You could argue Davison Mudzingwa and Francis Hweshe picked the right business at the wrong time.
“Poor funding, falling numbers in theaters and improving technologies are some of the reasons affecting the film industry in Africa,” says Hweshe.
We share a pizza after the premiere of Lost Tongue, their documentary on a disappearing language of the Kalahari Desert, on a winter evening at The Bioscope, in the Maboneng Precinct, in Johannesburg.
Hweshe and Mudzingwa are all smiles as it sold out and attracted positive comments from the tough film crowd. But the joy of the night fades like the closing credits with thoughts of the rough, hard and unpredictable road ahead.
Their life story is woven into their Lost Tongue film. They too, as second-language English speakers from Zimbabwe, suffer lost language, lost identity, and lost money.
“Funding is difficult to come by and if you wait to get money, you will not make a film. Every filmmaker should be prepared to empty their own pocket,” adds Hweshe.
Mudzingwa, the director, says filmmaking is even riskier than fashion.
“You have to bet on your instincts that people will like it. Most African filmmakers put so much on the art of producing and forget the business element,” he says.
What makes the documentary industry even tougher is that in Africa, where often the best films are made, fewer and fewer are going to the cinema.
“We are making films with universal themes that someone in Afghanistan, Spain and United States can watch,” laments Hweshe.
On this night the documentary was about a subject closer to home.
Lost Tongue was one of the 10 documentaries from around the world screened at the Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York in March. It cost the filmmakers more than $250,000 over three years. They will never get their money back.
The film, a debut feature presented by South African-based Mvura Ya Afrika Productions, explores a story of hope and revival of the ancient and endangered N|uu language of the marginalized Khomani San people of the Kalahari.
“A cultural and spiritual journey reveals the battle through time in the language going extinct. Today, the fight continues with new conflicts against time, with the number of surviving people who can speak the language diminishing,” says Mudzingwa.
Steven Markovitz, film producer and distributer, agrees. He says money is as important as a camera in this business.
“Documentary film is a tough business. There is need to marry sustainability and passion, which is the great approach to this and every other sector.”
Markovitz, who has directed over 100 films in 14 years, says no matter what happens, he will never leave the trade and has handed it down to his 17-year-old son.
“Most people do film for money and not passion, each time you embark on a project you should finance it from scratch.”
He puts the case for more investment.
“The strength of the film industry covers a lot of disciplines and these may include carpentry, accounting, artistry and creative jobs. Film that travels and has impact in the world has a profound effect on the public,” says Markovitz.
Nigeria is an African country seeing a boom in the film industry. It is the third largest national film industry in the world, with estimated annual revenue of $590 million. According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, the film industry’s share of Nigeria’s GDP is at 1.4%.
The problem is, just like Mudzingwa and Hweshe, Nigerian filmmakers are failing to sell beyond Africa. With piracy also taking its toll, fewer and fewer filmmakers are making money.
As long as there are stories to tell, Mudzingwa and Hweshe will keep telling them until their pockets are empty. While many keep complaining that African stories are the domain of outsiders, here are two young African filmmakers telling African stories.
By the end of this year, this African story of the Lost Tongue would have travelled to the United States, South Africa, Tanzania, Canada and Spain.  Lets’ hope it finds its tongue on the international stage.

Get Rich Or Try Dying – Sounds Like A Documentary?

