African Leaders challenged at TIFF

This came during a roundtable of filmmakers and allied professionals, ‘Africa Cinema Business’ who gathered at the Tudor Room of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, during the 34th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). At the event organised by the Africa Film Academy, organisers of the Africa Movie Academy Awards, Keynote Speaker, Mr. Dayo Ogunyemi, Managing […]

This came during a roundtable of filmmakers and allied professionals, ‘Africa Cinema Business’ who gathered at the Tudor Room of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, during the 34th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
At the event organised by the Africa Film Academy, organisers of the Africa Movie Academy Awards, Keynote Speaker, Mr. Dayo Ogunyemi, Managing Director of Kenyan-based company, 234Media, spoke on ‘Policy, Funding, Distribution and Sustainability’.
Ogunyemi urged governments in Africa to support the industry through enabling laws and regulations which give tax incentives and lower the cost of making films. “Cinema is vital to the growth and development of film in terms of profitability and sustainability for filmmakers. For films to have wider distribution and gross more revenues Africa needs more than 10,000 screens and the number of available screens in theatres across the continent is a far cry.
“We weed combination of big screens that will appeal to the middle-class and the rich while we must focus on community viewing centres that will take film to inner-cities and rural areas where our experiences have shown that people in these places do come out to watch films.”
South African filmmaker,  Jamel Quebak, whose ‘Of a Good Report’ film  is on TIFF’s official listing noted that governments at all levels in Africa must see films as cultural products like the rest of the world, particularly in the West “by investing in infrastructures that will make the industry buoyant and vibrant.” 
Contributing, Nigeria filmmaker, Lancelot Imasuen urged participants who also included film exhibitors and distributors to develop more robust distribution channels that will enable filmmakers earn good returns on their investments. “Nobody has given the industry any distribution model that becomes money spinners for filmmakers different from the existing models that are not yielding much.”
In her closing remarks, AMAA CEO, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe enjoined participants to collaborate as filmmakers from Africa and the Diaspora and engage with political leaders and policy makers to develop policy options which will make the business of filmmaking profitable and sustainable.
She used the opportunity to announce the call for entries for the 2014 edition of the AMAA awards. Entries as she said has since opened and will close on December 31.
The three-hour interactive session generated much passion and debate among the participants mainly filmmakers and journalists from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Senegal, United States, Congo DRC and Nigeria.