[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Are there a variety of different movie industries in Africa?
Tendayi Nyeke, Writer/Director/Producer: I think because of the size of the continent and how multilingual the continent is, there are different ways that stuff gets made and different frameworks for industries, so:
-South Africa.
-Nollywood, which is Nigeria based stuff or West African based stuff.
-Francophone, Africa. They work pretty closely with Canal + like French speaking distribution platform
So you get little big and little pockets of different ways of making film.
I find that in Africa, because of how diverse the continent is, you literally have to tailor make to your audience because something I value is the drive and the push to make content in the language of your audience.
Because of that you find such a range of different pockets of industries. I’m seeing increasingly that people are trying to sell stuff outside of their first market, that’s smart. You want to make sure that your first audience loves it but that it can be watched in Brazil.
An observation that I’m making in South Africa is that South Africa is actually exporting a lot to Brazil. We import a lot of South American stuff into South Africa because culturally there’s a lot of similarity, all of that stuff.
Definitely an increase in the drive of local yes, but it is (where possible) smart to make it appealing to the border audience. Although in the creation process I don’t see the pressure put on producers to make sure that it’s global. Something I hear said a lot is:
Local for local and then if it sells beyond itself but talk to your own audience first which I think is pretty awesome.
Film Courage: Local for local.
Tendayi: Local for local yeah.
Film Courage: What is Nollywood?
Tendayi: I might not be the best person to answer that question. What I know about Nollywood is that you know how we were talking about an independent spirit of filmmaking and using whatever you have to make stuff, that’s how Nollywood was built. People had cameras and actors and whatever sound equipment that they had and scripts and they would…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here)
About:
Writer/Director/Producer Tendayi Nyeke’s multi-genre creative work has been awarded internationally. A former broadcast executive who helmed several award-winning shows, Tendayi has also written, produced, and directed television programs across global platforms. Most recently, she Executive Produced the Annie Award-winning Disney+ science fiction Anthology Kizazi Moto (2023) with Oscar-winning director Peter Ramsey of Spiderverse acclaim.
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