Cinema on the African Continent
ALC Meeting date: Thursday, November 21, 2019
Introducing ALC Summaries
Every week on Thursday, the MIT African Students’ Association (MIT ASA) conducts a group discussion on a variety of topics that affect the African continent. We call this the Africa Learning Circle (ALC). Over the past 3 years since ALC started, we’ve been amazed by how insightful the discussion has been. Over time, we realized that these conversations should not end in the ALC room — we believe that the external community within and outside of MIT could benefit from discussed insights and shared perspectives related to the African continent. As a result, we’ve decided to regularly summarize discussions that occurred during ALC meetings, in what we’ll call “ALC Summaries”. These mini-publications will be shared online to allow more people to learn, participate, and enjoy the discussions, questions and other perspectives that are shared during the ALC discussions.
We would like to thank Jessica Quaye (Jessica Quaye), the current president of the MIT African Students’ Association, for actively working with us to make this ALC publication possible. This year, ALC events are moderated by Ayomikun (Ayo) Ayodeji and Awele Uwagwu. So, we also want to thank them and everyone else who helped make this happen.
Cinema on the African continent
This week’s theme was on Cinema on the African continent, especially focusing on the rise of Nollywood and the African Cinema industry on the global scale in general. Different topics covered in the discussion include:
- Understanding the global position of the Cinema Industry on the African Continent,
- Discussing Budgeting in African movies and how that compares to the Global, or Hollywood budgeting,
- Current problems in the African Cinema Industry, and
- Genre Experimentation in African movies.
The final part of the meeting discussed different movies that members of the audience watched, as well as a round of closing statements by the moderator, Ayo.
The global standing of African Cinema Industry
Ayo kicked-off the conversation by establishing a perspective about the cinema industry and helping the audience understand where Africa stands. He started by asking the audience “Can you provide a ranking of the top 3 movie industry on the globe”. Different answers were provided, with a popular one being “Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood”.
The true answer actually depends on what you’re looking at. By Revenue, the current ranking is Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood. However, in terms of the number of movies released per year, the current ranking is Bollywood, Nollywood, and Hollywood. While the number of movies released per year is not directly correlated to quality, this metric is a reflection of how committed the various industries are.
Budgeting of African Movies
Another point that was mentioned by Ayo and emphasized by the audience is how African directors have been able to produce high creativity movies with a significantly low budget. “Some very popular Nollywood movies were produced with a budget as low as 12K”. However, a counterpoint to this was brought up, showing that low-budgeting can also be a constraint that can lead African production studios from making high-quality movies in genres like action that could otherwise capture a bigger audience if the studios had enough resources to make high-quality movies.
Current problems in the African Cinema Industry
Ayo made an observation that despite a significant number of improvements, the African Industry can do better. He engaged the audience to discuss current solutions in the industry, and collaboratively propose solutions to these problems.
Lack of leverage when negotiating ownership rights and loyalties
Ayo pointed out how difficult it is for African producers to have leverage when negotiating ownership rights and royalties for movies. The audience discussed how Netflix bought the movie Lion Heart for allegedly $3.8m, to which many had mixed feelings.
Poverty on the Continent
An audience member pointed out how expensive buying a movie ticket could be by highlighting that it may cost 10 plates of food to watch 1 movie. The issue here is that both the cost of watching movies is high and the general ability to purchase a movie ticket is low.
Other Issues
Other issues that were briefly touched upon are the westernization of African genres and the systematic discrimination on the global stage.
Experimentation with Different Genres in African Movies
African movies have made several attempts to “catch-up” with the rest of the world. The ALC discussion highlighted different attempts by African movies to try out genres such as horror. The audience gave examples of how this has not been successful so far and discussed several anecdotes on how the west has been more successful with experiment with African genres and generally suggested that Africa could follow a similar approach when attempting to experiment with western genres. The examples discussed included Black Panther in Hollywood with an attempt to embed the African-ness into the movie, as well as Paul Simon’s collaboration with African artists to bring African music to the western world. Ayo brought up an interesting example where a group of Nigerian teenagers’ teamed up to make sci-fi movies — a non-common genre in African movies — with low-cost production equipment.
ALC members’ movie taste, and closing statements
Ayo closed the discussion by asking members of the audience about the most recent African movies that they watched. The answers included Married Men, Black Girl by Sembe Ousman, Osuofia in London, and Wedding Party. In addition to that, Ayo shared an article with a list of recommended movies to watch.
Questions Discussed
To close this off, here are the discussion questions presented during this ALC meeting:
- What are the infrastructural/social/cultural changes that could serve to improve the African movie industry?
- What are the major barriers that prevent quality or quantity growth within the African movie industry?
- What role(s) do the Government & Education have in fostering a conducive environment for artists and creators and their artwork?
- What do the transition from low-quality culture-rich films to high-quality, “seemingly more western” films say about artist discretion, cultural-phase shifts, etc?
About the Authors:
- Audace Nakeshimana — MIT ’20, Computer Science and Economics, Rwanda
- Robert Vunabandi — MIT ’20, Computer Science, D. R. Congo
