During one of the latest film stakeholder’s discussion on Tanzanian films held at BASATA (Jukwaa la Sanaa) that I attended, Prof. Amandina Lihamba, while giving her closing remarks, she retains that from her experience in arts “Audiences in arts is created, and thereafter they themselves creates hopes and expectations in such arts”. This argument contented my conscience and I decided to dissect it and see how it can be implied in our context of film art and industry and further loom into its dynamism in terms of film production, distribution and exhibition and so is its prospects. If audience can be created, I have a feeling that it’s high time we start doing the same with our film audience. My concern, over the past articles that I wrote and research I have conducted is that audience are the cause of the dynamism that is taking place in Tanzania film. In the recent research dissertation that I submitted to the University of Dar es Salaam, The changing dynamics in Tanzania film Industry, A study of Dar es Salaam film Audience, the study reveals that the dynamism that is taking place in Tanzania film industry at both levels of operations, that of production, distribution and exhibition is caused also by the audience’s choice of film that they watch. My further reaches in this article is that these groups of people that make the recently locally produced films their choice have been created.
It’s very comprehensive to analyze and speak about ways that Tanzania film audiences have been responding to films that are locally made or imported over the years of history of cinema and movies since the times of BEKE before I even speak of how they have been created or how they can be created. One of the question before that might be, have they been responding to the sense that these films maintains, is it all about the visual or aural astonishment, or the beauty of films? Whatever the case that might have informed their response, I propose that what has been important in this variety of films to them as audience is the phenomenal meaning, expectations and the hypotheses that they supply to these films. Therefore what they choose to watch is informed by their certainty of meaning and expectations.
Further into that we may ask, is it the audience’s meaning and expectation that precedes the film or the film is the one that audience chooses to watch and thereafter creates the meaning and expectations and hence the repeated viewing of the same film or rather films that fall under the same genre. Hereafter is it the question of genre or significance of the film to the audience? Consider the film audience who reads about the film’s plot or storyline from the back of the film cover or through any other access such as reviews on internet, this sort of audience has certain expectations that he/she is digging from the film. This is where my argument lies, that if it’s the authors of the films that create the phenomenology of film viewership and so they create the audiences for their films.
Films are made to be seen. Therefore audience plays an imperative role. With our locally made films some of the stakeholder hosts that we have lost track of what our films are or should be. My view is that we are lost if we criticize these films with no records or researched information of what Tanzania film audiences are. What could be their psychology and attitude towards different genres of films that occurs in the history of human development? The fact that film audiences are of complex groups and are in diversity that it takes a lot of consumers/audience research to detail them park another challenge if we are to understand such process of audience procreations towards their films viewership interest and attitudes.
The breeding of Tanzania film audience that I am proposing here starts with the film author’s understanding of the fact that human beings differ in million numbers of ways. The human basic needs and desires towards films vary correspondently. Some chose to watch thriller, some romantic comedy while other will sit for hours watching horrors. Other than that some would chose to watch a film basing on a number of appealing factors such as language, commercial motives, its complexity or simplicity. To conjure what the films is about takes brain muscles. To make a film that demands such muscles takes an author of the same quality. In turn, at the end of the circle it’s the audience who chooses among the pool of different levels of brain - demanding films. Whatsoever it’s the author who initiates the process and once the film is out his authority deplete and he can not tell where his influences ends.
This is the point that I get to realize that we can create a new group of film audience in Tanzania. This starts with identifying and being inspired by matters that informs their consent with different varieties of films found in Tanzania film market and exhibition. What’s important is that we create them to become audiences to our films and we don’t necessarily create what they want. As said above by Prof. Amandina that “Audiences in arts is created, and thereafter they themselves creates hopes and expectations in such arts”. To create films for them is more or less that you are arguing for them or with them or you are making a statement about the situations and circumstances that surround their lives. This puts us on the verge of contempt again as it demands that we (authors) are well informed and we do understand our society well enough to analyze their situations and the internal and external drives to such. Shall we get that information to our finger tips? How? Let’s read. So much has been written already, it’s upon us to adopt and only to adopt them to screen plays.
The film audience’s responses may reflect various influences and may act symptomatic of the society in which the film was made. I hope that fact provides us with an understanding as to why no matter what is so critically – what is not film in our locally made films they still enjoy distribution all over the film market in Tanzania and the nearby countries. The images and ways of life of post modern society are being reflected or portrayed in these films with very little or no commentary or statements to speak of the philosophy or socio – psychology of the same in the contemporary world.
Our films should have clear objectives which in some what reason can be to bring hope to the now riveted and history of struggle of the Africans against poverty, hunger, famine, war, ignorance to mention a few. I presume there are film audiences in Tanzania who would enjoy watching Xala, Yomba Yomba, Harusi ya Marium, Neria, Fimbo ya Baba, Mama Tumaini, Rama, to mention a few, its only that these films have limited distribution and are mostly exhibited during festivals where by very few attends them and need I mention also some would prefer to watch films in the confinements of their homes. Such being the case we can replicate from what these films are, probably in every aspect and make films of the same style or conventions and continue on such direction to find our own course, niche or place in the world’s film market. In each and every film I sighted above one is able to find a commercial motives being rendered apparently with the life – philosophy motives or fine art motives. This is the tendency in Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian films and so forth. I trust that such films as mentioned above would have enjoyed a wide market distribution if they were made to be distributed for profit or whatsoever. One thing that inspires such a conviction in me is that audiences are also wide and complex enough to find out what they would have chose to watch. They eat what you serve but they have a mandate over what class of service you are providing them. Hence we can speak of the possibility of creating another niche, with a different kind of service and possibly make another group of film audience to support it as they bring their expectations, phenomenal meaning, hypotheses and thereafter causing the dynamism to our growing film industry in Tanzania.
The Maisha Lab in Uganda put it as their motto that if we don’t tell our stories who will, the stories of the hunt will always favor the hunter until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, an African proverb infers. Rambo wins the Vietnam War for the American but we all know what happened during such war.
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