The primary concern of African filmmakers is to observe their reality through their own eyes and to depict it with authenticity. They aim to portray Africans as they are, with all their virtues and flaws, sanity and madness, love and confusion, courage and fear, and competence and chaos. Despite the financial and structural challenges faced by most African countries in the postcolonial era, a socially critical film genre with highly realistic standards has emerged, which is aesthetically pleasing and captivating.
One can witness this at various international and African film festivals, such as Ouagadougou, Durban, Cape Town, Edinburgh, Cannes, Toronto, and Berlin. However, access to African films remains a challenge, despite the global village and e-information era, where social media can trigger social uprisings and topple governments. The future of African cinema depends on the success of Video-On-Demand platforms, which hold great potential but have yet to deliver the anticipated breakthrough.
The struggle for African cinema continues, as filmmakers face the same set of challenges and issues that have plagued them for decades. Lack of funding, distribution, and audiences due to the absence of cinemas on the continent have hindered their efforts to present their own perspectives. The overflow of cheap international products and cultural alienation have made the development of cinema and television in Africa increasingly important. It is not a luxury but an urgent necessity to combat the growing cultural estrangement and social disorientation of the population. African films offer a different insight into the diversity of the continent and its current social and political conflicts, beyond the limited perspectives of European and American mass media productions that reduce Africa to its misery or exoticism.
Which is why at TRUFTZ – Township & Rural Film Trust of Zimbabwe we aim to showcase film from margialised area
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