It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since the tragic killing of 34 miners in Marikana. The horrific visuals of the shooting on August 16, 2012, remain fresh in the mind. Thousands of mine workers had been protesting against their meagre wages and poor living conditions when police opened fire, killing 34 of them. Police say they were provoked. South African’s were in shock like the rest of the world. Many believe the disaster was waiting to happen while others say the tragic events started a revolution. What did become clear that day is that despite the courageous fight against apartheid being won, the battle against inequality in South Africa is far from over. But has anything changed in the last two years?
<div id="attachment_2969" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2969" class="size-medium wp-image-2969" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/051201050-Desai-683x1024-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Amsterdam, 30-11-2005 International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam IDFA 2005 Rehad DESAI Jury Amnesty Award Foto Felix Kalkman</div>
South Africa has some of the most valuable minerals in the world. For decades, men have slogged, under poor safety conditions, to recover these precious assets from deep beneath the ground, touching and feeling the gems, but never having ownership of them. The mining industry remains South Africa’s biggest revenue earner. Considering the importance, one would assume employees in this sector would be well taken care of, if not by their employers, at least by the government.
For years, mine workers and labor unions have raised their concerns, hoping for change. The recent Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) strike in the platinum sector made sure that this time the pleas of workers will be heard. Relentlessly, for five months, workers were gripped with poverty, hunger and cold until finally there was some respite. The unprecedented 22-week strike made history. The three major platinum producers finally agreed to higher wages, not what Amcu was demanding but enough to get them to return to the mines.
Reaction to the wage deal was mixed with many industry analysts calling it a loss for the workers.  Amcu called it a victory. But will this victory see real transformation in the mining industry?
Amcu leader Joseph Mathunjwa, now a household name, says the strike was not just for social justice but also to honor the workers that were killed at Marikana. Two years later, the Farlam Commission of Inquiry set up to probe the shooting is still trying to find out what led to the tragedy and who was responsible.
Political activist and filmmaker, Rehad Desai, has placed together his account of what happened on that day. In his new documentary Miners Shot Down, Desai pieces together witness accounts, interviews with political heavyweights and even victims that survived the shooting, to expose the social injustices that exist on the mining grounds of Rustenburg, 120 kilometers northwest of Johannesburg.
The film also tells a story of how the ANC, a party once obsessed with fighting for human rights and social and economic equality, lost its way and ended up in Marikana.
Miners Shot Down is a chilling account of the events that led to what has been dubbed the Marikana massacre, using video footage and interviews from the seven days in which miners were striking for better wages.
“I thought it was very important to attempt to set the record straight, to show people what happened and in the process of showing people what happened you begin to understand why it happened,” he says.
Desai was born into a politically active family. His father, Barney, was a leader of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the family had to flee South Africa in 1963. Desai grew up in Britain but his parents constantly reminded him of his roots. While still a teenager, he joined his father in politics, passionate about fighting racism and capitalism. Both returned to South Africa in 1990. Rehad became a trade unionist with socialist ideals but after his father died, he ventured into television and film producing. To date, he has a string of documentaries to his name, many of which have garnered international acclaim for human rights.
His latest film is a story of working class South Africans that have been failed by their government, a government they believed was on their side.
“I think the revolution is coming back, the question is will there be a mature enough leadership to lead it or will the ANC, our ruling party, be mature enough to lead it, to be able to address the very real issues that this country faces or will they continue to follow the same path where the bulk of our people are excluded from the benefits?” asks Desai.
He is steadfast that the shooting on that fateful day was no accident, no measure of self-defense, but a conspired action to eliminate a problem. The film pieces together footage not seen by the public, scenes of the days before the shooting.
“It didn’t just happen, there were events that led to the shooting,” says Desai.
Horrific scenes of dead miners lying on the ground gives you an instant jolt back in time to the attacks carried out on innocent black people under apartheid, children scrambling for safety from gunshots. Desai admits that miners retaliated, but only after they were shot at first.
“Just as they were nearing their informal settlement, a number of vehicles moved in quick succession to sort of box them in, block them off and as that happened and as the miners drew nearer, teargas was fired at them, birdshot and rubber bullets, one of the mineworkers got his pistol out and fired back.”
This was the scene captured by television crews, played out on screens across the world, leading many to believe that the police fired in self-defense. But, Desai wants to know why police had live ammunition and why they had 8,000 rounds of ammunition that day. It is a question that is still being probed by the Farlam Commission of Enquiry. For Desai, it is clear cut; someone from the top gave the order.
Desai’s film takes a poignant look at the ANC as a movement and ruling party over the last 20 years, by following Cyril Ramaphosa.
“Cyril’s story from the 1980s, tells the story of the ANC, a movement which was heroic, courageous, vibrant, responsive, democratic which led a struggle against a white minority regime and succeeded,” says Desai.
Ramaphosa, once passionate about worker’s rights, formed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982. He later became a politician serving under Nelson Mandela. He left in 1999 to become a successful businessman, returning to politics in 2013.
At the time of the Marikana shooting, Ramaphosa was a non-executive member on the Lonmin board. The Marikana mine belongs to Lonmin.
“With the political kingdom the ANC gained, they lost sight of the bigger issues related to our economic democracy and we can see that story encapsulated inside the life trajectory of the man who’s become the deputy president of the ANC,” says Desai.
In March, Miners Shot Down was released at the One World film festival in Prague. The film took top honors, winning the Vaclav Havel Jury award for its exceptional contribution to human rights. It also won the Camera Justitia Award at the Movies that Matter Festival in the Netherlands.
The documentary is part of an ongoing campaign for justice by the miners and their families. They want the police to be prosecuted. Instead, miners are facing murder charges for the police that were killed. Explosive evidence recently emerged at the commission about killings committed by mine workers.  Witness accounts of atrocities committed by Amcu members, attacks on their fellow members for defying strike orders, the brutal mutilation and murders of police and of members of the rival union NUM. The commission expects to continue for some time as more new evidence comes to light.
The latest evidence again raises questions, what kind of struggle is this? No doubt there will be more stories to be told about Marikana.

