Within the bustling metropolis of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a lately erected statue of Ousmane Sembène towered over the crowds that attended the Pan-African Movie and Tv Competition in early March. Unveiled to mark the centenary of Sembène’s start, the statue (pictured above) depicts the legendary Senegalese filmmaker in his signature cap, smoking his pipe with a contemplative gaze.
Sembène’s legacy looms giant in African cinema. His distinctive type of utilizing social realist storytelling in his movies, which he discovered on the famend Gorky Movie Studio in Moscow, has influenced generations of Senegalese filmmakers, who right this moment tour probably the most prestigious movie festivals world wide.
Amongst them are Alain Gomis, whose movie Félicité received the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize on the 2017 Berlin Movie Competition, and Mati Diop whose movie Atlantics received the Grand Prix on the 2019 Cannes Movie Competition, when it was the primary movie directed by a black girl introduced on the competitors.
However regardless of worldwide acclaim, the Senegalese movie business has failed to achieve the business heights of different nations. In contrast to Nigerian Nollywood, which is now the second largest movie business on the planet after Hollywood, price $6.4 billion by 2022, Senegalese movies battle to search out an viewers at dwelling and generate poor income by way of ticket gross sales .
In keeping with a 2016 research by the Worldwide Group of La Francophonie, the turnover of the Senegalese audiovisual sector was US$32.8 million, of which about US$13 million comes from TV promoting. As such, its contribution to the bigger economic system continues to be very restricted.
Why is it that Senegal, with an extended custom of iconic filmmakers comparable to Sembène, and a plethora of movies introduced every year at festivals world wide, continues to be struggling to ascertain a thriving movie business?
One other profitable French-Senegalese director, Leila Sy (R), on set in Senegal. (Picture by SEYLLOU/AFP)
Pleasing a neighborhood viewers
Most Senegalese movies receiving consideration at worldwide movie festivals are author-led artwork movies which might be co-productions with Western nations. These largely non-commercial movies don’t enchantment to the typical Senegalese viewer.
“Right this moment we have now movies which might be largely co-financed by Western manufacturing corporations, who desire a sure type of filmmaking, which isn’t the type that the typical Senegalese would essentially use,” stated Toumani Sangaré, a movie director and producer.
To realize extra native success, filmmakers must make extra mainstream Hollywood-style movies that resonate with a wider regional viewers.
“Like anyplace on the planet, native audiences usually tend to pay for mainstream, mass-produced movies than for nationwide productions. They really feel they’re getting extra for his or her cash,” says Sangaré, who opened a movie faculty in Dakar final 12 months.
In Francophone Africa, there are already some promising examples of domestically produced movies which have change into well-liked hits. Les Trois Lascars, a Burkinabé comedy directed by Boubacar Diallo, attracted greater than 50,000 viewers upon its launch in 2021, a relative success contemplating there are solely 20-25 cinemas within the area.
Sangaré’s personal mini-series ‘Taxi Tigui’, which tells the story of a taxi driver in Bamako, was additionally successful in 2016, relying solely on Malian manufacturing corporations.
To duplicate this mannequin, says Sangaré, “we have to discover new funding mechanisms, normally involving home and worldwide non-public actors, to provide these mainstream movies on the size of those we export to worldwide movie festivals yearly.”
However native and overseas traders can argue that movies are solely price producing if they’re broadly distributed. Regardless of representing a possible market of round 140 million, the small variety of cinemas within the francophone nations of West Africa makes it tough to ascertain a worthwhile business.
A movie show revival?
The Senegalese movie business skilled a ‘golden age’ within the Seventies, when practically 37 cinemas have been lively within the capital Dakar alone.
This era additionally spawned Senegalese movies which have now change into classics, comparable to Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki, which was acclaimed at festivals in Cannes and Moscow, and was made on a funds of $30,000, obtained partly from the federal government.
However the financial realities of the Eighties took their toll on the nation’s artistic industries. “Within the Eighties, the IMF requested African states to implement austerity measures and the primary sector to be hit was tradition and cinema specifically,” says Sangaré.
The decline of the movie business has left an vital area for public gathering and cultural expression. It additionally modified the function of the state inside business. These days, the Senegalese authorities primarily helps to finance small-scale tasks, which normally do nicely internationally, by way of a particular fund: the Movie and Audiovisual Trade Promotion Fund (FOPICA). In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, it mobilized $500,000 to help manufacturing corporations, filmmakers and audiovisual technicians.
In recent times there was a renewed curiosity in cinema in Senegal. In 2016, French mass media holding firm Vivendi launched a community of cinemas known as Canal Olympia throughout Africa, together with one in Dakar. In October final 12 months, Pathé opened a contemporary cinema in Dakar with seven ultra-modern cinemas and a capability of greater than 1,400 cinema guests. Close by, an upscale mall, the Sea Plaza, started displaying the newest American motion pictures about 5 years in the past.
“We really feel the thrill across the return of film theaters, in addition to the need of personal gamers to be a part of this dynamic,” says Sangaré.
The subsequent step is for Senegalese administrators to switch American and French blockbusters. Six American and 5 French movies are on the high of the billboard on the Pathé on the time of writing. Just one Senegalese manufacturing makes it there: Mère-Bi (“Mom-Bi”), a documentary in regards to the late Senegalese journalist and author Annette Mbaye d’Erneville, directed by her filmmaker son Ousmane William Mbaye.
Streaming platforms to spice up native productions
TV sequence are one other potential supply of revenue for Senegalese producers. Ibou Gueye, the CEO of Senegalese manufacturing firm EvenProd, informed French journal Le Monde that producers normally hold between 60 and 70% of promoting income.
There’s a massive shift to sequence and flicks on demand. With over 5 million subscribers on its YouTube channel, Marodi TV is the most important participant within the Senegalese on-demand area. The in depth catalog of native programming has confirmed well-liked with dwelling audiences and the broader francophone African market. The platform says that overseas tv channels are the third supply of revenue, after Senegalese channels and YouTube.
Based in 2014, Keewu Productions launched the primary Senegalese sequence to look on Netflix 4 years in the past. The crime drama Sakho & Mangane, set in Dakar, managed to achieve a British viewers after being acquired by Channel 4 for its on-demand platform All 4.
However probably the most influential participant, each in on-demand and manufacturing, is the French media Canal+, owned by the French household firm Bolloré. This 12 months, Canal+ launched the Digital Manufacturing unit in Dakar, a digital creation hub made up of graphic designers, video makers and group managers from throughout the continent who work collectively to provide content material for an African viewers.
This new set-up and enterprise mannequin is more likely to enhance the manufacturing of native movies that can attain native audiences with out counting on overseas funding. With an estimated 14.7 million web customers, representing a penetration charge of about 80%, streaming platforms proceed to advance, supporting a brand new wave of flicks funded solely by native manufacturing corporations.
