Bongo Movies personalities: Many argue that the industry is quite at home without adopting names from overseas
What you need to know:
Most film industries have been forced to adopt the wood suffix as they try to equate with the American film industry
This week, a certain local organisation Media For Development International announced a triple release of DVD feature films named Swahiliwood enter-educate films.
It was quite a rare feat given the fact that many of the films we consume in our part of the world have over centralised on romance and love stories.
The titles to these new releases were ‘Mdundiko’ a Timothy Conrad film, ‘Sunshine’ produced by Karabani and ’Network’ a production by veteran John Kallage.
The project is under the auspices of the American people through USaid in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communication Programmes and in partnership with Proin Promotions a DVD distribution outlet.
According to sources the initiative is meant to harness the youthful energy of Tanzania’s exploding film industry to communicate social complexities around HIV /Aids which is one of the most serious health challenges facing Tanzanian youths today.
It also provides training and mentoring in film production for what is increasingly recognised as one of the leading industries for employment generation for Tanzania’s youth.
And despite the Tanzanian industry being considered second best after established entities such as Hollywood, Bollywood, and even Nollywood proponents believe the toddler is heading in the right direction.
“The Swahili film industry is growing”, says Louise Kamin, a programme officer at MFDI.
“Every week, 10 new low budget movies are produced, and six are released into the market, with 132 million potential viewers spread across East Africa and reaching into Central and Southern Africa as well,” she adds
According to Media for Development International Tanzania study the wide viewership of local films in a vibrant and profitable cultural industry that is growing steadily and providing thousands of jobs for Tanzanians.
The project uses the opportunity to engage other players from the public sector including the Copyright Society of Tanzania, the National Film Board (censorship) and the Tanzania Revenue Authority to influence conducive policies that are essential to the growth of the sector.
The growth is huge as suggested by the number of actors and actresses that continues to grace the industry that is not to mention the productions that are released annually.
But it is at this point that questions begin to emerge as to whether our film industry is facing issues of identity crisis that we have do evolve our identity along the ‘wood’ suffix.
There was a time when we thought that the word ‘Bongo movies’ in itself was sufficient and quite creative indeed and now we have the Swahiliwood factor to contend with.
And as famous Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka questioned last year: Does the branding influence the product? If you give a product a deleterious name, does it affect, in advance, the consciousness of future producers?
“If, on the other hand, a propulsive, challenging name, one that even intimates more than it presently is, would that provoke in the artiste a tendency towards adventurousness, experimentation and originality? Or are we merely indulging in self-flagellation?” questions Soyinka.
“Consider this, following the mentality at the base of this, FESPACO, because based in Burkina, would be Bullywood. Or perhaps, since that is so close to Bollywood then we call it Bellywood. Try and think – just one more!- of anything more ghastly, more ghoulish than the contribution from Ghana – Ghollywood! Well, you know where it all started,” he continues.
Another question is whether this new breed still deserves to be associated with the second-hand clothes market tag, or with an evolving designer cut production, catering, not for the lowest common denominator in taste but for more discerning audiences, raising – and surprising – expectations in their limited scope.
Even a casual study of current film making indicates that the film industry even as suggested by Media for Development International Tanzania study is rapidly by-passing the stage of such retarded infantilism.
So why should the films of such artistes continue to be classified under that unprepossessing monstrosity of a verbal shroud known as Nollywood, Ghollywood, River wood or even Swahiliwood?
How then do we extricate the grain from the chaff, the silkworm from the pupae? The Indian film industry has churned out so prodigiously since it succumbed to the perverse name of Bollywood.
Thousands of films emerged, mired in the Bollywood mush. It took a Satiyajit Ray to plot a truly original path through the morass with his masterful Pather Panchali, the first of a trilogy of ordinary lives that opened the eyes of viewers to the vast world of mundane rhythms, East and West Africa. This has taken a toll in the conditioning of audience tastes, expanding to southern, and West Africa.
