FILMS AND FILM MAKING: What is the way forward for Africa?

In the fermenting fields of modern public entertainment, the shiny silver screen continues to loom large and loud.
The innate human desire to be thrilled and tickled has always been a major motivating wheel in the accelerating drive through the ever growing challenges and the meteoric expansion in innovative techniques to depict situations and create circumstances that either reflect our relative realities (past and present) or stretch our imagination to a future or a dimension far beyond ourselves.

From the rudimentary stage shows of the Athenian amphitheaters where dance-dramas, oratorical renditions, and chorus choirs riotously vied for public attention, the film industry has surged far beyond the humble bare bones of these unlikely inspirational foundations to the tantalizing glitz and glamour of modern Hollywood stunt masters and their captivating stage wizards. Indeed it is interesting to speculate as to what extent the literary connoisseurs of the Victorian tragi-comedies and the pedantic critics of the serialized novels would have turned their class-conscious artistic noses had they still been around to leisurely savor the still-baking cake that the great muse of creativity has dragged from their modest Stages to the wild wider world using a raging technology that is wanton in its reach and ‘sacrilegious’ in its touch.

But in whatever speculative direction the Victorian snouts may bend, the world of cinema, as a form of entertainment, seems to have galloped on far beyond the controlling odor of the dictates of any would-be commentator or the sovereigns they serve. With our current content, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” may now sound like a Nun’s boring bed-time story book.
The advent of the CAMERA in the 19th century, and then the motion Cinematic Image in the 20th Century brought new techniques to old styles and modes of expression that is not just entertaining, but fiercely liberating. Indeed, for this Genie, there is no holding back! Buoyed on by our natural desire to be entertained, the Film Industry has, in turn, powered our creative genius into overdrive which has also fired up our general productive output. The combined effects of these complemented factors has propelled us to the deepest and furthest of every frontier known and unknown where we continue to be dazzled and dumbfounded, tickled and troubled in varying measures.

If Tinsel Town, by a long stretch, stands out as the ultimate pinnacle in the race towards the coveted Golden Globe, for Africa, it is yet Morning on Creation Day- the crawl is only just beginning. Our aesthetics is still being forged in the fiery crucible of trials and tumbles. Hollywood, the veritable Mecca of Film formulation and glamour gloating remains, in every conceivable area of cinematography by far, the standard bearer and the screen dictator.
In Africa, our artistic mantra seems to be shrouded in numbers. The more we produce, the less quality we appear to craft. For example, Nigeria, Africa’ largest, and the World’s third largest quantitative movie producer, has never qualified for the Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards, the ultimate summit for ambitious film makers all over the world. South Africa, though not known for churning out thousands of films have fared far better in films such “TSOTSI” and even “District 9”, (if our definition of ‘African Films’ could be stretched thus far). For the prolific NOLLYWOOD producers, this sad story carries a familiar ring in all respected circles. None of their films has made the official selection, let alone qualify for the final competition at the prestigious Film Festival in Cannes where opportunities are readily extended to films from developing countries to showcase themselves and attract major western distributors. Indeed, this is far from lack of trying as can be argued with Chinize Ayaeni’s “IJE , the Journey” or Jeta Amata’s “Amazing Grace”. But somehow, the qualities just seem to fall flat behind the quality screen in the quantity heap.

So in spite of significant strides by people like Andrew Dosumnu,, a notable Nigerian photographer and film maker, one of the few African film makers who have directed Music videos in Hollywood, our continent keeps crawling.
From the evidence available I can state, without blinking, that Omotola and Genievive, highly regarded in Africa as two of Nollywood’s best, may struggle to pass any serious audition in Hollywood, by Hollywood standards. Little wonder that there is a new and growing trend by some ambitious film makers to use famous Hollywood crew in their films in an effort to bridge the attention gap. Such go-getting producers could easily justify their inroads by pointing to hits like “Blood Diamonds”, a film portraying the civil war in Sierra Leone, and shot mainly in South Africa, featuring Leonardo Di Caprio. But the question still remains, IS THIS THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEMS?
As African film makers continue to crawl, confused and panting behind the rest of the sprinters on this state-of-the-art technological and artistic track, there are many questions we need to be actively addressing if we want to forge ahead, boldly and proudly.
Do we actually have a story to tell the world? Do we need a world audience to tell our stories? Do we have the technique and the technology to tell those stories? Is there a need for originality or is wholesale copying an accepted substitute for professionalism and innovation?

