Film directors seek a voice for Africa

Cannes, France --- "If Hollywood makes money, if Bollywood makes money, then why can't we, in Africa?" asked Robert Kofi Nyantakyi, the head of Ghana's Gama Film Company.

The script the African film moguls are trying to write at the Cannes film festival this week could be called "Desperately seeking a voice for Africa".

"We have so many stories to tell" said Nyantakyi, whose country is a pioneer of West African cinema.

But with few funds and a wide technology gap to overcome, Africa's chances of producing films featuring its own cultures and concerns appear doomed to failure unless national industries band together to break down borders.

"What we are advocating is for Africans to co-produce among themselves," said South Africa's Eddie Mbalo, who heads the country's National Film and Video Foundation, the continent's only independent film institute supported by the state.

"We see film as a means of promoting economic development as well as art," Mbalo said in an interview.

"It's important for the image of Africa, for our image of ourselves, for democracy."

But the statistics are not encouraging.

In 2001, powerful South Africa produced only five films -– none distributed in 35mm -- which had a tiny 1% market share of the 24,7-million tickets sold. The country moreover has plenty of cinemas in previously white areas but few in the townships, with an entire infrastructure needing to be built.

Mbalo said the situation was rosier this year, with seven features produced in South Africa and, more significantly, all boasting majority 40-60 % funding from the domestic private and public sectors. Video too was on the up and up.

"We are positioning South Africa as a film-making country," he said.

"Our work is beginning to pay off. Now we have to develop a black audience, and we need more South African films."

In Ghana, Nyantakyi's company alone is producing eight features this year and has six in the pipeline.

"But what we're trying to do now is get together and cross borders," he said.

Because of language barriers, films should be dubbed in French and English, he said, and the French government was helping by supplying specialist equipment.

"This really creates a wider market," he said.

"To make film self-sustaining it must sell across borders."

But the continent is lagging behind on all fronts, from cutting-edge digital technology to the lack of trained make-up artists and needs to invest in acting and editing schools, he said.

"We must have a quality that sells worldwide," he added.

"But we need to bridge the development gap under our own guidance. We must empower people to do things for themselves."

There is a rapidly growing emerging market for films to be tapped amid the African diaspora in the United States and Europe, who want to see more and more films about Africa, he added.

Meanwhile, debate continues on what sort of film to make for the continent's audiences. This year's low-budget South African movie God is African proved to be a money-spinner that sold out for 16 straight days at home.

Heremakono, a poetic Mauritanian film chronicling the hopes of villagers, won the Yennenga Stallion prize for best African feature at this year's Fespaco pan-African festival but failed to wow the masses.

Its director, Mauritania's Abderrahmane Sissako is heading the jury that will hand out prizes for the best of the 19 films selected for the "Un Certain Regard" section at Cannes.

Other directors are at Cannes -- Souleymane Cisse and Cheikh Omar Sissoko, also Mali's culture minister -- but there is only one African film featuring at the 12-day festival; the Cameroon production The Forest.

"We must come together like the Europeans and create a film industry for Africa," Sissoko said.