Pushing up African cinema’s 1% market share
Eye Of The Storm, a drama that explores the pschological ramifications of the use of child soldiers
Image by Eye Of The Storm
One of Film Africa festival’s aims is to showcase African cinema and give it a higher profile: the need is great, given that African cinema has a market share in Britain of only 1 per cent.
Such statistics are not surprising at a time when most filmgoers are pulled in by Hollywood stars and special effects, neither of which are a feature of African films. But the fact that the vast majority of the bums on British seats will never have sat through a single African film is part of the national ignorance about Africans as people rather than war victims, aid recipients, refugees or NHS workers.
The 65 films on offer in the fifth Film Africa (30 October to 8 November) – picked from 400 submissions – aren’t mass-appeal blockbusters, but many are both entertaining and interesting.
Festival producer Rachael Loughlan points, for example, to three features from Ethiopia (including the delightful Lamb) and several films from lesser-known film-making countries, such as Angola and Ivory Coast. The latter provides the opening night film, Run, about a man who dresses as a madman and flees after assassinating the prime minister. It won awards at the Panafrican cinema and TV festival, Fespaco, and at Cannes and is described as “an extraordinarily cinematic and poetic work on Ivory Coast’s historical conflicts”.
Another film that shows a country’s political history is The Man From Oran, an epic on post-independence Algeria.
The directors of both films will take part in the festival, a point Loughlan cites as a festival plus: “Sixteen visiting film-makers will be attending and participating in discussions.”
Some of the discussions should be fascinating. Activist Bisi Alimi, for example, will lead a panel on LGBTI rights in Africa after a screening of a film, Stories Of Our Lives, banned by the Kenya government for promoting homosexuality.
Similarly, a showing of Democrats, a revealing documentary that follows the co-chairmen of the process of formulating a new constitution in Zimbabwe, is likely to provoke a lively discussion. So will Mercy Mercy, “a fraught, powerful, disturbing, and ceaselessly thought-provoking” study of two Ethiopia-to-Denmark adoptions: “(The) film offers no easy conclusion to the plight of the children, who appear to be the last priority in the lives of the adults that surround them and whose attitude to the children’s wellbeing is problematic throughout.”
“We champion films shedding light on important topics,” emphasises Loughlan. Those topics inevitably include migration (Hope, a love story amidst chaos on the Sahara escape route, and Stranded in Canton) and child soldiers (Eye Of The Storm), in which an idealistic lawyer is assigned to defend a rebel accused of war crimes.
If music is your bag, there’s Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango (did you know?); They Will Have To Kill Us First, a sad but ultimately life-affirming look at a handful of Malian musicians forced to flee an Islamist takeover in the north; Beats of the Antonov, in which displaced Sudanese in mountain hideouts and camps maintain their identity by playing music, singing and dancing; and the curious I Shot Bi Kidude, which investigates the mystery of the kidnapping of a (it is said) 102-year-old fast-talking, chain-smoking, Zanzibari rebel rocker.
There’s romance, too, in the ‘From Africa, With Love’ category – thanks to sensible cooperation by the UK African film festival network: Film Africa, Africa in Motion in Scotland, Afrika Eye in Bristol, Watch Africa in Wales and the Cambridge Africa Film Festival.
Overall, Loughlan sees “a definite increase in quality this year”, with “more films by and about women – it’s happening in the film industry at large and it’s happening across Africa”. She also notes the number of debut features and shorts from relatively young film-makers – “and they are the future film-makers, so that’s good.” She admits, however, that it’s hard to find films for families and younger audiences, who are the future audiences.
She says the organisers “want to involve audiences” so have introduced an audience award for the best feature.
Her ultimate aim “is to make the festival redundant because African films will be screened all year round – it’s a shame to have a great 10 days of African cinema while in the rest of the year it’s not visible.”
• Film Africa runs from 30 October to 8 November, with screenings at Hackney Picturehouse, Ritzy, BFI Southbank, British Library, ICA, Cine Lumiere, South London Gallery, Rich Mix, School of Oriental and African Studies, and the University of Westminster. Info: http://www.filmafrica.org.uk / 3073 8335/ info@filmafrica.org.uk Image by Film Africa
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