Film: No Africans at Cannes. In the backroom, yeh.
May 13, 2008 4 Comments
The Cannes International Film Festival starts tomorrow (till May 25th). The official program can be viewed here. I may be missing something, but no African film or film with an African theme (including North Africa) made the official cut. African films are shown as part of the “Pavillon les Cinemas du Sud” (Pavilion of Cinema of the South). Full list here (including Changing Faces, Zimbabwe, Triomf, Black Business/Une Affaire de Negres, and Paris a tout prix). People used to call that the “development” section. There is also a special set of screenings of African shorts and some discussions and screenings of films by young Africans.
Pingback: Global Voices Online » Africa: Cannes International Film Festival
As I posted on Global Voices Online:
Speaking as an ex-film student I can give my take on why that is:
1) The arts are not highly valued in Africa and as such a lot of the bright minds forego film school in favour of white collar positions.
2) There are no societal incentives to go into film which results in the same consequence as number 1.
3) I don’t know about other countries but in Kenya, the quality of the equipment is very low resulting in a poor quality product
As far as I can tell these are among the primary reasons that a lot of sub-saharan Africa probably didn’t even make enough movies to submit.
As for why there were no Nollywood films…go figure….forget them anyway, let’s make Lagos our arts capital
Pingback: Cannes ‘is like a nightclub singer’ and war porn « Africa is a Country
Pingback: Goodbye Solo gets the love « Africa is a Country