Made in Africa: the Documentary Economy

In addition to being a filmmaker, you’re also running Documentary Africa (DocA). What was the purpose of creating this structure in Africa? It’s one of the first foundations initiated by professionals, not by an institution: DocA was founded by several African producers (1) who wanted to give documentary film making a boost. The poor relation of cinema in Africa, for historical, colonial and post-colonial reasons, documentary’s nevertheless always been active, as it requires fewer resources than fiction. And recently a whole generation of young people has taken possession of cameras.

Thanks to a financial contribution from the Bertha Foundation, associated with the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA), the Dutch documentary film fund, a report on the state of documentary film on the continent was carried out by nine researchers (critics, programmers, journalists, producers) and presented at the 2014 edition of IDFA in Amsterdam. It highlighted problems of funding, broadcasting and distribution, and training. I was appointed at the end of 2018/beginning of 2019 to act on this call for action. DocA’s main mission’s to support the circulation of documentary viewpoints from the continent, through this mode of cinema. We know that documentary film can be a tool for change, for inspiration, that it can provoke debate. I also think it’s become a means of revitalising this pan-African discourse, which, having fallen out of fashion, has lost its meaning over the last twenty years.

GLASS CEILINGS

From the creation to the distribution of a film, what are the current challenges in different countries? Africa’s a huge continent. In terms of cinema, it’s divided into four blocs. The Maghreb’s influenced by France because of colonisation. It often imitates French financing systems, like the Centre national du cinéma marocain, financed by public funds. The West African bloc is linked to the Franco-French funding system through the OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie), and the historical relationship between this country and Senegal and Burkina Faso, which generally allows for a better knowledge in France of West African filmmakers (Souleymane Cissé, Sembène Ousmane and Jean-Marie Teno in documentaries). The Anglo-Saxon bloc, composed of Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, is disparate. In Nigeria, for example, cinema is a real industry, with a market, distributors and cinemas: at the very least, 70 million people have the means of watching films, in cinemas or on television. Finally, there’s the Portuguese-speaking world, divided between countries where cinema is in its infancy and Central Africa (Gabon, Cameroon), where everything remains to be done or done afresh.

This leads to very unequal production trajectories. The fewer producers, resources and means of viewing there are, the more fragile a film project will be, with less access to international broadcasters. These disparities will take time to be resolved because they’re structural, due both to relations with the former colonial powers and to the absence, in certain countries, of public policy on cinema and the audiovisual sector. This

is the first aspect of the problem, trying to give all these creators the opportunity to start on an equal footing.

Faced with these challenges, what are DocA’s means of action?

We have set up aid to support the many documentary organisations (2) with a regional vocation, which have been carrying out field work for 5, 6 or 10 years (laboratories, residencies, festivals). DocA also grants direct financial aid to filmmakers (development, production, post-production and, since 2021, promotion of the work). We received more than 1400 projects in 2021 alone, and still don’t have enough resources to support more than twenty projects per year.To compensate, I recommend some projects to international funds, such as the Sundance Documentary Film Program, so that they can develop. It’s to draw attention to projects from the continent for which we think there’s a creator, a vision. The international network is one of the major challenges for documentary film in Africa, because that’s where the distributors are. Another glass ceiling is even more difficult to break: the way the world sees Africa. This very negative view of the continent has existed for centuries, and the global cultural industry isn’t spared. We see it in all the people who can decide the future of a film (programmers, broadcasters). In my 22-year career, I, who also am a filmmaker, have often had to hear: “Oh really, there’s a cinema industry in Africa?” It’s therefore anything but easy for producers to make potential coproducers understand that from Nairobi or Kinshasa it’s possible to talk about the world with a camera, with images, being as legitimate as a filmmaker in London or Paris. This vision’s changing, but this can only be done from the continent, by creating the means and structures for the emergence and visibility of this African audiovisual and cinematographic production.

Do African films find an audience, both professional and amateur, at their shooting location? Are some countries on the continent potential outlets? It’s possible for fiction in countries where you can make money thanks to a national audience, such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa and, paradoxically, Ethiopia, where there are lots of cinemas to which Ethiopians go to see mainly Ethiopian fiction films. But for documentaries, it’s very difficult to get them released in cinemas.This is the case in Europe, and it is even more so on the African continent. We therefore mainly see these films in festivals, which, compared to twenty years ago, are now numerous in Africa. The problem is also that the national channels, which should be the natural partners of documentaries, don’t play the game, or do so in an absurd way by asking the producer to pay to be shown on television, as in Gabon for example. In other words, the films go to festivals, try to obtain a nomination in a category of festival (Sundance, Berlinale, Doclisboa, Cannes Festival, Cinéma du réel), then a prize, in order to be bought and broadcast by international channels: Arte, Canal,TV5 Monde, Al Jazeera, etc. Private initiatives, associations or collectives also manage to bring cinema, including documentaries, to more remote locations, but unfortunately these remain the exception.

(DE)FORMING THE GAZE

Does aiming for an international network lead some to produce “cinema for Westerners”? There is indeed a miserabilistic vision of the continent, based on a certain truth: poverty, corruption, structural failures. But to embrace such angle is an easy solution, which seeks to soften or move the broadcasters. Personally, and this is the filmmaker speaking, I find this horrifying because it’s often these films that make the rounds of the major festivals. We warn young filmmakers and producers, defending the fact that more nuanced visions are possible, encouraging them to take more distance from reality, not to forget the humanity of the person filmed, whatever their social situation, and to show their paradoxes, their richness, so as not to be satisfied with sensationalism. As Samba Félix Ndiaye, the great Senegalese documentary filmmaker, said:“I only film the people I love.” Without going that far, there is this notion of responsibility: what do we show when we film this reality that will be printed in time, for whom and for what? Regarding the projects submitted to us, the new generation of documentary filmmakers seems to be asking this question of the purpose less and less.

