It is a sad observation that the Tanzanian filmmaker and academic Amil Shivji made on the BBC: Africans do not have access to pioneering works of cinema produced by the continent. The holding of distribution rights outside the continent, often in Europe, is one of the reasons for this situation.
In the interview with BBC Africa, Amil Shivji explains as well as the films made in the years 60-80 – among others in West Africa by big names of African cinema like Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Mambéty Diop or Gaston Kaboré –, were funded by governments and private companies in Europe. Restored and digitized today, they “still do not benefit from the distribution models they deserve in Africa”.
“We are still quite dependent on European markets to distribute our films, because we do not have the infrastructure (adequate)” to do it in Africa. “So even the classic films of the fathers of African cinema, we still do not have the rights to distribute these films on the African continent, even for educational purposes”, regrets the lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Thank you @BBCAfrica for letting me share my two cents on the need for African cinema to play on the continent. https://t.co/yhY5FJa0nP
– Amil Shivji (@amilshivji) December 20, 2021
(Thank you @BBCAfrica for allowing me to share my two cents on the need for African cinema to be shown on the continent.)
The problem that the academic raises is well known. The unavailability of these works on the continent is mentioned in the latest Unesco report on African cinema published last October. It is also due to conservation difficulties. Due to conflicts or climatic conditions, “the audiovisual archives stored locally have gradually deteriorated, because the methods and resources of conservation were inadequate, and the first documents dating from the 1950s have already disappeared”, can we read in the document.
“As for celluloid films, the archives that have best survived the test of time are hardly ever found in Africa, but in the national cinema archives in France, the United Kingdom and other European countries or in various Western universities with a department dedicated to African cinema “. Consequences : “educational establishments in Africa do not have access to these pioneering films” and “very few people know about the continent’s cinematographic heritage, and even less among the African public”.
If these films are inaccessible, it is also because adequate structures have not been put in place. “The continent does not impose any deposit system, the first and often the only actors in the field of conservation are the national cinema archives”. On the continent, “only eight countries” have such structures.