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Leo Africanus wonders why there are not African films at the Cannes International Film Festival: “I may be missing something, but no African film or film with an African theme (including North Africa) made the official cut.”
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1 comment
Speaking as an ex-film student I can give my take on why that is:
1) The arts are not highly valued in Africa and as such a lot of the bright minds forego film school in favour of white collar positions.
2) There are no societal incentives to go into film which results in the same consequence as number 1.
3) I don’t know about other countries but in Kenya, the quality of the equipment is very low resulting in a poor quality product
As far as I can tell these are among the primary reasons that a lot of sub-saharan Africa probably didn’t even make enough movies to submit.
As for why there were no Nollywood films…go figure….forget them anyway, let’s make Lagos our arts capital :)