When film director Alain Kassanda set out to tell the story of his grandparents under the colonial yoke in the Belgian Congo, he wanted to collect films from that period. The pictures he found spoke of how Belgians they civilized for the local people, they built roads and schools and from black folklore. “The Congolese always appeared as ghosts. It was racist propaganda that never showed the Congolese perspective,” says Kassanda. To make matters worse, he had to pay 25,000 euros to access these graphic files distributed by various Belgian institutions. “They took us in without our consent and now we have to pay for what they stole from us. They took the pictures the same way they stole works of art that are now in European museums. The restitution is primarily through access to these files,” he defends, visibly annoyed, in a bar in Tarifa during the 20th edition of the African Film Festival (FCAT) taking place this week in the Andalusian city.
Kassanda talks about physical restitution, access to the material, but alongside that there is an elusive struggle, but no less relevant. It is the one that is being fought for the graphic memory of the African continent. his grandparents movie colette and justin Released last year, it recontextualizes these images through what some African filmmakers are calling the ‘reappropriation’ of this narrative. It is the struggle for representation, for the images of a deformed and exoticized on screen by the colonial powers. Something that is gaining new strength in the heat of the art object restitution movement sweeping the continent.
The report commissioned by Paris in 2018 to Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy ensures that 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s cultural heritage survives outside the continent. “Audiovisual restitution is also the struggle for memory. Fully aware of the power of memory, the colonizers dominated peoples who were unaware of the importance of memory, which was primarily oral,” argues Moroccan director Ali Essafi. The accusation made by the Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, who is considered the father of African cinema, against his French colleague Jean Rouch, who he barked at, is famous: “You look at us as if we were insects”.
“Africa was the continent told by others, by the colonizers,” adds Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou, an expert on the decolonization of visual arts who also attended the Tarifa event. “The cinematic legacy has been uprooted from its roots, and that memory is essential to knowing who we are and where we’re going,” he says.
Dramani-Issifou was the curator of the exhibition that presented in Benin the 26 works returned by France in 2021, as part of the new Africa policy launched four years earlier by Emmanuel Macron with his famous Ouagadougou speech. “It’s about taking back control of how and where the images are shown,” he says. As an example, he cites a recording by the French missionary and ethnographer Francis Aupiais showing a voodoo ceremony, which he believes is an invasion of the privacy of the people involved.
They took us in without our consent and now we have to pay for what was stolen from us. They took the pictures the same way they stole works of art that are now in European museums
Alain Kassanda, Dinner Director
The 1934 Laval Decree barred African directors from filming in French-speaking Africa without authorization from the authorities to prevent the spread of anti-colonial messages. It was not until 1960, with independence, that the first generation of African filmmakers emerged. They offer the world a post-colonial look and among them Sembène himself, Djibril Diop Mambéty or Désiré Ecaré stand out.
Study in France
But the umbilical cord was never completely severed. First of all, because many filmmakers went to France, Russia, Great Britain or the USA to study in the first years after independence. “They returned to their countries to make films, but they were strongly influenced by aesthetics and themes that were alien to the continent’s cultural roots,” explains Léa Baron of the Cinémathèque Afrique, an institution dependent on the French institute.
Western governments and production companies funded films that are out of reach for many Africans today
But also because much of the work carried out after the 1960s ended up in the hands of public institutions and private traders from outside the continent. A comprehensive Unesco report dedicated to African cinema It noted that the best African films are “almost never found in Africa, but are more likely to be found in the national film archives of France, Britain and other European countries, and in Western universities with African film departments”. “This means that these groundbreaking films are not available in educational institutions across Africa,” the study said, adding, “Very few people, particularly African audiences, are aware of the continent’s film heritage.” Western governments and production companies funded films , which are unattainable for many Africans today. Post-production often continued to be done outside of Africa. The differences between the 54 African countries are immense, but they all share this colonial legacy, as well as economic deprivation and accumulated problems in producing and distributing their own tapes.
There are countless digitization and, in many cases, rights restoration initiatives, but there is still a long way to go. These difficulties in accessing this heritage are narrated by Baron Thierno Souleymane Diallo in his feature film At the film graveyard in which he embarks on his own quest Muramani, a film said to be the first to be directed by a French-speaking black filmmaker. He travels around Guinea-Conakry, visiting old cinemas and warehouses with rotten tapes, only to encounter the same answer: “Sure they have it in France. They have everything in the archives.” Diallo says he learned a lot from European writers at film school, but very little from what was done in his country. “It’s important for the new generations to know their history and themselves turn to theirs,” he says, while focusing on the responsibilities of African governments and intellectuals. “They can’t wait for the West to do the same for them.”
knock out
Added to the challenges of the past are the challenges of the present. “African youth are obsessed with being successful abroad and have little time to look back on their classics. They are also very exposed to trash TV,” interprets Mozambican director Pedro Pimenta, a UNESCO adviser on African audiovisual affairs. The result, he laments, is that many end up making films with foreign festivals in mind rather than the African market.
All of this in a context where western festivals and production companies are showing a growing interest in African content, as evidenced by blockbusters like the saga wakanda, among other things. Nollywood, the very powerful Nigerian entertainment and commercial film industry, has also had a strong presence on platforms like Netflix for the past few years. “There have never been so many Afro-Futurist films. The platforms have recognized that Africa is a great market when they have already reached their limits on other continents,” says Pimenta. This is an opportunity for the region, but experts warn of dangers. With the emergence of new offers, there is a growing temptation to adapt production to Western tastes and the demands of foreign guests. This also influences the decision as to which topics are relevant and how they are dealt with. “The platforms’ approach remains neo-colonial and condescending. We need to redefine our collaboration. You may have the money, but we have the content. We must implement a new ethic in exchange,” defends the expert Dramani-Issifou. Director Kassanda sums it up. “Cinema is also a question of power: the power of those who have the means to represent themselves.”
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