Dear Netflix, Signed from African countries that are not Nigeria or South Africa.
I have always been that person with a Netflix subscription, who was simply too lazy to cancel. Let’s face it, the cancel option on tech products is always the hardest to find. I never really watched films on the platform but I took out a free trial and never cancelled.
Some five years later, I am still paying but now I am playing catch up and bingeing on Netflix content. The pandemic and more time at home obviously having something to do with that. What I did notice this time round, was just how diverse the content on the platform had become.
Films from the African continent are not only flooding my feed but they are not the usual films from Africa that we see. You know the type. European public money funded gaze on poverty, war or Aids and African American fantasies of the motherland. S’up Wakandans?
So I was part amused and part uncomfortable when several people forwarded a link to recent Netflix ads. This one and this other one. The messaging was great. “Made by Africans, Watched by the World.” It is a great effort and given the sheer amount of ‘think pieces’ doing the rounds about what Netflix means for ‘African’ cinema, it goes without saying that expectations are high.
What I also noticed, was the sheer number of Nigerians and South Africans in the advert which makes sense, given the high number of South African and Nigerian content in the Netflix African collection. Yes, I did see the kid from Malawi in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind and one or two Kenyans. Precisely my point. There are so many more that could have joined in, to make it truly a statement from Africa. The focus on these two countries makes perfect business sense. South Africa has the most advanced film infrastructure on the continent and Nigeria has the most people. But they remain 2 out of 54 countries on the African continent, in a collection branded as African.
I have no problems with either country. I am part Yoruba, my middle name is Adeola in case you had doubts, so I have no choice but to love Nigeria, Abeokuta to be specific. I have at least 3 films in development that are co-productions with South Africa. I love the place.
But the continent has a lot of diversity and even more stories to tell outside Nollywood and the Europeanish echoes of Mandela’s hometown. Africans with no ties to either country, are making films, good films. They are doing so without the infrastructure of South Africa or the population size of Nigeria. Their work rarely gets past the festival circuit or as some filmmakers from Kenya intimated recently, is exploited without compensation to them. But I digress. IP exploitation in Africa is an article of its own and it shall ‘soon come.’
Africans outside South Africa and Nigeria, deserve a place at tables branded African. Kenya gets in occasionally but I am talking about Sao Tome and Principe for example, (Google is your buddy). Especially as more often than not, filmmakers from other African countries are increasingly bringing the quality that Nollywood does not always have, in terms of story telling or performance. Unpopular opinion, I know. But shooting on the Alexa, and casting social media stars, will never hide poorly developed scripts and poor direction of actors.
Does it mean that I do not watch Nollywood films? No. It has been a guilty pleasure since I saw Glamour Girls as a kid. But Nollywood is one style of filmmaking from Nigeria, and it should not be a synonym for films from Nigeria or the rest of West Africa. It is a perfect tool in the gold rush for subscribers, which its celebrities might bring to Netflix, for Netflix. But short term cash for Netflix, is long term damage for African filmmakers outside Nollywood. We routinely spend a significant proportion of our time when pitching at forums, explaining that a film is not Nollywood, just because it is set in Nigeria. Funders immediately have images of theatre style exaggerated acting, poor narrative structures, poor sound mixes, in their head, because that it is all they are fed on the platforms they trust to curate quality content. Kinda like that danger of a single story, that Chimamanda Adichie waxed lyrical about.
This is not a criticism of Nollywood or Netflix. Filmmakers in Nollywood should be free to tell their stories their way. Netflix is new to the market and has spotted an obvious gap and opportunity in diversity. They have made a concerted effort to hire people from the African continent to lead their curation of content from Africa, but I bet those employees have targets to meet. If I were in their finance team, I would want to increase subscriber base first before investing in production too. Nigeria and South Africa are obvious targets. Plan A would definitely be to be deliberate about letting them see their own stories reflected in the catalogue. But can the Netflix team acquire the plethora of content outside these regions too?
Their quality and diversity could be the game changer that African cinema urgently needs, if people outside these countries, outside the continent, begin to see these films as they were intended — as comedies, action, thrillers, that happen to be set in Congo or Morocco. Will those filmmakers begin to build the sort of notoriety that gets them green lit or better deal terms instead of being perpetually niche because they are African? Because if the current African, erm Nollywood collection, is how the ability of filmmakers of African descent is being presented, the messaging is not only wrong but dangerous. Africa has Nigeria, which has Nollywood like the USA has Tyler Perry. But USA also has David Fincher. India has Bollywood and it sits alongside films from Mira Nair.
Maybe it is not such a bad idea to call the films by their name — South African, Nollywood, because that is what they really are. There are 52 more countries to go and Netflix cannot fix 75+ years of underrepresentation in cinema in one year.
But branding collections African, when less than 20% of the continent or even all styles within Nigerian or South African cinema features, is problematic. And the same way as black people we ask white people to pull up and use their privilege in the fight for racial equality, us Africans with ties to the more dominant countries, should not forget to do the same for the rest of the continent, when we are up against Western curation of what African cinema is.
Otherwise, in the opening words of Genevieve Nnaji on the advert promoting Netflix Africa, we could be adding to the problem of marginalisation in cinema that we are all demanding is solved.
Her words,
“Have you ever had someone tell your story, take your voice and replace your face, until no one else can see or hear you?”
ps. I have no connection to and have never been to, Sao Tome & Principe. :)
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