Senegal anguishes over 'slow death' of its film industry
DAKAR (AFP) - Faded movie posters peel off the walls, a big screen lit only by sunbeams pushing through the broken roof of the musty, abandoned cinema, a symbol to many of the death of Senegal's film industry.
"When we look at the state of Senegalese cinema, this is it," film-maker Mariama Sylla says, jabbing her finger towards the derelict Cinema Liberte in a Dakar suburb.
Senegal was once at the forefront of African cinema, with directors such as Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Diop Mambety receiving international acclaim during the country's cinematic golden years after independence from France in 1960.
After years of steady decline film-makers are despondent over the future of an industry which they say has been completely abandoned by the government.
"Senegalese cinema was born before the Asian cinema," said Sylla, co-founder of the Collective of Indignant Senegalese Film-makers which held a recent protest over the moribund state of the industry.
"Today the Asian cinema is in the front row in Hollywood, at the Oscars, Cannes ... while ours is stuck debating a crisis that has lasted for years."
However new hope has appeared in the form of Senegal's new Culture Minister Youssou Ndour, the world-renowned singer appointed after a new government was elected in March, who is an artist like them.
A frank document published by Ndour's ministry in June admits weaknesses in the film industry are "symptomatic of the non-existence of state support".
"Today the major challenge is finding financing to produce a quality film ... it is also difficult for those who have made a film to show it," said Mamadou Ndiaye, an award-winning director who cannot survive without his day job.
Last year Ndiaye won the prize for the best television series at Africa's largest film festival FESPACO in Ouagadougou with his show "Ismael Ndiaxum" (Ismael the Blunderer in the local Wolof language).
Despite the fact that he works for state television station RTS he has been unable to sell the series to them and show the series to a local audience. As a result the show is likely to be aired first on a French television station.
"They (state television) only offer you crumbs," he told AFP.
In the past 10 years, almost all of Senegal's cinemas -- which once numbered about 100 -- have been sold off, becoming shopping centres, nightclubs and churches, according to the culture ministry's report.
Eight are still in business but struggling to survive.
This means movies such as Moussa Toure's "La Pirogue" which was shown at Cannes and won two awards at the Francophone film festival in Angouleme in the southwest of France -- which this year paid homage to Senegalese cinema -- has not been seen by the average Senegalese.
The drama tells the story of 30 people attempting the hazardous boat crossing to Europe - a story of desperation that many Senegalese can identify with.
At the offices of the Association of Senegalese Filmmakers (CINESEAS) only two DVDs of local movies are on sale.
A salesperson admits it has been over five years since they have had an original DVD to sell from award-winning director Ousmane Sembene, who is considered the father of African cinema.
"Maybe you could buy it in France?" he suggests.
"When we make movies, of course it is for the world, for whoever, but I think that a Senegalese who makes a movie wants it to be seen first by Senegalese, especially when the theme is on Senegalese society," said director Ndiaye.
After independence from France, culture flourished in the west African nation under poet president Leopold Sedar Senghor who is regarded as one of the continent's most important intellectuals.
However after an economic crisis in the 1980s, strict controls imposed by the World Bank left culture out in the cold as government cut subsidies, sold off cinemas to private owners and dismantled support systems.
In 2002, new hope bloomed when then president Abdoulaye Wade signed a new law meant to regulate and support the industry "which we had been running after for 20 years", said CINESEAS vice-president Amadou Salaam Seck.
But it has yet to be implemented.
"There is nothing, no aid, no subsidies, nothing," said Seck, adding that as a result the number of quality, feature films produced in the past decade can be "counted on one hand".
However Seck said that after recent meetings with Ndour, who has promised to set up the national centre of cinematography envisioned in the law by the end of the year, "we are very optimistic regarding the real revival of cinema in 2013".
Ndiaye's latest film 'Crepescule' (Twilight) is about the decline of Senegalese cinema.
"I see Senegalese cinema not as something dead, but as something which is diseased, on the operating table, in a coma of course. Now will this sickly thing wake up ... or will it die?" said Ndiaye.