Dr Manthia Diawara speaks to ArtMatters.Info at the inaugural Amakula Kampala International Film Festival in 2004

As moving images readily connect with African audiences more than the printed word, African writers appear to be turning to filmmaking in an attempt toappeal to their people. Ogova Ondego reports.

Kenyan Ngugi wa Mirii, who co-authored Ngaahika Ndenda (I will marry when I want) play with Ngugi wa Thiong’o and that sent wa Thiong’o into detention and spewed wa Mirii across the border into exile in Zimbabwe, has recently (2004) directed Secrets, a film. While Senegalese Ousmane Sembene is referred to as the father of African cinema with his 1962 production Borom Sarret and has gone on to make nine features and 10 novels in 42 years, Nigerian Wole Soyinka directed Blues for a Prodigal, his first film, in 1984.

Paris-based Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun worked as a journalist for several years in France before turning to film in 1999 with Bye Bye Africa that he shot on video before transferring it to 35mm film. This film was about his African origins. Abouna, his second film, was made straight on 35mm in 2002 and has enjoyed favourable festival screenings. In 1995/6, US-based Malian academic Manthia Diawara co-directed Sembene Ousmane: The making of African Cinema with Kenyan wa Thiong’o. Professor of comparative literature and film at New York University, Diawara embarked on a film on Nairobi and Prof wa Thiong’o in 2004 as Mwangi Gicheru is reportedly said to be preparing to turn his popular novel, Across the Bridge, into film. Through Mwangi Gicheru Films, he has turned his Kikuyu theatre production, Bishop Wandeiya, into film not unlike Nigerian home video productions.

What would this trend suggest?

African writers, according to Diawara, are turning to filmmaking in an attempt to readily connect with their people. This would imply that Africans prefer watching moving images to reading literature, but do they? Then why are film theatres being turned into worship centres right across Africa? The real promise in Kenyan cinema, Prof Diawara contends in his 1992-published African Cinema, will come from creative writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Meja Mwangi. He writes that Ngugi participated in the 1986 Edinburgh Film Festival, where he presented a short video about South Africa and discussed the film course he had taught in Sweden. As for Meja Mwangi, he was listed as an assistant director in Out of Africa (1986), and his novel, Carcass for hounds, was adapted into film by Nigerian Ola Balogun.

However it is almost 13 years later and wa Thiong’o is yet to make any film while little is known about Mwangi. It should also be borne in mind that teaching about film and making film are not synonymous. One may also wonder what happened to Soyinka after his 1984 Blues for a Prodigal. However, Diawara, who also heads the Institute of African American Affairs at New York University, is adamant that only writers can make African cinema meaningful. He has already made two films in a trilogy he calls Urban heroes. The first two are on Conakry (Guinea) and Bamako (Mali). The other two will be on Nairobi (Kenya) and Dakar (Senegal).

Diawara ventured in filmmaking through teaching and writing about film. “I have taught about all conceivable areas of cinema—production, distribution, exhibition and history,” he says. “The history of film shows that film critics usually end up becoming filmmakers. The new wave film movement in France, for instance, shows that Jean-Luc Goddard and Jean Rouche wrote about film before making them.” Diawara says the relationship between literature and film is very close as they are both interested in areas like storytelling. They both deal with narration, flashback and editing.

“Modern theatre and poetry have had a big influence on filmmaking,” he says. “African writers are turning to filmmaking as it is easier to connect with audiences than through novels.” Diawara’s African city series is aimed at identifying what he refers to as ‘urban heroes’. “I am not interested in looking at just the negative things in Africa as portrayed by Western news media like BBC and CNN, and neither do I want to show Africans in villages as if there were no cities in Africa as some African filmmakers are doing and thus ending up perpetuating the notion of Africa being primitive.” He is critical of such filmmakers who he accuses of selling out to Western funders of films. “They make nice films with colourful images but empty of stories, i.e. they make what critics refer to as cinema calabash.”

