NEO•GRIOT

Cinema: Women in the spotlight

Written by Clar Ni Chonghaile in Nairobi

Monday, 10 January 2011 16:16

Female directors are achieving increasing success in the African film industry but those at the forefront want to be recognised for their skills, not their gender. Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu becomes very animated when she talks about Kathryn Bigelow’s best director Oscar this year for Hurt Locker – the first time a woman has won that award. “It’s ridiculous we had to wait this long. But even Kathryn Bigelow herself said she’d much rather be appreciated as a filmmaker than as a woman filmmaker.”     WANURI KAHIU Wanuri Kahiu has big ambitions. The petite Kenyan filmmaker with a lightning smile took her science fiction film Pumzi to Cannes this year and won the best short prize at the Cannes Independent Film Festival. Kahiu left Kenya at 16 to study in the UK, going on to do a master’s degree in film directing at the University of California before returning to Kenya in 2006.   Her first feature, From A Whisper, was based around the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It won five Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009, and she is now in talks about international distribution.   Kahiu’s vision of African film is radical – from her theories on how to improve distribution to the need to confront stereotypes. “It is the responsibility of artists to say we want to represent the place that we love in a different way. We want to represent it by showing the people who laugh with us, who cry with us, who make love with us. Not just people who molest and abuse and corrupt. There is more to Africa than tragedy.” Kahiu, who made waves in Cannes this year with her science-fiction short Pumzi, is among a group of young African filmmakers seeking to overturn on-screen stereo-types of the continent. She does not want to be judged based on her gender.   “It’s really frustrating that we still pigeonhole women,” she tells The Africa Report. “Do we not see the same images of violence and hurt that men see?”   The talk about Bigelow’s win illustrates how cinema has been dominated by men, and not just in Africa. Beti Ellerson, who directed the 2002 film Sisters of the Screen and produces the African Women in Cinema blog, says that hopes were raised in 1997 when more women than ever before entered the pan-African FESPACO film festival.   “I thought optimistically that this was evidence of African women’s growing presence and participation in cinema. And yet, the following years did not show such promise. There was not an exponential increase in production,” says Ellerson. Although women had made their mark on the cinematic landscape, some were discouraged from getting involved by lack of funds. She hopes digital technology might open up the industry.   There is a cohort of pioneering African women filmmakers who have helped smooth the way for today’s generation. In Kenya, Kahiu lists Judy Kibinge and Wanjiru Kinyanjui, whose The Battle of the Sacred Tree is Kahiu’s favourite African film. In North Africa, director Raja Amari pays homage to fellow Tunisian Moufida Tlatli, whose 1994 film The Silences of The Palace was the first feature film directed by an Arab woman.   Still, short film projects such as Mama Africa, a workshop collaboration organised in Harare by Zimmedia in 2000 that resulted in six shorts by African women directors, and the 1997 series Africa Dreaming have remained two largely isolated events rather than a sustained momentum to showcase female directing talent.   The funding dilemma   One South African-based advocacy group, Women of the Sun, aims to help African women filmmakers exploit opportunities and share their skills. It is organising a forum of African women filmmakers in Johannesburg on 1-4 September, alongside the African Women Film Festival. Women of the Sun’s Eve Rantseli has noticed many more women entering the industry in South Africa, but she says there remain very few feature-film directors. “If you look beyond directing, if you look at actors and actresses, you find their fees are not the same,” she says. “You find that many productions take place in a white, male environment. People tend to deal with people they know, and if you are dealing with an environment that is white and male or just male, people tend to work with other males.”   SHIRLEY FRIMPONG-MANSO Shirley Frimpong-Manso is all about quality, and the Ghanaian director’s dedication to improving production standards in her films is paying off. The 33-year-old, who heads Sparrow Productions, won the best director award for The Perfect Picture at this year’s Africa Movie Academy Awards in Nigeria.   A former radio presenter who studied at Ghana’s National Film and Television Institute, Frimpong-Manso said she made a decision to tell tales about modern Ghana and to match substance with style. So far, she has directed five features. “When I decided to do movies, I consciously decided to do something more modern, more light. Movies go all over the world and they say a lot about who we are and what our beliefs are,” she explains.   Her biggest problem is funding, as the lack of money limits her creativity. She wants to make films about Ghana’s fight for independence, but the money is not there. One issue for every African director is money. “Funding is a huge problem, and because of that you have to think about the script and the story you are writing and that limits your creativity,” says Ghanaian director Shirley Frimpong-Manso. “We want to go back into our history books and tell stories of our independence, but we can’t do that because we don’t have the funding.”   The Ghanaian government and other stakeholders need to do more, says Frimpong-Manso. In Kenya, where the film industry is worth more than KSh3bn ($38m), the government and filmmakers are beginning to talk about tax regimes and incentives. The Kenya Film Commission says the industry could grow to Ksh40bn a year and create 250,000 jobs if it is properly exploited.   Dynamic producers who know the market and can collaborate with their peers will come out on top. African filmmakers need to become more innovative about distribution, making better use of online facilities to engage with those who sell pirated copies.   Amidst this, Amari dislikes what she sees as the paternalism meted out to African filmmakers: “I don’t think there should be any special treatment for African film. It should be competitive, they should be able to prove themselves.” More character-based films could help win global distribution rights for African film, she says.   Modern Africa   RAJA AMARI If Arabic cinema has often presented women as the victims of a cruel society, Tunisian director Raja Amari is determined to break what she calls this “reductive” tradition. In her latest film Buried Secrets, Amari’s female lead is both victim and executioner. “I’m interested in the female universe. I think female characters live through more conflict and tension in Arab and African society,” she says. Her aim is to show the diversity of women’s lives. “I present things in a less allegorical way. My films are about desire, about the body.”She is not afraid of breaking taboos nor conservative rejection of her style.   Born in 1971, Amari studied literature in Tunisia before moving to Paris in 1995 to study at La Fémis film school. After her first feature, Satin Rouge, won best African film award at the 2002 Montreal Film Festival, Amari has become a respected member of the international film community. She is in the midst of writing the screenplay for her third feature film, which will be set in Tunisia and France. Despite the obstacles, filmmakers like Kahiu, Amari and Frimpong-Manso are determined to keep pushing boundaries, and they do not think their work needs to have a particular message just because they are women or African. “[African filmmakers] are making films that are exciting, that are challenging, that are cosmopolitan and that resonate with other people who have a similar experience – people who are internet-savvy, who live in cities. Africa is not only about the huts and women carrying water on their heads,” says Kahiu.   This article was first published in the October-November 2010 edition of The Africa Report.

Last Updated on Monday, 10 January 2011 16:53

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