What problems does this colonial past you mentioned pose today, beyond the distortion of the West’s view of the African continent? Documentary cinema, the real thing, has frightened local filmmakers for long. Their parents or grandparents perceived cameras filming them as if they were insects or animals in a zoo. Because of this repulsive effect, many turned to fiction, pretending they were also capable of telling fables and

figuring another Africa. At present there’s both a fascination with documentaries and a reluctance to go towards a reality that’s still steeped in colonial images in many places. As a result, national television stations have chosen to support fictional filmmakers, with documentaries being equated with Whites filming africans. Another perverse effect is the fact that documentary is very little taught in the multiple film schools available on the continent – 70 to 80% of cinema courses are focused on fiction – and, although this is changing, training, writing assistance, support and development initiatives are also mainly focused on fiction. Even European organisations, except for Docmonde, tend to support African creators of fiction and even animation. As a result, for the public, documentary cinema isn’t considered as cinema.

It’s only recently that documentary filmmakers started to become aware of their power: documentary as a way of reappropriating our history and who we are. The next step is to search for documentary producers, who are rare all over the continent.

When did you first notice those various developments in Africa? There was a double movement in the 2000s. Filmmakers from the diaspora returned where they came from. In the 1970s and 1990s many of them, documentary or fiction filmmakers, had gone into exile in Brussels, Paris, London, Munich or NewYork, because it was too dangerous, for political reasons, to remain in their countries. When they came back, some of them created a multiplicity of festivals, laboratories, writing workshops, partnerships with american, french or belgian initiatives, which gave a new impetus to African cinema, all genres included. We’ve received more than 1,400 projects to date at DocA, because these initiatives are endogenous, and no longer exogenous. At the same time, some countries have set up film commissions: a film fund in Senegal created 5-6 years ago, a strengthened culture fund in Burkina Faso 4-5 years ago, a national fund expected in Rwanda by 2023. Political institutions have realized that national initiatives are also needed.

NEW FRONTIER

Is this double movement linked to the arrival of digital technology? Digital technology has truly democratized cinema in Africa, which was quite elitist until now. There is also the arrival of mobile phones, which has considerably changed the relationship to the image by demystifying it. In Africa, the average age is 20, so phones and social networks are very widespread. This is the tool of today’s and tomorrow’s African authors and filmmakers.

African views on the continent have multiplied today through documentaries, and the prism of cinema is a very good approach for demystifying the view of Africa. Currently there’s a lot of talk about the decolonisation of the Western gaze. But it should be remembered that historically, since the pioneers, the challenge of African cinema has been to change the perspective of the gaze on Africa. This is its raison d’être, and we often forget to say so.This double movement of democratisation and demystification and this incredible new energy have led big corporations and platforms, such as Netflix, to set up a market on the continent. Africa has become the new frontier.

Has a platform like Netflix become an outlet? It can be an opportunity for fiction writers – platforms are only interested in documentaries on an episodic basis, on specific topics that are in the news. At DocA, we caution producers about these new opportunities that are also a new form of predation: finding out there’s a middle class in Africa, the platforms are first of all concerned by the conquest of new products and markets, as competition has increased in the US and elsewhere. Amazon Studios launched its Africa project at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria in late October 2021. Netflix has offices in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Disney’s coming up with a lot of animation projects. Often it’s about taking away the rights of African writers and producers. Their calls for projects target young people, who are more flexible. As creative freedom and independence are flouted on these platforms, I don’t think this will allow a national cinema to flourish.

What about creative freedom in Africa today? In some countries, being a filmmaker’s still very risky. For example, we have supported filmmakers who were arrested in Sudan when they were just demonstrating for freedom of expression. Students at a film school in Ethiopia, where I’ve often been teaching, also testified to the difficulty of getting into documentary film, which is still exposed to censorship, repression and self-censorship. Coming from the Comoros, where there is normally no repression, I was myself afraid when my film Red Card (2020) was released there. I only implicitly attack the president in it, but I received phone calls, and my preview was ransacked by soldiers who made us evacuate by force.There are places where you walk on eggshells, that’s obvious. Some subjects can very quickly put you in danger: homosexuality, corruption, etc. it’s not easy. For example, for the film I am Samuel (2020), a love story between two young Kenyan men, the director, Peter Murimi, and the producer, Toni Kamau, are having a lot of problems in Kenya, where homosexuality’s forbidden.

Translation: Chloé Baker

1 Judy Kibinge for Kenya, who runs DocuBox, a fund for East African documentary film; Steven Markovitz, one of South Africa’s leading documentary and drama producers; Salem Brahimi, a French-Algerian producer; Femi Odugbemi, a leading Nollywood producer in Nigeria; Joslyn Barnes, producer and founder of Louverture Film, Danny Glover’s production company in the US. 2 In 2021, Fidadoc in Morocco, which covers the whole of the Maghreb and some West African countries; Koudougou Doc in Burkina Faso, for West Africa; the South African Documentary Association (DFA) in South Africa, which covers Southern Africa; and DocuBox in Kenya for East Africa.

Page de gauche, de haut en bas left from top: Amina Abdoulaye Mamani.

Sur les traces de Mamani Abdoulaye. 2019.

63 min. Programmation Cinéma du réel, Paris, 2022. (© CINEDOC FILMS). Peter Murimi. I Am Samuel. 2020. 69 min. (Court. We are not the machine Ltd.). Ci-dessous below: Ousmane Zoromé Samassékou. The Last Shelter. 2021. 85 min. Programmation Cinéma du réel, Paris, 2022. (© Les Films du Balibari)