Lights, Camera and Africa Magic.

What’s the Chop?

While COVID-19 has us losing on multiple fronts, African cinema offers a glimmer of hope. A bunch of major developments have the continent’s film industry experiencing its day in the sun.

What is African cinema?

African cinema goes way back to the early 1900s, when much of the continent was under colonial rule. As you can imagine, the portrayal of Africans and Africa in film was quite offensive and racist. It wasn’t until they gained independence that African filmmakers began to emerge and real African cinema was born — with more honest and authentic content that allowed the world to really begin to see Africa. Since then, African cinema has come into its own, and according to many experts, it has the potential to become a ‘gold mine’ for the continent.

What’s going on?

Long story short, the toil is starting to pay off — in more ways than one:

• In Nigeria, actress and director, Genevieve Nnaji, released a Netflix-produced film called ‘Lionheart’, which was nominated for an Oscar (though it was later disqualified for having ‘too much English’).
• 2019 also had wins for Kenya, which had its Cannes debut with a movie called Rafiki (which was later banned in Kenya — as usual, the prophet isn’t recognised in his own hometown).
• We are seeing more ‘African’Africans in Western cinema — people like Chiwetel Ejiofor to Lupita Nyong’o to Djimon Honsou, which has thankfully reduced the number of foreigners waffling ‘African’ accents.
• Representation is also evolving positively — Africa and Africans are increasingly being depicted more accurately, and … dare we say, gloriously? Take Black Panther and its Afro-parallel plot and content, for example.
• Increasingly, homegrown animation is becoming more widespread. And many believe it has the potential to transform false perceptions of the continent. Think: more Kirikou, and less Lion King or Madagascar.
• Many of these countries now hold their own film festivals and award programs, expanding awareness at home and abroad.

Even still, achievements aside, the struggle is real.

What are the struggles?

Money makes the world go round, so obvs., this is problemo numero uno. Funding for production is often hard to come by — it took Kenya’s Rafiki 7 years to raise money. Then, actually making money from films isn’t a picnic. In Uganda, Isaac ‘IGG’ Nabwana, who people have dubbed the Quentin Tarantino of Africa, has to work multiple side hustles to make ends meet and produce his content (even though he’s now a global sensation).

Money woes mean that quality is also a persistent problem. There’s a huge gap when it comes to skills and training, and so, these producers end up creating content that lacks that pizzazz we’ve come to know as the golden standard.

Distribution is another pain point. Nigeria, for example, produces 50 new movies every week, but these are mostly distributed (and/or pirated) through DVDs sold on streets and in small shops. This is one of the reasons Netflix has set up shop in the country, to join organisations like IrokoTV in capitalising on that gap.

Your Takeaway

If setting up solid cinema infrastructure across the continent could bring in about $2 billion in revenue every year, then with funding and talent, we can actually get the content (and copyright, fingers crossed) right; then, we can start to tap into new channels to reach the different audiences at home and abroad. We’re not even close, but the journey is bound to be remarkable. Hollywood-what?

What can I do?

As we all continue to self-isolate, and #QuarantineandChill becomes a whole thing, we’d suggest you take this time to really explore African cinema. We’ve name-dropped a lot of people and film suggestions; check them out. You never know what role your observations might play in contributing to its evolution.

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