MOVIES

Long-overlooked African movies become available on DVD

By John DeFore
SPECIAL TO AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Friday, July 10, 2009

There is a secret province in the DVD world, a place where things you might presume to be lost forever are preserved. Foreign films, documentaries and decades-old stage plays live on here, if only you know whom to ask and are willing to pay the price, which can be well over $100 per disc.

The price is steep because buying these releases gives you rights a normal DVD does not include. Know that faux-scary FBI warning you always see, telling you you might go to jail if you screen your new purchase for more than a few close friends? Doesn't apply here, since these products are marketed specifically for public screening. They're offered to libraries, schools, film festivals and other institutions and meant for use in classes or special events.

This week, one valuable collection of feature films emerges from this hidden territory: Scores of African movies have just been made available to individuals at the consumer-friendly price of $24.95 (down from prices that topped out at $200) by a company called California Newsreel.

California Newsreel is a nonprofit, independent organization that in the late '70s began to distribute docs exposing the injustices of apartheid. First known as the Southern Africa Media Center, it battled the South African government by disseminating facts being suppressed by officials, making college students and church groups throughout America aware of the situation and fostering support for change.

The institution expanded its mission in the early '90s after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. "We knew that there were films — primarily feature films made in Africa by African directors — that would show at international film festivals but would normally not be seen again," says California Newsreel's Cornelius Moore. "We thought it important for viewers in this country to see portrayals of Africa from African perspectives — to 'See Africa Through African Eyes' — rather than through Hollywood and European productions."

That mission got a boost with the emergence of low-cost video replication. While the group couldn't afford to make actual film prints of all the titles it hoped to distribute (even today, only a few of its movies are available on celluloid), it could get videotape transfers and ship them easily to anyone who wanted to show them. DVD came later, after the group's new Library of African Cinema had expanded beyond its initial eight titles, each selected by "an international advisory board of film scholars, film festival directors and African filmmakers" and paid for with foundation grants.

Moore founded the Library project and proudly recounts its successes. "Some of the titles have actually had U.S. theatrical engagements," he says, citing celebrated Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene's "Faat Kine" and the recent Rwanda documentary "Shake Hands With the Devil." But more often, attention comes at film festivals, as it did for Zeze Gamboa's "The Hero," which won the World Cinema Dramatic Award at Sundance, or "Dakan," which he says "has been a favorite at gay film festivals."

The collection now holds more than 70 films from 25 countries, and Moore says that, despite what one might assume, collecting the films has not been made more difficult by political instability around the continent. Rather, he worries about what everyone in the movie business does: funding, which has "dwindled over the past decade" from the European sources who have often paid for these productions.

When the day comes that financiers start spending again, they should find a more welcoming audience on these shores. "We have noticed an increased knowledge of and interest in African films" in recent years, Moore reports. "Since California Newsreel has made the films available in this country, film scholars and college professors have had access so that they can teach with them and write about them. The films have been integrated into courses on history, film, political science, anthropology and French. Also, we've seen a significant increase in African film festivals and the desire of international film festivals to show African films."

That awareness can only increase now that film buffs who live far from major universities and film fests can order these movies themselves. While they won't be nearly as well distributed as major studio fare — some titles will be offered by Amazon and Netflix, but don't expect to see them in many brick-and-mortar outlets — the entire catalog is available at www.newsreel.org. (Moore doesn't expect to distribute his holdings digitally anytime soon, thanks to licensing issues, and does not plan Blu-ray editions.)

Prospective customers should be aware that no remastering work has been done on these prints, and the discs have no bonus features (aside from English subtitles where appropriate). Even so, $25 is a bargain for a movie that, in most of these cases, was virtually impossible to see just a month ago.