Diawara

Saying the likes of Gaston Kabore, Idrissa Ouedraogo and Suleymane Cisse make good films, Diawara nevertheless says they alienate urban Africans as they cannot identify with their films which draw heavily on village images. “Film is an urban activity and you cannot afford not to address city dwellers,” he says, adding that his Urban Heroes series addresses globalisation and new ideas of democratisation in Africa. “I put the camera in front of Africans and let them talk freely about their perceptions of Africa.” Diawara’s hero is ‘any one who is knowledgeable about his or her urban environment. Such a person could be an intellectual or a mad person’. Diawara, who is currently spending a year teaching in Accra (Ghana) will also do a film on Dakar besides that of Nairobi. Diawara’s Conakry Kas (People of Conakry), an 82-minute documentary he refers to as glocal (global and local), won the best documentary award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival’s Festival of the Dhow Countries in July 2004. Although it had also been screened at Amakula Kampala International Film Festival in June 2004, disagreement among organisers of the 7th African Cine Week of Nairobi in October 2004 denied it screening due to what was variously described as being ‘too long’ and also ‘not being directed by a Kenyan’ to open the festival. Conakry Kas also competed at the Cape Town World Cinema Festival in November 2004 although Diawara was not present in South Africa.

Accompanied by his friend Danny Glover, Diawara visited Guinea-Conakry to see and capture on film what was left of the artists and intellectuals of the ‘Guinean Cultural Revolution’ of the 1960s and find out how the residents of Conakry were coping with globalisation. The rhythms that accompany Conakry kas include the music of Kouyate Sory Kandia, Les Ballets Africains, the Bembeya Jazz National, Manfila Kante, Les Etoiles de Boulbinet, Alpha Wess and the young generation of rappers. His other documentaries include Bamako Sigi Kan and Rouch in Reverse. Conakry Kas was made on Betacam in 2003 and released in 2004. Diawara says cinema in Africa is a by-product of nation-building and that colonial and independent African governments did not support any film that criticised them. Although the French are credited with doing a lot in promoting cinema, Prof Diawara says they excluded any filmmaker who criticised them and only supported those who toed the line and ended up making ‘cinema calabash’. “They abandoned Ousmane Sembene in favour of Suleymane Cisse when he made what they considered to be political films. But when Cisse criticised them, they chose to work with Abderrahamane Sissako,” Prof Diawara says. Out of necessity, Africans are now making ‘world’ or ‘festival’ films that have their own requirements as defined by the various festivals. “Festivals work in cahoots with governments and only promote one favoured filmmaker at a time. That is the predicament in which Sissako finds himself. He is the one getting production funding. But one has to be careful not to criticise Sissako lest one antagonises European film funders.” Diawara challenges Africans to come up with more film festivals to counter FESPACO that he says has been taken over by France. “While many African films have little chance of being accepted at FESPACO, South Africa is not the home for African cinema because it has European aesthetic values and mentality. You need a truly African film festival that is respected by Africans to counter both FESPACO and Southern African International Film and Television market (Sithengi) that has been re-branded as Cape Town World Cinema Festival.”

He suggests such an organisation be situated in East Africa in Nairobi, Kampala or Dar es Salaam. The success of such a festival, Diawara suggests, would depend on well-defined programmes and identity. “For example, it could specialise on African documentary, African experimental film, or commercial African cinema. Issues of market and aesthetics could come in periodically.” Prof Diawara says that since the Nigerian home video concept has proved that one can make money from videos, an African festival could just focus on videos. Holder of a doctoral degree in comparative literature and film, Diawara appears to have done nothing in his life but literature and films. He worked as a teaching assistant in literature and film to pay for his tuition and wrote one of the very first dissertations on African cinema besides writing on African American and African cinemas. Holder of Malian and American passports, Prof Diawara says he was born in Mali but that he grew up in Guinea where he also attended primary school before going to France where he attended secondary school. However it was from the United States that he obtained his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees and has lived and worked since 1974.

“People often confuse my nationality and identity which is good for me because I want to be from Guinea, Mali and Senegal as all these people share a culture,” he says. Founding editor of Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, a bilingual review that publishes essays, fiction, reviews and artwork relating to Africa and the Black Diaspora, Diawara’s writings include African Cinema: Politics and Culture (1992), Black American Cinema (1993), In Search of Africa (1998), and We Won't Budge (2003). The documentaries he has made include Rouch in Reverse (1995), Sembene Ousmane: The making of Afrrican Cinema (co-directed with Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 1995/6), Diaspora Conversation, Bamako Sigi Kan (2002) and Conakry Kas (2004).

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