Globalizing African Cinema? cont'd.

In many structurally-adjusting African countries, coercive neo-liberal economics have not only exacerbated an already difficult situation for African filmmakers, but have also unloaded bigger burdens on African filmmaking. Tax codes, budget cuts and the steady reduction and drying up of both external and internal funding sources for production and distribution continue to shackle filmmakers. Privatization has provoked the gradual disappearance of movie theaters from many an urban landscape with perhaps few exceptions, for example, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Zimbabwe and a few places in North Africa. Divestiture of government interests in movie theater ownership and management in many structurally adjusting African countries has occasioned the sale of movie houses to private entrepreneurs, many of who decide to close these down and convert them into warehouses for imported commodities such as rice, sugar, flour, cement and second hand clothing from the West. Such moves have put added pressure on the distribution and exhibition of African films on African soil, so that African films continue to be strangers in their own territories. The requisite lifting of all measures vaguely reminiscent of protectionism has also rendered the African cinematic landscape more vulnerable to dumping of second rate foreign products.

Will African cinematic content and Africans styles of storytelling be the next victims of globalization? The debate is already in full steam, and many people see danger as well as opportunities. The dependence of African cinematic production, distribution and exhibition on European funding, especially, is, by now well known. With the steady tide of consolidation and reduction of funding sources from the north/west, some of which are now more vocal about and insistent on the imperative and, even, the inevitability of globalization -- read Westernization, commercialization, etc. --, pressures to standardize and conform to “global cinematic norms” -- read American/Hollywood – are on the rise. So also strategies to negotiate and resist. Granted, this is not unique to African filmmakers, as gestures of independent filmmakers from Europe, Latin America, Asia and other parts of the world reveal, but I would argue that the burden is heavier on African filmmakers.

Faced with such manifestations of the forces of globalization, Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache, for example, poses the following question to his fellow African filmmakers regarding their relationship to Western monies: "... are we losing a sense of our own reality, are we compromising cinematic content for 'northern' funding?" In other words, are we giving in uncritically and without resistance to globalization? What do we make of the role of Western funders in shaping and influencing African cinematic content and style in an era of globalization? In recent times, we have been hearing more and more African filmmakers reiterate the imperative for new directions for a more viable, commercially and otherwise, cinema. Others cry out, “Be universal, or be more universal! Be Y2K compliant! Make films that are entertaining and less political! Get out of the bush, the savannah and the Sahel!” One notices a trend in the last two decades whereby some African filmmakers are more and more relocating to Europe and other places outside the continent for many reasons. This, along with the different subject matter, stories as well as styles, languages, actors and locations of some recent African films is usually pointed out as indications of moves away from local, rural, national, traditional to more cosmopolitan, universal, global and modern narratives. These are held up as the recipe for commercial success and broader appeal of African cinema. In other words, fall in line with normal global entertainment, be Y2K compliant and all else will be okay.

Is what some see as heavy handed tactics of western funders and seeming compliance/complicity of some African filmmakers leading African cinema toward a kind of compulsory homogenization that will result in what one may call an “afrimage” , an African clone of an American shaped “globimage” or the so-called “eurimage”? What becomes of the African difference in such constructs? Parallels in what is called “world music” may be instructive here. Marie Daulne of the Black female group Zap Mama, argues that “world music” is merely a label, a conspiracy, to devalue ‘authentic’ African musical styles which are ‘compelled’ to succumb to a dubious global modernity – read western styles and sounds -- to enable it to cross over to European audiences. For her, not only does this downgrade the African difference, but it also works to further marginalize/ghettoize African music. Daulne refuses to bend to the expectations of “world music” and continues a practice rooted in Africana specifics but also open to the range of experiences and technologies that history has made available to her and her fella musicians. Enracinement et ouverture, rootedness and openness. I believe many, if not most, African filmmakers share such perspectives.  
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