Do we try to carve out our own peculiar path in the manner of Eastern film makers whose every foot forward is very visibly laced in their traditions, yet still find ways to excite, or do we accelerate our total aping of everything thrown down at us from the long winding stairs of the blinding Hollywood bling and glitz?

In my opinion, any talk of a radical distancing ‘rethink’ outside the context and content of the existing ‘Box Office’ standards may continue to be a very long theoretical search for an alternative route. Our film makers can’t afford to bag the camera and wait for that angle to develop into some concrete bridge.

AS things stand at the moment, our dire economic straits and alarming technological disability dictates that we would be at the disadvantaged end of this SHOW for a while longer. And as a minute cog in the huge menacing global machinery, we can’t avoid being sprayed with some of the dis used oil that gets thrown in our way.

And as we move forward, it is the unenviable task of those in the forefront of African film industry to be judiciously selective in what we are encouraged to accept and in how we use it.

Technology is imperative and since we don’t have it we can’t help but borrow it. Professionalism is vital; there is no pride or progress in amateurism. That much is hard to dismiss!
However, our story is our story and we must be able to tell it our own way. At the heart of every film is a story. He who can spurn a good tale stands in a better space to unfold his vision with the quality of props and casts that could shape that vision out into a believable breathing artwork. If we don’t tell our story our way, others would tell it AFTER THEIR OWN IMAGE.

Africa may not be an up and coming but it’s definitely not down and out. Starting from the first Nigerian film, “PLAVER”, shot in Jos in 1904, the industry seems to be on the way up, even if judging only from the numbers of house videos being splashed on the market every month. Sadly, as I have already pointed out, the quantity rolled out here is in no way reflective of the quality. However these poor quality, even poor taste, mediocre duplication do not take away from the individual efforts of strident strivers like Andrew Dosumnu.

We may be far back, but we need to push on.

We need the machinery and the technology that would create the sound bites, the atmosphere and the stunts to dig us out of the hole of patchiness. On the issue of substance and style we also need to strengthen the scenes to reflect and enliven the story. The dialogue has to be pointed and inspiring. Indeed, all the elements of Drama has to be carefully harnessed and adopted to our specific needs.
To achieve all of these, we inevitably run back into the dire problem of resource availability, or the lack of it thereof. Professionals have to be up to scratch, in all areas. Talented actors have to be meritoriously scouted and well-trained and daringly adventurous. The directors, the actors, the photographers and a host of other crew have to have their roles properly defined and adequately supported. We are talking money here,if we should ever dare to sail to enchanted lands such as “AVATAR” and “Prometheus”.

We may have our own unique stories and our own very way of telling it to the world, but we still need to borrow the modern vehicles of carrying that message, in the absence of an effective home-grown one.

If we would want to make any serious impact and rise beyond the banalities of the soap operas and unto the coveted wining STAGES of canes or even the Academy Awards; if we want to be heard, our artistic voices must rise above the stereotypical wails of endless emotional sobbing outbursts which saps the energy out of any situation and drowns the collective efforts. We must find ways of breaking loose out of the existing typecast models!

