By Sharlene Versfeld and Joy Sapieka
Published November 18, 2021
Africa Direct, a series of short documentaries directed and produced by all-African filmmaking talent, are being launched on Al Jazeera English network.
The films open a window onto a range of ordinary and extraordinary African lives, to present nuanced and complex perspectives of this diverse and multifaceted continent. The stories give voice to African storytellers, who have so often been drowned out or overwhelmed by outsider mediation. The series comprises around 30 short documentaries, curated into half hour episodes.
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The first tranche of six half hours, that shall air November 30, 2021 -January 4, 2022, shall feature the first 14 short films from 11 countries. These slice-of-life stories centre around a main character who articulates their own narrative, without reporters or other mediators. Simply put: Africa Direct is African stories told by African storytellers about African lives – for audiences across Africa and around the world.
These character-led films are traditional and modern, poignant and flamboyant, with people who are surviving or thriving, poor or powerful. At the heart of each film is a story which makes us think, feel and connect.
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Kenyan director Joan Kabugu’s Throttle Queens celebrates Ciku Mbithi and her friends, some of the women motorcyclists of the Throttle Queens Club in Nairobi. Here we see how their love of riding brings them exhilaration, freedom, adventure and a sense of control over their lives.
In Colours Are Alive Here directed by Seydou Mukali, we meet David Ochieng, also known as ‘Avido’, from Kibera slum, a rising star and designer with colourful fashions have adorned many big name celebrities in both Kenya and abroad, as he invites you in to his bustling life as he surrounds himself with creativity, design and artists.
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Traditional knowledge is uncovered as we witness the ancient arts of parchment book-making in the Ethiopian mountains in The Bookmaker, directed by Girum Berehanetsehay; and of calligraphy in Timbuktu as a man restores ancient manuscripts in Beïrey-Hou: Desert Libraries by Andrey S. Diarra (Mali), and tension between old and modern ways features in In The Aluminium Village by Onésiphore M. Adonai (Benin) where we meet an engaging young man who must straddle the old ways of his village and his youthful aspirations.
The lives and vocations of African women are explored in On the White Nile by filmmaker Akuol de Mabior, where we are transported into the world of a spirited South Sudanese fisherwoman and boat captain; in The Young Cyclist by Yuhi Amuli, a young Rwandan former hawker becomes a female bicycle taxi-driver and then a competitive cyclist; and in Amelia Umuhire’s Settling (Rwanda) a professor of architecture inspires her students to take a people-centred approach to the city’s ‘informal housing’ challenges.
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Celebrating Africa’s flair for creativity and the unusual, we meet a dancing deputy mayor who officiates at wedding ceremonies in Happiness, a joyful film by Valaire Fossi (Cameroon); while in The Cave, directed by El Kheyer Zidani (Algeria), a puppeteer and artist prepares a new show in a remote town, where he and his father share the joys of theatre, music and storytelling.
In bold attempts to make a difference we meet a man who has nurtured baobab trees from tiny seeds to an expansive forest for the past 47 years, providing a lifeline and legacy for his village, in The Man who Plants Baobabs (Burkina Faso) by Michel K Zongo.
Filmmaker Oumar Ba’s Kalanda: A Wrestler’s Dream (Senegal) tells the story of a young man determined to make it to the main wrestling arena; and in Diggers and Merchants, by Nelson Makengo (Congo-Kinshasa) we meet a manual digger who has worked the copper quarries around his village for years – all he and his peers want is a fair chance to make a living and be respected.
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“Documentary storytelling is a hugely influential medium in terms of perceptions of places, people and their power,” says Ingrid Falck, Manager of Documentaries at Al Jazeera English, who conceived and commissioned the series. “We have long championed the idea that those who know their stories best should own them in the media, claim their storytelling space. We have huge audiences across the continent and show a lot of great Africa-centred content – but the western gaze still casts a long shadow over Africa in a lot of other international media. Africa Direct is a celebration – of African documentary talent and of local stories. I’m deeply grateful to the superb pan-African teams and filmmakers who’ve delivered these stunning, immersive and thought-provoking short documentaries, for our global viewers.”
Al Jazeera partnered with Big World Cinema for this project: it is entirely based within Africa. The team includes Executive Producer Steven Markovitz (South Africa), Series Producers Angele Diabang (Senegal) and Brian Tilly (South Africa).
“We received over 300 proposals from 31 countries,” says Markovitz of Big World Cinema. “It was an extraordinary experience reading and assessing the wide range of stories from across the continent.”
