Cameroon’s Netflix has pushed for a big win for English-speaking minorities Art and Culture
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Yaounde, Cameroon – This month marks another milestone for Cameroon’s growing film industry, with two other films to be released on Netflix.
A Man for the Weekend, a romantic commercial work about a career-oriented woman asking her colleague to put her as a boyfriend for a family reunion, will begin showing on June 16 on the global platform. Then there will be the Broken story. of the woman fleeing the marriage, who was putting her father’s company and her fame on the line on June 22nd.
The purchases have gone on to become a Cameroonian film in four U.S. streaming giants, after Therapy and The Fisherman’s Diary became available earlier this year.
“I certainly knew this moment was coming,” said Ndamo Damaris, who played Professor Bihbih in The Fisherman’s Diary, a drama acclaimed by critics of a 12-year-old boy named Ekah.
Inspired by Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Ekah challenges the odds of going to school in a fishing community that is a taboo for girls ’and children’s education.
“I feel proud and happy to be a part of this movement that has not achieved global recognition because it has inspired so many lives in a positive way by addressing very sensitive and passionate issues in our community,” Damaris said.
‘We believed in our creativity’
The Fishermen’s Diary, pre-selected for the 2021 Oscars, attracted a great deal of international appeal for its right to education.
It has won dozens of awards around the world, including eight at the 2020 Golden Movie Awards Africa (GMAA) in Ghana and four at the Ahmednagar International Film Festival in India, including Best Picture in 2021.
“We’ve never seen ourselves get this far,” said Kang Quintus, producer of The Fisherman’s Dairy. “It is a great achievement for Cameroonians to be proud of all Cameroonians.”
Impressively, the film was shot in the coastal town of Limbe in 2019 during the fighting in Cameroon Anglophone crisis, Which has been in full swing in the northwestern and southwestern regions.
“It was a big challenge to get the project done [in that context] insecurity – but we moved forward, “Quintus said.” We were able to focus and believe in our creativity. “
In fact, most Cameroonian films are produced in English-speaking regions of Cameroon, home to about 20 percent of the 26 million inhabitants of most French-speaking countries under the name Silicon Mountain, a nickname created to represent the thriving technology ecosystem around the city of Buea. .
The four films acquired by Netflix have been produced by English-speaking Cameroonians.
“I wanted to produce a film that would have a huge impact, a film that all communities around the world could see and relate to in the story,” said Quintus, who received the screenplay for the film in 2014 but started working in 2019.
“I wasn’t ready then [in 2014]. I had to take my time to put together the resources and the technical team, ”he said. “I was very confident when we started filming the film – it was a very inspiring story.”
‘Opportunity meeting ready’
Netflix’s exposure is a big boost for English-speaking filmmakers who have made an effort to find an international platform to distribute and showcase their creations.
Things started to change a few years ago, when they started putting content on Amazon Prime and some airlines.
Agbor Gilbert, president of the Cameroon International Film Festival, who has been involved in filmmaking since 2005, is one of the leading actors to hit Netflix for Cameroon films.
“Netflix refused to get it [English-language] The Cameroonian film, because Cameroonian cinema was under the auspices of the French organization OCAPAC, which works with the French civil law system in French-speaking Africa, “said Gilbert, noting that English-speaking Cameroonians have not” established their own distribution system (under common law).
“So we told them so many times that I had meetings with Netflix officials [English-speaking Cameroonians] to produce films – we are citizens of Cameroon but not Cameroonians of France – we have our own English systems, so we should use the Anglo-Saxon platforms of the world, ”Gilbert said.
“We were told that there are about four million Cameroonians in the US, three million of whom are English speakers,” he added.
“After discussing front and back, Netflix said our claims are real. So the purchases were just a case of being willing to seize the opportunity.”
The insides of the industry are optimistic about the future of Cameroonian cinema, highlighting, among other things, the growing collaboration with Nigerian actors in the well-known Nollywood industry in the surrounding country. However, some complain about the lack of government policies that allow art to flourish.
“We were shooting a movie and we needed a court in Buean,” said Therapist Director Anurin Nwunembom, who has been making films since 2001.
“We negotiated for two weeks and it failed. We went to Tiko [a coastal town also in the Southwest region]; it still failed, so we had to order a cultural center, ”he added.
“Most officials refuse to understand the place of art. These people are educated enough to see what the culture and entertainment industry is doing for other countries. ”
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