Johnny Masilela
Imagine a group of film-lovers cramped in someone’s garage, sitting on makeshift benches, watching their favourite motion picture. For the uninitiated, the latter setting is downtown Accra in Ghana, where, for lack of better language, industry leaders have dubbed the new craze a “video boom”.
Ben-Musa Imoro, local filmmaker and vice- president of the Video and Film Producers’ Association of Ghana, says the boom has dealt a major blow to the mainstream cinema houses and national television.
Ironically, the makeshift video houses of Accra and elsewhere in this West African country have also emerged as a serious challenge to American soapies, and many other products coming from overseas.
Imoro was among a number of stakeholders interviewed about the state of the film industry in their homelands during a TV scriptwriting workshop held recently in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare.
Imoro and 12 other screenwriters from South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe gathered in Harare for a three- week TV scriptwriting workshop conducted by Canadians Robert Forsyth and Jeremy Hole, and respected African filmmaker Gaston Kabore. The workshop was co-ordinated and funded by Unesco and the Canadian government.
“The success of the video industry in Ghana,” Imoro explained, “lies in the fact that people are shown films made locally by local screenwriters, directors and actors.”
Imoro said the production of the video shows was affordable not only as far as equipment and other technical factors were concerned, but also in that many of the producers use their own relatives as actors!
The result? Ghana’s national TV and the movie houses are more involved than ever before in channelling resources into the development of the local film industry.
Echoing almost similar sentiments, the world-renowned Kabore of Burkina Faso says Africa has to “industrialise our cinema”. Kabore, who is the outgoing secretary- general of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers, says not only the private sector but governments have to be roped in to help in the formulation of strategic policies to help African film.
The picture in Swaziland and elsewhere is not as promising as in Ghana.
“There is no film industry in Swaziland,” reported aspiring screenwriter Modison Magagula. The country’s only TV station broadcast events mainly involving the royal family, he said.
Magagula says potential filmmakers – mainly NGOs – wishing to have their work shown on Swazi TV have to buy time slots for projects such as Aids education.
Zimbabweans Lazarus Fungurani, a TV cameraman, actress Robina Chombe of Flame fame, and aspiring screenwriter Blessing Muchinapo all lament the recent closure of the Central Film Laboratory facility on the outskirts of Harare.
The three argue that instead of closing down this multi-purpose facility the government should have sought partners in the private sector to keep it operational.
The Zimbabweans indicated, however, that the industry’s flame was kept burning by ongoing projects hosted by, among others, the Unesco-sponsored Zimbabwe Film and Video Training Project, and the African Script Development Fund.
Namibian playwright and screenwriter Frederick B Philander is bitterly critical of his government’s attitude towards the arts in general, and the film industry in particular. Philander alleges that only filmmakers sympathetic to the ruling South West African People’s Organisation had a chance of making it on to the national network.
South Africans Kalosi Ramakhula, a filmmaker, and aspiring screenwriter Phybia Dlamini, lament the trend whereby a handful of people are in control of resources both in the TV and cinema industries.
“Open up any newspaper, go to any workshop, seminar and the film festivals, and I bet you’ll come across the same circle of people in control,” says Dlamini.
“Nothing has changed from the days of apartheid. It is the same people who call the shots in the industry. It’s time the industry unshackled itself from the legacy of the past,” says Ramakhula.
Against this background, Ramakhula, Dlamini and the rest of the workshop participants formed a group they chose to name the African Renaissance Screenwriters’ Association.
Imoro and Philander have been charged with the responsibility of drawing up a constitution in order to formalise the grouping, which, for a start, will have representatives in the participants’ respective home countries. In the meantime, participants have committed themselves to keeping each other informed of industry developments in their respective countries.
Kabore, who was invited to the informal inaugural gatherings of Arsa at a hotel in Harare, encouraged the group to form the structure, adding that the fledgling association might as well consider some form of relationship with the Pan African federation.