Holding Up A Mirror To A Massacre

Apocalypses, domination by robots, intergalactic wars or futuristic post-Armageddon societies have never appealed to me. I have always been a bit of a literary and culture snob, and have turned my nose up at any science fiction. I have never watched any of the Star Wars movies.
But to be a good writer, you need to read a lot. Not only that; you should read widely. So last year, in the spirit of being a good writer, I gritted my teeth and took my first journey into the world of sci-fi.
For my initiation, I chose award-winning South African writer and documentary maker, Lauren Beukes. Admittedly, I chose her acclaimed novel, Zoo City, because I have a strong bias towards Afrocentric literature. And the fact that it offered an alternative vision of South Africa’s Johannesburg appealed to me.
Zoo City is not Beukes’s first piece of speculative fiction, her debut novel, Moxyland, outlines a futuristic, corporate Apartheid Cape Town. However, Zoo City is the one that has been highly praised; it won the Arthur C Clarke Award (think Nobel Prize for science fiction), among others.
And with good reason. As I read, it becomes less of a grudge read and more of a literary experience. In a world where there is an unspoken rule that African fiction must be political and/or historic to be considered worthy, this book is refreshing and innovative. Beukes deftly interweaves traditional African belief systems with traditional sci-fi to create a post-modern, unexpectedly viable, vision of Johannesburg in the future.
I became more interested in the genre and soon discovered that Beukes is not alone or a pioneer. Afro-futurism has been around for more than 100 years, with its roots in the African Diaspora. African Americans, former slaves, imagined futures where men and women, white and black, were equal.
Early pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, wrote a number of science fiction narratives.
Over the years, both Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora have increasingly developed Afro-
futurism as a literary and cultural movement that blends science and magic realism in order to explore Africa in the past, present and future.
In a talk entitled ‘Afro-futurism in popular culture’, Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu speaks of Afro-futurism as a means of reclaiming the past. Look online for a recording of her TEDxNairobi talk and you too will get a real sense of the brave and unconventional woman behind her film, Pumzi.
After winning five awards at the African Movie Academy Awards in 2009 for her debut film, From a Whisper, this was Kahiu’s first venture into Afro-futurism. Pumzi was also Ken-ya’s first sci-fi film.
The 23-minute film imagines a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Africa, where there is no water and where people live in contained communities. Released in 2009 at the Kenya Film Festival, Pumzi went on to be screened at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in 2010, as part of the New African Cinema program. Kahiu hopes to turn the film into a full-length feature.
Nigerians have always been the toast of African literature, so perhaps it is not surprising that Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor is at the forefront of the push to move African sci-fi from the fringe into the mainstream literary canon.
In addition to the science fiction prizes she has won, such as the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, Okorafor has some of the biggest awards in African literature under her belt. She received the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa for her young adult book, Zahrah the Windseeker, and the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa for her children’s book, Long Juju Man.
Of the three women I refer to in this column, Okorafor, a Chicago State University creative writing professor, is particularly prolific in African sci-fi, and has published six books in the genre so far.
The world of science fiction is one of infinite possibilities. Afro-futurism is a cultural movement that increasingly reflects the current mood of optimism about the political and economic future of the continent. It is, as I have discovered, an important genre. And that more young African women such as Beukes and Kahiu are joining and even leading the movement is not only exciting but also necessary.
If one of the central tenets of Afro-futurism is the ability to reclaim the past, then this movement will give expression to the political, cultural and artistic aspirations—and frustrations—of a new generation of young African women.

