What does success mean? Is self-esteemed or public success? Is it gained through festivals, in which case it does no longer belong to the author? We are sometimes at a loss with this question, but it is for the good cause, since it is leading us to good examples from time to time.
Yet it may be necessary that the career of a film starts from the cradle, as this recognition must first start in Africa. There have been good examples in the past, like – yes this a bit chauvinistic to cite it –Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s Chronicle of the Years of Fire. It won critique success which led to a Golden Palm for Africa at the 1975 Cannes Festival, just one year after it came out. And this film will never be counted as a monument of Arab Cinema but as success of African Cinema. It must be added that this masterpiece by Lakhdar-Hamina recorded over 500,000 entries when it was shown in
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France. The Gods Must Be Crazy by Jamie Uys, was a commercial success which won international fame, confirming the saying that no one is a prophet in his own country, knowing that this should originates from the alma mater among all the international productions which led Africa to the most prestigious ceremonies while remaining a major darkness spot. Funding This is going fast, but funding is a cornerstone, the sinews of the cinema war and the fuel of any good project. It’s a spot of darkness for several reasons, one of the main ones being that, for a film to reach international success, the subject must be specific to the continent, so that it can be exported easily, specificity being a base of success at the international level. When speaking of Algeria, the film must be on colonialism or the ten years of darkness, for Tunisia it must be the
How does international success influence the recognition of an African Film in the continent?
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Can anyone be a prophet in his own continent?
Success is a relative concept applied to a piece of work, a film in this case. It cannot really be measured. When it comes to an African film, the question becomes fuzzy, or even difficult when referring to international standards.