Tuesday, October 24, 2006
hmmmm
so i've been torn between a lot of desires.right now, i'm neither actually producing on the daily and i'm not in Nigeria, so like what's the point of BongoDoesHollywood ?
especially since i'm not as good as telling backstories as Uchenna can be.. for a bunch of reasons.. like the fact that i'm pretty much a "heat of the moment" kind of guy and topics that seemed interesting then are boring now.
so like what to do to keep this alive ?
well.. i could talk about MY life, but that's probably even more boring and i don't like mixing stuff. or post random thoughts on film and stuff..
so i may do that.
here, now
let's talk about african film and the language issue and authenticity in general.
The other day, in a car ride with my mom, someone on RFI was talking about Gabonese Cinema and they said "Movies from Gabon are surprisingly about modern topics".
interesting.
Are they really though ?
I don't know. What i'll say is that they are set in urban settings more often than movies from Burkina and Senegal.. Now how is it surprising ? Gabon the most urban country in Africa, more than 80% of the population lives between Libreville and Port-Gentil and Franceville. Congo-Brazzaville (my country) too is in the same case (there are probably others but they're microcountries like Djibouti or Equatorial Guinea).
So like what is suprising ?
People make movies about their lives and their lives are in the city. And there are a bunch of cities on this continent, son.
And that has been my oldest beef with the Fespaco school of african cinema. That tendency to sell an authenticity that totally ignores the reality of african modernity. And i'm not even talking about a contrived modernity in a "westernized" way. Nah, i'm talking about Kinshasa, which is not Jo'Burg or what Abidjan was 20 years ago. Kinshasa is an african urban monster. Their music is modern, removed from its traditionnal roots and totally modern, post colonial and yet african.
so yeah, that beef made me want to see what they're doing on the other side of the anglo/franco divide and get interested in Nollywood (i'll write about what i really think about Nollywood one day, not because my opinion matters but because Uchenna seems to not understand my beef with THAT industry.). And yes, Nigeria produces movies in urban settings, in rural settings, representing the diversity of african life to an extend.
what does all that have to do with the language issue ?
well, that's another tacky topic.
in which language do we shoot ?
people always talk about how great it is to watch movies in wolof. nice. i don't have anything against wolof. but while people talk about "then every senegalese can get the movie", they're silent about a few other issues.
1. Wolof is spoken and understood by 80% or so of the senegalese. Which language do they shoot in DRC that has 4 main languages and hundreds of others ? In Nigeria that has 3 main languages and even more others ? in Cameroon where the widest spoken one is spoken by less than 20 % or the population ?
2. Film Production is a business, an industry. It has always been, since day one. you need an audience to pay for your tickets to get your money back. so fine, senegalese villagers can watch the movie but had it been in french, urbanites from Mali, Guinea, Congo, Ivory Coast, Burkina, Cameroon could have to.. so like.. is it necessary ?
i don't know. plus it depends on a lot of things.. the setting and all that. In Douala, people will speak french more often than not, in Kinshasa they'll speak Lingala no matter where they're from and in Abidjan nouchi win
and in Nollywood they make movie in precolonial settings (that they ALL call "epics") in english. that's interesting. i mean even if i have a lot of issues with those movies (the recurrent christian undertones, the anachronisms, women wearing tshirt and bras and the absence of tits in general), you get people in calabar watching Ibo stories and Yorubas learning about Oron warriors.. Lingua Franca, son.
now, don't get me wrong. i'm the first one to get pissed at the father of african independances who (except in Tanzania) made the weak choice of the promotion of European languages.. we do have lingua francas and multilinguism all over the continent.
but sometimes you have to be pragmatical..
oh yeah, this rant was kinda related to the movie too..
there has been a lot of debates during the production with actors, partners, people around us about the use of pidgin.
"why this character talks like a white man ?"
well, being the foreigner on the set, the topic was particularly interesting..
because i undertstand SOME pidgin. because it's based on english and not that hard to learn and because i learned some in Cameroon..
but pidgin in Nigeria is a lot deeper than in Cameroon and i could get lost in some convos.
so like sometimes some were like "it'd be more authentic like this" and i responded "and un-understandable to non-nigerians".
we had to find the fine line, because pidgin is cool as hell but we didnt want to have to subtitle the whole thing.
some of it will be subtitled though..
rant over
peace
aflakete the wunderkid at 9:44 AM