Hustlin’ for a Legacy

Girls of Afro-futurism

So goes Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s searing satirical piece, entitled ‘How to Write About Africa’, which appeared in Granta magazine in 2005 and subsequently went viral.
The article offered comic relief to many Africans who had bottled up resentment to the centuries-old narratives about the ‘Dark Continent’, which were more often than not shaped by non-Africans.
In recent years, many more Africans have joined Wainaina’s ranks – evangelists trampling these stereotypes and spreading the gospel of ‘Africa rising’.
As part of this new narrative, the news media constantly reminds us that Africa is home to six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies. This year, The Economist declared Africa “the world’s fastest-growing continent”, while Time noted Africa is “the world’s next economic powerhouse”. A few years back, a McKinsey &amp; Co report described our economies as “lions on the move”.
Indeed these lions have newfound assertiveness, thanks to a period of relative political stability, a decade-long economic surge, changing geo-political relations on the back of China’s growth, and access to social media platforms.
In this mission to redefine the long-battered image of Africa, Kenya offers an interesting case study. Much of the country’s confidence comes from its status as a regional economic hub, political heavyweight and technology leader.
Kenya is also, arguably, leading the African pushback against Western media’s tendency to cover mostly coups, wars, famine, hunger and diseases on the continent.
“These are the images that we must aggressively seek to banish from the global media space and sphere about Africa. Not because they do not exist, rather, that they will belong to a past, an inglorious past, that we seek forever to consign to the annals of history,” Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta declared on World Press Freedom Day earlier this year.
With Kenyans at the forefront of Africa’s tech movement, it’s no surprise that the younger generation is using social media to challenge stereotypical images. In the lead-up to the March general elections, KoTs (Kenyans on Twitter) were increasingly vocal about which stories Western media chose to cover.
KoTs used #someonetellCNN to force the broadcast giant to apologize. An international correspondent had allegedly stage-managed  a report showing some Rift Valley residents planning retribution attacks for the 2007/8 post-election violence.
Not only are Kenyans challenging Western narratives, they are also producing their own. For many Kenyans, one of the lasting images of the media coverage of the election is that of NTV anchor Larry Madowo’s ‘helicopter journalism’. On election day, Madowo started off with a live report from a polling station in Nairobi. A short while later, he was reporting from Garissa Town, then Lamu, then Tana River County.
Another example came after the poll. Kenyan student Waringa Kamau, who is studying at the Washington and Lee University in the United States, wanted to find out if KoTs’ concerns that Western media deliberately portrays Africa in a negative light extended beyond her fellow Kenyans. Her documentary, Africa in Western Media, shows that the students she interviewed agreed with KoTs.
With the growing optimism, there is also an increasing concern that the news media is under pressure to downplay any negative accounts. Kenyan media has been criticized by Kenyans themselves for trivializing some of the violence and irregularities that occurred during the run-up to the elections.
Even the broader ‘Africa rising’ narrative has been condemned. It is accused of implicitly concealing the fragility of Africa’s economic growth and the various challenges that could hold the continent back from genuine, inclusive development. Some of these are ongoing aid dependence, governance issues and the fact that the economic surge is largely driven by the extractive industry, as Rick Rowden points out in his Foreign Policy article, ‘The Myth of Africa’s Rise’.
So, while a shift from the ‘hopeless Africa’ narrative is long overdue, Kenyans and their African sisters and sisters may need to move into a new paradigm, where happenings on the ground are examined more closely.
We need to find the balance when telling our own stories, otherwise the image of Africa rising will not hold and the journey to inclusive development may be stalled before it starts.

Tag: Documentary

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Get Rich Or Try Dying – Sounds Like A Documentary?

Holding Up A Mirror To A Massacre

Girls of Afro-futurism

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