In short, our film makers need to create rubrics for an African aesthetics that is not simply geared towards creating a western remake or show casing an African experience for the approval of a western audience. Enduring relevance and true acceptance cannot be achieved through wholesale mirroring but by coloring the wider table with significant dosages of our own unique taste and blend. This is a hard but an ultimately rewarding venture. It is called originality! When you build on the foundations of what you have, when your voice is deeply rooted in the revitalizing waters of your own taste then, and only then, can you proceed with the level of confidence needed to attract others. For it is always better, in my opinion, to invite others to take a tour of your own gardens rather than make headlong plunges into an unknown forest full of thorns and turns.

Nonetheless, we should never allow ourselves to get stuck in the paralysis inflicted by the fear of an unknown journey, though our steps must be guarded by our own special experiences.

The lingering disquiet for me is that the full scale ‘photocopying’ of a culture well supported by an almost limitless production capital and an out-of-this-world technological base, is bound to leave us swooning on the faded tracks of the inept. For example, any attempt by us to duplicate the dressage’s or even the themes of mega budget epics like Titanic or Avatar will, in my opinion only succeed in exposing our mediocrity.
Technology has contributed tremendously to the content and structure of American films such as Independence Day or Vertigo. The fact is that America by far leads the world in the creation, management and distribution of modern technology to an extent that it almost smacks of a colonial type domination. And Hollywood has, by extension, led world cinema in taping into this new technology and transforming it into films. In such a situation how can it be possible for us to rise to the heights of our competitors who have everything that we think we need?

Equally, if not more, concerning here is the ever present threat to our unique cultures, if that should mean anything to us. When we import to build, we are more than likely to model our structures on the sources of our importations. It must be disturbing to note that in our zest to swallow everything ‘gifted’ to us, our story-lines and their customizations have largely veered towards the glorification of certain traits that may be largely anathema if not positively devastating to our own cultures and societies. We may be imperceptibly promoting cultural colonization, if for example we have to showcase an affluent African family as a wine-drinking, spaghetti-eating-polo-playing lay backs. This might very well be acknowledging a slowly growing fact, but it does far more than that: it would be creating or intensifying aspirations towards such assumptions.

Some may argue, and perhaps rightly so, that the definition of our directions should not be dictated in such blatantly devise terms. But the first thing I would say is that, though we may not like to admit it the world is blatantly divided into “Third” and “First”, and the earlier we start to tailor our suits to suit our situations the fitter the coat would sit on us.

We must recognizes that every film ever produced has a cultural element to it, covering areas like language, gestures, food, beliefs and relationships. And every film carries with it a national character which is always visible beneath the glare of the outward show. A film can tell a story in itself, but it can also signal a bigger story OF itself! “The beliefs, attitudes and values implicit in any film tends to resonate with the beliefs attitudes and values which are dominant in the society in which the film originates” (Linton, 1979). In this regards, a cultural anthropologist or a social historian or even an economist researching on Nigeria for example, can get an awful lot of overflow of material by simply studying Nigerian productions.

In effect, too heavy a reliance on foreign film equipment, ideas and standards, as in the case of Africa, is a slow walk towards a chained cultural caving.

With respect to this central take, I have to end this piece with something worth reflecting upon by our nascent film makers. It is an unequivocal warning by an erudite African scholar, Ali Mazuri: “The technology of communication, ranging from the electronic media to publishing has become at times a declaration of war on ultimate values. Human aggression and an enjoyment of violence has been sustained and nourished by the abuse of television and film. Restraints on avarice and acquisitiveness have been undermined by the very ethos of capitalism as communicated and over-communicated through its own instruments of dissemination. The natural human weakness of lust has at times been recklessly exploited by the West’s technology of communication, with negative consequences for the sacred drive of sexuality. The West’s technology of communication has at times undermined in Africa the imperative of reciprocity among people. Western culture has eroded some of the principles of collective responsibility in village life…”
We don’t have to agree with Mazuri’s view, or indeed with any view expressed here or anywhere, but at least we must equip ourselves to know what is best for us so as to enrich the ongoing debate on where we should stand or how we should walk towards that which we want!