Within the bustling metropolis of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a not too long ago 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 beginning, the statue (pictured above) depicts the legendary Senegalese filmmaker in his signature cap, smoking his pipe with a contemplative gaze.
Sembène’s legacy looms massive in African cinema. His distinctive fashion 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 in the present day tour essentially the most prestigious movie festivals all over the world.
Amongst them are Alain Gomis, whose movie Félicité gained the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize on the 2017 Berlin Movie Competition, and Mati Diop whose movie Atlantics gained the Grand Prix on the 2019 Cannes Movie Competition, when it was the primary movie directed by a black lady offered on the competitors.
However regardless of worldwide acclaim, the Senegalese movie trade has failed to succeed in the industrial heights of different nations. Not like Nigerian Nollywood, which is now the second largest movie trade on this planet after Hollywood, value $6.4 billion by 2022, Senegalese movies wrestle to seek out an viewers at residence and generate poor income by ticket gross sales .
In accordance 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 financial system remains to be very restricted.
Why is it that Senegal, with a protracted custom of iconic filmmakers comparable to Sembène, and a plethora of movies offered annually at festivals all over the world, remains to be struggling to ascertain a thriving movie trade?
One other profitable French-Senegalese director, Leila Sy (R), on set in Senegal. (Picture by SEYLLOU/AFP)
Pleasing an area viewers
Most Senegalese movies receiving consideration at worldwide movie festivals are author-led artwork movies which are co-productions with Western nations. These principally non-commercial movies don’t attraction to the common Senegalese viewer.
“As we speak we have now movies which are largely co-financed by Western manufacturing firms, who desire a sure fashion of filmmaking, which isn’t the fashion that the common Senegalese would essentially use,” stated Toumani Sangaré, a movie director and producer.
To attain extra native success, filmmakers have to make extra mainstream Hollywood-style movies that resonate with a wider regional viewers.
“Like anyplace on this 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 yr.
In Francophone Africa, there are already some promising examples of domestically produced movies which have develop into standard 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 a hit in 2016, relying solely on Malian manufacturing firms.
To duplicate this mannequin, says Sangaré, “we have to discover new funding mechanisms, often 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 buyers can argue that movies are solely value producing if they’re extensively 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 troublesome to examine a worthwhile trade.
A movie show revival?
The Senegalese movie trade skilled a ‘golden age’ within the Nineteen Seventies, when practically 37 cinemas have been lively within the capital Dakar alone.
This era additionally spawned Senegalese movies which have now develop into classics, comparable to Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki, which was acclaimed at festivals in Cannes and Moscow, and was made on a price range of $30,000, obtained partially 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 particularly,” says Sangaré.
The decline of the movie trade has left an necessary area for public gathering and cultural expression. It additionally modified the position of the state inside trade. These days, the Senegalese authorities primarily helps to finance small-scale initiatives, which often do properly internationally, by a particular fund: the Movie and Audiovisual Business Promotion Fund (FOPICA). Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, it mobilized $500,000 to help manufacturing firms, 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 referred to as Canal Olympia throughout Africa, together with one in Dakar. In October final yr, 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 most recent American films about 5 years in the past.
“We really feel the joy 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 exchange American and French blockbusters. Six American and 5 French movies are on the prime of the billboard on the Pathé on the time of writing. Just one Senegalese manufacturing makes it there: Mère-Bi (“Mom-Bi”), a documentary concerning 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 collection are one other potential supply of revenue for Senegalese producers. Ibou Gueye, the CEO of Senegalese manufacturing firm EvenProd, advised French journal Le Monde that producers often maintain between 60 and 70% of promoting income.
There’s a massive shift to collection and films 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 standard with residence 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 collection to seem on Netflix 4 years in the past. The crime drama Sakho & Mangane, set in Dakar, managed to succeed in a British viewers after being acquired by Channel 4 for its on-demand platform All 4.
However essentially the most influential participant, each in on-demand and manufacturing, is the French media Canal+, owned by the French household firm Bolloré. This yr, Canal+ launched the Digital Manufacturing facility 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 prone 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, equating to a penetration fee of about 80%, streaming platforms proceed to advance, supporting a brand new wave of films funded solely by native manufacturing firms.