INTRODUCTION

In confronting research on the state of documentary in Anglophone West Africa I had a clear consciousness that the countries that make up this community of nations share conflicts of political, social and historical realities that have long needed definition and resolution.

The post-colonial issues of tribal identity and inequitable sharing of national resources have created constant tensions and armed conflicts in many of these communities with devastating impact on politics, governance and development. The landscape in countries such as Liberia and Sierra-Leone where bitter civil war and armed struggle raged for over a decade is littered with experiences needing articulation especially as regards its impact on people, particularly the youth population. In Nigeria, Ghana and the Gambia the absence of armed conflict has not always meant peace given the violence of their politics and the adverse effects on their development agenda.

The legacy of the colonial governments was to put documentary-making in the hands of political institutions. The State kept a firm hand on the broadcasting landscape, dominating its content and controlling its messaging. For them, documentary was a key political tool for managing governance. Post- colonial administrations, military and civilian, have found it convenient to perpetuate this approach, using documentary principally as a propaganda tool for consolidating political power. Each of these countries has the same model — government-owned TV stations that answer directly to authority and submitt themselves to censorship restrictions.

Yet, the dimensions of documentary as a tool for deepening experiences by bringing perspectives to history, is a vital and urgent need to foster development and grow the nascent democratic experiments in these countries. It is precisely for this reason that documentary is a genre fostering reflections on culture, politics, ethics, philosophy society, science, spirituality and addressing questions of day-to-day life.

The proliferation of digital equipment and the ease of use of modern camera equipment has created immense activity in the fiction-film genre among the youth population of Nigeria and Ghana and to some extent the Gambia. Nollywood in Nigeria and Ghannywood in Ghana are globally acknowledged video film industries that have engaged the attention of audiences, scholars and filmmakers across the world with their guerilla filmmaking styles and street theatre content. To an extent, because it is also an attempt at articulating the cultural, political and historical experiences of the peoples of these countries, they can be argued to be pseudo- documentary films. In reality however, a fiction film has a different contract with the viewer than a documentary. Fiction promises entertainment first and reflection second. In fiction you invite the viewer to suspend disbelief. It is an invitation to go into an imaginative world. Documentaries offer reflections first and foremost. Reality is far more complex. It invites debate.

Perhaps, therefore, the foundational value of the process of engaging the professionals of these countries in this research report is to project into consciousness the question: which cinema for Africa? Nigeria and Ghana and the Gambia needs a cinema that entertains, but more immediate in value, it needs a cinema that deepens democracy, strengthens governance structures, advocates responsibility, elevates accountability, and fights diseases, poverty and illiteracy.

The critiques of corruption, poor governance, ethnic divisions, economic paralysis, etc., in Sierra Leone and Liberia can find a stronger footing if filmmakers turn their cameras on the issues of realities.

There are also urgent issues about forging a future as engaged members of the international community. We need to integrate the evolution of cultural identities fostered by globalization. What are the influences of new technologies? We need to reflect on issues of civil societies and the emerging economies of Africa. What is our development ideology? Development is a conscious agenda that requires mass mobilisation. Documentary is, and should be, at the centre of that conversation.

The complication of documentary of course is the intersection between art and activism. The perspectives of the filmmaker are formed by his/her background, heritage and experiences. Objectivity is remote. The answers offered are a function of the questions asked. It is possible to distort the answer by the framing of the question. The narrative of reality and “truth” does not allow for simple answers, but because its content is about our shared experiences, its capacity for emotional connections cannot be contrived. That is why the populations of these communities have, for so long, found the existing models of state-managed propaganda documentary structures so offensive.

Taking documentary filmmaking out of the hands of institutions and moving it into the hands of individuals is the key intervention tool. It is about engineering open, more vibrant societies. It is about the education of the viewers — a firewall against the regression to a past riddled with misunderstandings and manipulations.