Amid ongoing hype and discussions around recent high-profile international
movie awards like the Golden Globes, African screenwriter CHINAKA IWUNZE
finds herself at the edge of her seat anticipating awards ceremonies closer to
home such as the SAFTAS, AfricaMagic’s Viewer’s Choice Awards, AMAA and
FESPACO Jury awards to name a few. Iwunze also feels that much of this
excitement has incited some thoughts, particularly on the questionable state of
screenwriting in Africa.
It was 2011 just before I was due to go to Lagos to head the media department
for a company hosting the New York Film Academy. I remember watching an
interview on Jara, an M-Net Africa produced show, where a Nollywood
professional screenwriter talked, with great pride, about his career. At first his
success sounded obvious as he explained his writing process, and in some ways
I was envious, until he mentioned what he had earned for some of his scripts.
Without cynicism or sarcasm, he said 3 000 Naira per script. According to xe.com
that is the equivalent of ZAR170 or US$19!
As one can imagine, this was a very disheartening discovery – then again, there
are no organisations that protect the rights of screenwriters in Nigeria. I then
decided to search for a credible agent in South Africa, only to find out that there
was only one established organisation/agency in the country, the Writers’ Guild
of South Africa. For this to be the case in a country where filmmakers have gone
as far to take home an Oscar (for Tsotsi), what hope was there for other
countries yet to create
Oscar-winning films?
The question really sunk in once over coffee, when a friend and mentor – Matt
Graham, whose most recent work has been on Oliver Stone’s The Untold Secret
of the United States – shared his opinion on the state of screenwriting in
Nigeria.
“I have heard tales in Nigeria of how directors and producers expect a script to
be written for them in days by a writer, who often has to support him or herself
with a full-time job in the meantime. It seems the script is a necessary evil,
something which has to be “gotten out of the way’, and is regarded as rather a
“nuisance’.’
It all made sense – the neglect… the inertia. But why should a script be a
necessary evil? And if so, isn’t this justification enough for screenwriters to be
respected and duly compensated for their work? Ideally yes, but the problem still
remains the “neglect/inertia’ factor, which I believe stems from a series of issues.
Greed
The first is the lack of funds, aka greed. Let’s take South Africa and Nigeria, two
countries with which I am all too familiar. In Nigeria, most organisations and the
government have shown no interest in assisting an extremely vibrant industry
that not only put local culture on the map, but is hailed as one of the top
industries responsible for job creation and income generation in the country.
In South Africa it is plain old selfishness. This is because we have film
professionals, who have managed to carve a space for themselves in the
industry, insisting on keeping things exclusive – so that those “eating’ the money
must continue to do so.
The second issue is what I like to call the “Cinematic Wave’, which looks at the
consistency of films being produced. At the moment, the wave is very high, from
never-ending low-budget Nollywood films to the telenovelas and soap operas
dominating South African and Kenyan local television; it’s no wonder everyone
who wants even a little piece of the action is constantly on edge to bring
something out and quickly, irrespective of the quality. And what eventually ends
up happening, yet again? The screenwriter is pushed aside.
Finally, the African audience is lazy – most of us at least. This is because of the
steady stream of non-challenging content being churned out, like Big Brother
Africa running for its eighth season (no offence to Big Brother Africa, as it is
actually a show I have respect for).
Nurturing values
At the end of it all, it is like caring for a child – the values you instill in them will
eventually become a way of life. Empty or poorly scripted content breeds a lazy
audience, which in turn breeds more empty content. This is not about big-budget
or high-tech films; a low-budget movie, with a strong content can win the heart
of any audience – for example, Paranormal Activity, Napoleon Dynamite, Material
and Semi-Soet.
The fact is, if good content is not valued within the industry, how can we expect
the rest of society (government and consumers) to value or invest more in what
we make?
Ousmane Sembene, who was one of Senegal’s top filmmakers and whose great
films earned him the nickname, “the father of African cinema’, once said in an
interview: “Why be a sunflower and look to the sun? I, myself, am the sun’.
The time has come for us, particularly the up and coming generation of film
professionals like myself to refuse to be sunflowers. We need to be suns and
rise with new values and approaches, like holding more significance to the art
and craft of screenwriting – Quentin Tarantino will vouch for this any day.
“As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want
to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I
demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.’ – Quentin Tarantino,
goodreads.com.
It seems to me that Tarantino appreciates the screenwriter’s ability to embody
the director and the producer in his quote; because the truth is, behind every
great film, is a great script. This is not to say, other roles are not important, but
rather that the screenwriter is just as important and should be treated as such.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Screen
Africa.
