The 1996 Southern African film festival in Harare has just drawn to a close. Andrew Worsdale was there.
MOST African films suffer from the development paradigm: the funding situation gets in the way of true cinematic story- telling. Certainly the line-up of 1996 award-winners reflected such paradoxes. Most of the films were old and several strained under story pressures – based, as they were, on issues and not character. Host nation Zimbabwe scooped six awards – between Flame, the tale of women volunteers during chimurenga and their most recent product, Everyone’s Child, about two children orphaned by Aids.
Flame picked up best director (Ingrid Sinclair), best actress (Marian Kunonga) and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) prize – recognising a film with a theme that is consistently African. Everyone’s Child won for its script (Tsitsi Dangarembga), cinematography (Patrick Lindsell) and music (a compilation of popular Zimbabwean hits). The best film award, however, went to South Africa’s Cry the Beloved Country (the best documentary director went to South African Marc Radomsky for Ghetto Flowers), with Cry’s Vusi Kunene taking best actor award.
Flame has been criticised for being too politically correct. Everyone’s Child and another new Zimbabwean feature, I Am the Future, also received flak for being boringly issue-based.
No wonder Cry the Beloved Country won the main prize. Funded by, among others, Investec Bank, it displays old-fashioned story-telling and production values, albeit in a Hollywood – or for that matter BMW- commercial idiom – as opp-osed to the usual well-intentioned, technically inadequate and cinematically stagnant stuff from the region. Of the features, these were the only films that really could have won in what was an unimaginatively programmed festival that also suffered from an inordinate amount of organisational chaos.
The Ethiopian Tumult was a notable exception. Although it’s far too long at 117 minutes, its sense of cinematic shorthand is exceptional. The film took six years to make and director Yemane Demissie plugged a bunch of his own money into it, getting very little support from development agencies. And, being the experimental cinematic beast that it is, it probably won’t even see the light of a circuit day.
In truth, a two-day conference on film financing for regional producers and financiers conducted in French, Portuguese and English was possibly the best attended and most successful element of the festival. Zimbabwe, for example, has had a recent features boom – all because of donor funding.
To quote Chris Kabwato of Media for Development Trust: ”We cannot build commercial cinema because of the nature of the themes prescribed by ‘donors’ who are quite different from our dreams … We all know how the Zimbabwean film-maker has become an overnight expert in whatever issue donors place in vogue. Last year it was gender, this year its environment, next year it could be vegetarianism and the next violence to domestic animals … ”
The fact is, most African film-makers rely on charities to make their movies. And the attraction of an issue-based story is that it makes for easy distribution through theatres and, more importantly, on video and into universities and community centres.
Everyone’s Child was produced by the Media for Development Trust as part of the Children Under Stress project. It began as a community-based training package aimed at empowering communities to care for children living in hardship, especially those orphaned by Aids. After countrywide research sponsored by Anglo American and Plan International, a story and screenplay were developed. The credits are a fine example of the way African films are being financed these days: the British Overseas Development Administration, PLAN International, the Canadian International Development Agency (Cida), Oxfam-America, Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), Terre des Hommes, and ”Jonny’s friends from England”.
An alternative source of finance is to be found in co-production. The European Union operates a fund simply called APC that gives money to African, Pacific and Caribbean countries. Three member states have to be signatories to a deal for any funds to be handed over. Flame benefited from this scheme and a French-based fund Fond Sud, which specialises in development in the South. There was a lot of debate around the need for co-productions and, above all, government support and tax incentives for the region’s film industry. Everyone seemed to agree that lack of finance was the major drawback for African players in the industry.
Everyone agreed except South African producer, Jeremy Nathan: ”Money is not the problem because it is there. The stories are the problem. We have to produce interesting stories that attract the viewers.” His company, Catalyst Films, is in the process of producing six half-hour films, a co- production between South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Tunisia and Senegal. Entitled Africa Dreaming, all the films centre on a love story.
With a total budget of R4 500 000 for three hours of finished product, the major production finance came from La Sept (France, Germany, Austria), YLE TV (Finland), Canal France International and NPS (Holland). The Catalyst project still drew some NGO capital to sustain itself.
Nathan reflects on the project, saying ”this continental co-production will show off Africa’s talent and establish a reliable network that can serve future productions. Producers are sharing skills, resources and creative approaches from the north and south. Broadcasters should be sharing resources, too, but of the African broadcasters, only the SABC has participated.”
South Africans can be encouraged by that, and with the promise of R10-million to support the local film industry included in the government’s white paper, we may well be on our way to creating a viable industry.
The Zimbabwean government is presently preparing a policy document to help boost the local industry, but Sports, Recreation and Culture Secretary Stephen Chifunsiye warned delegates: ”When we talk about the film sector, it’s a political issue and government will need to know what the political agenda of the films is.”
Meanwhile, the industry in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe is all but dead. Only Ghana seems to be thriving, with an output of over 30 feature films a year. But then again, they’re all shot on VHS for about R8 000 each – and perhaps there’s a lesson in that as well.