Durban FilmMart 3: Development(s) in Kenya

I recently attended the Durban FilmMart Co-Production market, which featured a diverse slate of documentary and narrative projects that are fostering collaboration between African countries and entities outside the continent. This is the third in a series of blogs about projects and issues related to co-productions in the South African industry. The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on Its Back, a documentary pitched at the Durban FilmMart by producer Atieno Odenyo and director Philippa Ndisi Herrmann, is about the impending construction of what will be Africa’s largest shipping port on the Island of Lamu off of Kenya. The film, previously titled We Want Development, will deal with the tension between globalizing commercial development and protection of local homes, culture and industry. Lamu Island is a historically rich center of Swahili culture and intersection with the Arab world. There are no cars; transportation there is by boat and transportation around the island is by donkey (hence the movie’s title).  Judging from the trailer shown at Durban, this film will be an artful, allegorical look at Africa’s interaction with the rest of the world. (The port contract was recently given to a Chinese company and will feature in China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy of commercial bases across the Indian Ocean).

I spoke with Atieno Odenyo about her experience at Durban and other co-production forums, about Kenyan filmmakers’ reliance on European grant money, and about some of the work being done to foster local industry in Kenya.

For Atieno and Philippa, the Durban FilmMart 2013 was a chance to continue to foster relationships formed during development of their feature film Two Princes, which took them in 2011 to both the Durban FilmMart and the Produire au Sud Co-Production workshop in Nantes. Produire au Sud brings producing/directing teams from Africa, Latin America and Asia together with European financiers.

Since European production grants have been practically the only way to finance certain kinds of projects in Kenya, there is a need for more support for producers within Africa.

The Kenyan Film Commission hosted a pavilion at Cannes this year as part of an initiative to sell that country. They also signed Memoranda of Understanding with South Africa and France.  These MoU’s are short of Co-production treaties but will allow formalized collaboration between Kenya and these two countries.

Atieno, who was part of the Kenyan delegation to Cannes, runs a Nairobi-based Production company called Mawe Moja. She underscored the need for support for Kenyan producers – since without that, the fostering of industry and crews may draw foreign productions without necessarily cultivating local voices.

As in many emerging film economies, skilled, affordable crews that can work beyond the limits of U.S. union parameters are attractive to foreign productions – but that alone doesn’t necessarily promote quality films of the kind that people in those countries want to watch.

Part of Atieno’s push for Kenyans’ ownership of their own industry is the development of that country’s first crowd-funding platform for film. Kenya was the first country in the world to widely use SMS bank transfer and donation technology, so it’s an environment well suited to such a venture.

The ‘development’ chronicled in The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on Its Back – and its questions of local voice and agency – will like run a strong parallel to the development of the Kenyan film industry. It will be interesting to see how both turn out.

Making Movies in France - The American Way

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Grad Film Alum Melanie Delloye’s thesis film Anna and Jerome, starring Élodie Bouchez, is a French road movie about a mother who doesn't have custody of her six-year-old son and decides to run off with him. Shot in Normandy, and taking full advantage of the geography of the province, this film eschewed traditional financing through France’s national and region­al film agencies. Instead, Melanie made use of a new feature of the French landscape – Crowdsourcing.

Melanie says: “We applied to a bunch of the regional grants, but we were told that in order to do it right we would have to wait a year to make sure that we met all the guichets [benchmarks]. We didn’t want to lose momentum so we decided to go ahead and make the film ‘the American Way.’”

Melanie and her producer Robin Robles raised funds through the crowdsourcing site Ulule, which accepts money in multiple currencies from inside and outside of France. Like Kickstarter, Ulule facilitates funding for a variety of projects (those currently featured on the site include film, photo, and music projects, and even an agricultural start-up).

According to Melanie: “It [crowdsourcing] is very new in France and a lot of people don’t really under­stand what it is. There isn’t even really a French word for it – we just say ‘crowdsourcing.’” To date just under 1,900 projects have been funded through Ulule – compared with over 38,000 funded on Kickstarter. And the goal of 14,000 Euros (about US $18,000) for Anna and Jerome was one of the larger amounts raised on the site – at least at the time.

The novelty of crowdsourcing in France had some benefits. Ulule was fully behind the project and fea­tured it in a number of ways (including a blog about Melanie as Ululer of the Week). Anna and Jerome also received a small amount of funding and other support from Daily Motion (the French equivalent of YouTube).

Melanie and Robin finally did get word from one of the regional film funds that they’d received a grant – but it came six months after Anna and Jerome was finished! (Most such grants require the production to take place within the specific region, province, or municipality, so it was moot.)

Productions that fall under  the guidelines of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée ( the 'CNC' - France's national film agency) also come with other rules, including minimum labor and benefit payments. Making Anna and Jerome outside the con­fines of that system allowed the production to function strictly as a student film, which gave more flexibility (Producer Robin Robles is a recent graduate of La FEMIS, the French state film school). So for a number of reasons, the decision to make the film ‘à l’américaine’ seems to have been a good choice.

Still, Melanie is not forsaking traditional French fund­ing methods. She is developing a feature film set in Colombia, for which she plans to find production financing within Colombia and also seek French co-production funds.

In future blogs I will discuss the Colombian film industry's new incentives system and other productions in development to be shot in that country.