It’s highly a sense of departure from imperialism and consumption of the arguments/thesis that are conveyed to us about the world through this medium (film) whenever you find that we are now engaging on the making of films with our own hands and brains. I salute the braveness of the filmmakers who initially way us through the stage in development of Tanzania filmmaking industry where films that dominated the market were those imported from Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigeria and South Africa to mention a few. Recently the discussion on this trend has been revolving around the film’s form and structure, contexts and content, history and business. The centripetal force towards the current tendency of releasing half baked films on weekly basis has been the filmmakers themselves plus the monolithic enterprises. What is being wrapped or packaged in these films is originally the image of the Tanzanians. We are now being observed by the rest of the world via the satellite channels as African Magic on DSTV, the context that one may assume that it works to our advantage on the matter of promoting our local film products, is highly a context that loops us on the verge of disdain. However, the world will never be critical of the fact that we are still lugging off in the struggle to comprehend how films tell their stories in the sense of their formal structures but I conceive that they can be critical of the stories that we tell and who do we choose to tell those stories through. It’s upon the former and the later assertion that I will be deriving my two opinions.
My first opinion should take into an account of what I prefer to call “the soul” of every film that is being made in this world, and this is simply “the story”. In short, the story constitutes a cause-effect relationship between characters, time and space. The story is by itself what makes a good film, apart from other elements and techniques that are employed during the writing of the screen play and later the making of it. To a greater extent the successful adaptation of a story to a screenplay will be the one that follows a certain standard narrative and dramatic flexible formula that has been agreed upon by the filmmakers themselves or rather what is being recommended by the audience. This is the stage in development of filmmaking that we haven’t reached yet, but what happens to the art of storytelling that is believed to have its origins in the diversity of Africans traditions, tale telling and performances? What happens to other sources that we can derive stories from apart from people, such as myths, history, and literature?
My opinion here is that we might fail to comprehend the intelligibility of using the electronic movie making technology, we might as well fail to comprehend the dramatic structures and master narratives that has informed the most successful and blockbusting films such as the classic Hollywood dramatic and narrative structure but we should not fail, even under any other circumstances, to tell stories that are compelling and stories that underscores the reality of the situations from our different but daily wakes of life. From early 1990’s Hollywood has produced a consistent style of filmmaking in terms of the narrative stories they tell and how they tell them dramatically, from 1960’s to present what have we produced via this medium? Rather I find that the situation is worsening up.
My second opinion is on whom we should use to hold together the different parts of the story that makes a whole film, in this matter the central characters or the protagonists in any film plays this significant role. What makes them characters is a set of traits such as wit and keen insights but then he/she needs to go through a series of adventures that are larger than life. It’s upon him/her that we see the story and the plot unfolding, through him or her we conjure the message that is being processed to us (audience). However, with our new trend of filmmaking, I doubt that we have been able to modify or forge our filmmaking practices towards this tendency. Briefly, films mechanically reproduce the culture of the people and no matter what happens in the film, the central focus of the film rests with the decisions and actions of a major character who wants to solve, escape or do something to reach a certain defined goal. Again if I draw examples from Hollywood films, you find that an active, goal oriented protagonist is at the center of the Hollywood version of storytelling often motivated by certain psychological traits whether to make the world safe or to complete the journey into the unknown. If a film begins with an enigma or problem that affects the life of the major character, I think we have enough problems to capitalize on; however my query will still be on “who is that major character” in our societies? What should we vest him/her with? Knowledge, courage, wit, wisdom? It’s time we wake up and command our intelligence towards this aspect.
Above are the two opinions that I may use to testify against the cases that we are challenged on the use of filmmaking technology towards the aesthetic of the filmmaking art, we are lacking investors who are willing to provide funds for the making of commercial films, we don’t know yet the significance of the titles we give to our films and so forth. Let’s find good stories to tell, stories that are credible, unified, interesting, simple and complex, stories that handles emotional materials with restraint and lets tell those stories through characters who hosts what is wit, moral, rational and keen about ourselves, our culture. Nevertheless I wish to find stories whereby writers process a message to audience that brings hope in anything, any situation that they write for or against instead of just portraying what they call reality about Africa.
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