The Question of an Ethiopian Cinema
I just returned from a week-long trip to Ethiopia where I was —
among other things — investigating the question of an Ethiopian Cinema.
What I mean by “Ethiopian Cinema” is a film industry that is not only
vibrant but also one that has a self-conscious identity and a unique
“film language.” If you’ve been following my blog, you might recall that
earlier this year I asked a similar question about an “African film language” and a “Third (World) Cinema”
when I was studying African cinema. You might also recall that exactly a
year ago I visited Ethiopia with some colleagues and with my wife to
begin exploring this question, about which I blogged in a series of six
posts composed during the trip [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], and [6].
The timing of my trip this year almost couldn’t have been better.
Over the past decade, the number of films produced in Ethiopia and by
Ethiopians has increased from about five per year to about a hundred per
year. This is in part due to the new digital technologies and in part
due to the nation’s overall economic growth. Consequently, this
year Addis Ababa University (AAU) created its first masters degree
program in film within the School of Fine Arts and Design
(inexplicably doing this before creating an undergraduate program in
film; incidentally, everyone I talked to in Ethiopia thought
AAU’s creating a masters program before an undergraduate program was
strange.) Also this year the Ministry of Culture and Tourism began
hosting workshops with film professionals as it continues to work on its
draft of the nation’s first comprehensive film policy. Perhaps not so
coincidentally, also this year the national television station ETV
changed its name to the Ethiopian Broadcasting Company (EBC)
and has begun to show locally and internationally produced films.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Diaspora community has
also been busy, with the creation of the Ethiopian Broadcasting
Service (EBS)
in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2008, to distribute Ethiopian media
entertainment. Earlier this year, an oppositional network representing
the Oromo ethnic group and language, the Oromo Media Network (OMN)
was created in Minneapolis, Minnesota (though unfortunately so far it
only broadcasts news and political opinions); meanwhile, some young
Oromos living in Diaspora have independently begun to make movies in
their language.
my interview with film director Berhanu in my hotel room at the Bole Ambassador
My trip actually had four separate goals, so my time was a bit
hectic, and I wasn’t able to accomplish all of the things that I wanted
to accomplish or spend time with even half the people I would have liked
to have seen. In addition to my research question, I also needed to do
some preparation for a possible study-abroad program for which students
from Wagner College will — I hope — travel with me to Ethiopia for a
couple of weeks next summer. Where they will stay, what they will do,
and the formalities of the international relationships between
institutions are all tricky details. Also, I will be teaching a class on
“African Cinema” at Wagner College in the spring, and in collaboration
with Sandscribe Communications
in Ethiopia, will make this course available via the internet as a
workshop to students in Ethiopia. Copies of all of the movies that I
will teach the textbook are now at Sandscribe’s office in Addis. To
advertise this workshop, I gave a rather lengthy presentation at the
Bole campus of Rift Valley University in
which I attempted to relate the question of an Ethiopian cinema to the
history of African cinema. Lastly, I did a little work for Sandscribe so
that it can grow.
my interview with movie maker Tesfaye
Hence, to achieve all these goals, my six days in Ethiopia’s capital
city Addis Ababa were essentially a series of meetings and interviews at
various places around the city that I did with the help of Sandscribe’s
manager Tesfaye and his capable wife Metsihet, who video-recorded some
of our activity. I had formal meetings with faculty at Rift Valley
University and informal meetings with friends at Slow Food International and the Gudina Tumsa Foundation.
I conducted interviews with a professor at Addis Ababa and with
six film-makers, representing three different generations of film-making
in the country. I also met with two individuals from the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism who are working on a governmental film policy.
