Let’s Make a Movie

G. Pascal Zachary writes about the Ghanaian film industry:

These populist films, while didactic and predictable, at least present an alternative to elite allegiance to the visual arts of former colonialists. In the quarter-century following Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957, government subsidized filmmakers through a state agency modeled after the British Broadcasting Corporation. State financing led to the production of such minor classics as Love Brewed in the African Pot (1981) by director Kwaw Ansah.
In Francophone Africa, subsidies to filmmakers from the French government spawned a generation of well-trained and high-minded directors, including Ousmane Sembene (Senegal), Souleymane Cissé (Mali) and Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso). These and other French-speaking directors made movies that were acclaimed by discerning critics in Europe and the United States, but rarely screened at home. The French justified African movie subsidies as part of a defense of the French language globally and the influence of France with its former African colonies, but African directors gradually began to mourn their alienation from their roots.