The 80's was an excellent decade for African cinema, when talented and old school filmmakers had access to finance from France mainly, and some other European countries, filmmakers, the likes of Solyeman Cisse who made such an excellent film like "Yeelen" Idrissa Quedraogo from one of Africa's poorest countries, Burkina Faso with a film "Yaaba" Flora Gomes from yet another very poor country, Guinea Bissau, with films such as "The Blue Eyes Of Yonta" and "Po Di Sangui", to mention but a few. In the 90's and in the new millenium state funds from European countries simply crashed astronomically. The world economy crashing due to amongst other factors such as 9/11 only jeopardized the financing of African filmmakers even further. But a new generation of African filmmakers have turned to private equity, product placement, and other maneuvres to insure their creative flare, ends up in the screens. In 2005 a South African film named "Tsotsi" directed by South African director Gavin Hood, won the Oscar for best foreign language film, and in 2006 the Golden Globe award for best foreign language film. In 2009 Neil Blomkamp directed the science fiction thriller 2009, and in the opening weekend in North America it grossed 37 million dollars. It was nominated in 2010 for 4 oscars, including best picture, best adapted screenplay, best visual effects, and best editing. All a big boost in morale to upcoming African filmmakers all over the continent to say the least. As a filmmaker myself, I must confess that this has been the missing inspiration, a lesson in the modi operandi to follow, to put African cinema back into the world stage as it once was in the 70's and the 80's albeit in an art house kind of way. Well the survival of African cinema lays as I have been saying for years in producing viable commercial films, that can find a world audience crossing over from art house cinema, don't get me wrong; still fundamental to the medium, to commercial cinema. This ends the dependancy cycle on European state financing, for long a viscious cycle, and forcing filmmakers to seep private equity. This raises the stakes, films have to be of extremely high quality and standards to meet commercial market demands.
Last Friday I went to see such an excellent film in Lagos, Nigeria. "Phone Swap"Executively produced, produced, directed, and marketed by a young upcoming director Kunle Afolayan who managed to raise aproximately 400,000 dollars from both product placement, and private equity, showed to me what I have been writing all above. The film still way below in budget to your average American or European Independent film budgets, and it's South African counterparts, by millions of dollars, proves that; with loads of passion, hard work, perseverance, business sense, and with the spirit to never give up, that African Cinema is yes, on a high again. This beautifully shot film, with excellent global technical standards, superbly acted, a romantic comedy, that grasps you from beginning to end, making you laugh practically through out the entire film, is of absolute no surprise, that it has become Nigeria's highest grossing film at the theatres ever, in ten days at the theatres earning roughly 15% per cent of it's production cost, and that it has signed major international distribution deals, in England and soon in the US. The director and I met at a recent film copyright seminar last week in Lagos organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization, and I was really taken aback, how humble, how friendly, and how open this young director was. At the seminar he shared his experince of making this film and the other two he had made prior to "Phone Swap" with an incredible open mindeness, and open spirit, thus firing up potential directors at the seminar, who thought that all was almost lost.
So the way forward is to have African films run the commercial distribution network, competing in as many international markets as possible, encouraging private investors, that these can truly be very viable and successful investments, as recent African filmmakers have proved, and with this more quality and superb African movies can be made, and reach the international world stage.
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