Lastly, of course, was my own presentation, the audience for
which included several people active in the film-making community. I had
a really good time full of engaging conversations even though, it must
be said, a lot of my time was spent in taxis stuck in traffic, since
Ethiopia is building a new metro-rail that cuts right across the city and, for the time-being, creates a lot of congestion. Such is the big city.
me with Sandscribe Communications manager Tesfaye and Rift Valley University professors Merga and Teshome
To be quite honest, I’m overwhelmed with all that there is to think
about and still learn. Debates about tax policy and infrastructure
continue. Observations about the ways Ethiopia’s film industry is so
unique present interesting questions — questions such as why Ethiopia’s
market is so driven by theaters rather than by the DVD or internet
markets and why so many of the films are romantic comedies rather than
other genres. One question that I repeatedly raised is whether
“Ethiopian cinema” is really only an “Addis Ababa cinema” that doesn’t
truly express the entire country or even connect with audiences outside
the capital city. Different ethnic groups within Ethiopia certainly
experience “Ethiopian cinema” differently.
with former students Hiwote, Fiker, and Yimeka and film-maker Paolos at the delicious Efoy pizza parlor in Addis
But to return to the question with which I began, is there such a
thing as a distinctly Ethiopian film language? And how might this relate
to that ever-problematic and ineffable something that some might call
an “African film language” — what scholar Manthia Diawara explores in
his 2010 book African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics, which will be the textbook for my class in the spring. The term “film language”
can mean a lot of things, and at the core of its meaning is something
of a paradox. On the one hand, film language has a universal grammar of
images and sounds and how they are sequenced to create meaning and evoke
emotion; the elements of this film language are pretty much the same no
matter who the film-maker is (e.g., various kinds of shots, editing
techniques, lighting, etc.) On the other hand, it is sometimes said that
individual directors have a distinct style or that different national
industries have recognizably different film languages (for example,
Hollywood versus Paris.) More substantial than mere stylistic
difference, and also more technical than the mere reflection of a
national culture, the “film language” involves something that is
sometimes called “looking relations” — how the camera positions the
audience in relation to characters and objects. Such looking relations
are intimately bound up with both politics and culture. For instance,
feminist scholars have analyzed how much cinema objectifies women from a
male perspective, and postcolonial scholars have analyzed how American
and Hollywood cinema dehumanizes African people by gazing upon Africa
from a condescending colonialist viewpoint that seems to reaffirm an
implied feeling of white male privilege. Hence, in some ways,
an “African film language” was a way of making films in opposition to
the racist, sexist, and imperialist “looking relations” that persisted
(and still persist) in so much of American and European movies. What is
problematic about such oppositional cinema is that it is defined
negatively “against” a more dominant cinema rather than simply being sui generis,
of itself, or of its own culture. One way a film might define itself
more positively and more nationally is through characters and looking
relations that hold up a mirror to the whole country — rich and poor,
male and female, etc. — that reflects critically on the multiplicity of
relations out of which a culture is formed.
Considering this question historically, for Ethiopia, I noticed a
difference between the earlier generation of filmmakers and the new
generation. The earlier Ethiopian generations during the Haile Selassie
and Derg regimes were trained and experienced film in a remarkably
international context — studying at film schools in Paris, Berlin,
London, Kiev, and Moscow with a cohort of individuals from countries
such as Cuba and Argentina as well as other African countries. Those
film-makers participated in the pan-African film festivals such as FESPACO and film movements such as “Third Cinema.” But
the new generation that came of age under Ethiopia’s Prime Minister
Meles after the 1991 revolution trained more locally, either self-taught
or learned at small film academies in Addis with one-year programs.
Their films tend to borrow (somewhat unconsciously according to
some individuals I met) from the conventions of Hollywood and Bollywood
movies and Latin-American soap operas, and they are somewhat
disconnected from the rest of African cinema.
The paradox I want to emphasize here is that the more “national”
cinema of the 1980s was forged out of the cauldron of an international
education, Marxist thought, and Pan-African solidarities. In other
words, a “national” film language was created out of an “international”
consciousness. In contrast, today’s attempt by Ethiopian film makers at a
“universal” film language is being created out of local contexts.
me and Karl Marx after meeting with Professor Aboneh at the outdoor cafe across the street from Addis Ababa University
Admittedly, my observation is somewhat casual, simplistic, and
incomplete. I pose this problematic dichotomy between “old” and “new”
generations in hopes that the wrongness of my conceptualization might
provoke a response so that I might continue to learn.
link to :-https://filmandmedia.net/2014/12/25/the-question-of-an-ethiopian-cinema/
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