A major symposium at this year’s South African International Film Festival will bring leading African filmmakers into contact with their local counterparts. William Pretorius reports
HISTORY will be made at the “Across the Continent” symposium when, for the first time ever, filmmakers from all over Africa get together in South Africa. Hosted by the South African International Film Festival and M-Net, this three-day conference — from October 13 to 15 in Johannesburg — will cover every aspect of filmmaking by means of first-hand information from the directors themselves.
As a forerunner to the symposium, the Film Resource Unit (Fru) will run a producers’ workshop on October 2 and a technical workshop on October 7. There will also be a Film and Television Programme Market where products can be bought and sold, and local filmmakers can meet African filmmakers and make business contacts.
This type of symposium is long overdue. Besides introducing filmmakers to each other after the long alienation of the cultural boycott, the conference is the first step in unifying the local industry through the exchange of information.
The focus will be on both the creative and technical aspects of the industry. African filmmakers now see using South Africa as one of their options: post-production can be done here rather than overseas, our infra-structure can be utilised. Co-productions with the rest of Africa are logical steps in getting our ailing industry off the ground.
The symposium, too, will be essentially a learning process. There is much ignorance about the African film industry — a recent academic book, Mass Media for the Nineties: SA Handbook of Mass Communication, edited by Arrie de Beer, for example, suggests the local industry is the only industry in Africa worth anything. Africa, in fact, supports a variety of thriving film industries. Burkina Faso, for instance, which is among the poorest countries in the world, makes a high quota of films every year.
Even the experts need a refresher course. The edition on African cinema of the Critical Arts Journal from the University of Natal, as another example, has little new to say about the subject that has not already been said by Roy Armes and Manthia Diawara in their books.
The symposium will open with the premiere of Zimbabwean director Isaac Mabhikwa’s More Time, a drama about the clash between traditional values and more modern attitudes to sex. A township girl falls in love with the local “Mr Cool”, and has to come to terms with the realities of physical love, including pregnancy and Aids.
During the symposium, Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene – – regarded by many as the doyen of African film — will examine the aesthetics of African cinema; Martin Botha will give an overview of South African cinema; Anton Hayward will discuss financing; and Clarence Hamilton and Glen Masoane will talk on the government, the industry and training young filmmakers.
Distribution will be covered by Ben Zulu of Zimbabwe, while Philippe Sawadogo, director of the Fespaco Film Festival, will look at the government’s role in the Burkina Faso film industry. Kwan Ansah from Ghana and Laurence Dworkin will present their visions of the future. And, in a special session, speakers from Francophone and Anglophone Africa will discuss how they make films.
Other guests at the symposium include filmmakers Nii Kwate Owoo from Ghana, Roger Gnoa M’Bala (winner of the Grand Prix at the last Ouagadougou film festival) from the Ivory Coast, Anne Mungai from Kenya, and Djibril Diop Mambety of Senegal.
The symposium will culminate with the presentation of the M-Net Film Awards. The venue for the symposium has not be finalised, but further information can be obtained from the South African International Film Festival Office at (011) 403-7111.