OPINIONISTA: Double bind: Women film makers in Africa are edited too soon

The year is 1969. The place is Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso where the Pan-African Federation of African Filmmakers is founded, masterminded by Beninese/Senegalese film director and historian, Paulin Vieyra.

This reality, that only African men and no African women, have won the Golden Stallion at Fespaco, is the result of pervasive patriarchal biases, patriarchal biases that exist in both the film industry and African society. Where competence is held equal, a man is more likely than a woman to access the means to be a filmmaker; a white woman is more likely to do so than a black woman; a younger woman is more likely than an older woman; a woman affiliated to some political power in some way is more likely than a woman who is not affiliated to political power. For African women filmmakers, this political power might be the ruling party in power, or it might simply be international community powers.

Within Africa, nationality plays a large role in determining whether an African woman can access the resources necessary for filmmaking. North African women filmmakers have higher chances of accessing the resources they need than do other African women.

Filmmaking by indigenous Africans took off after African countries obtained independence. Reflecting the patriarchal nature of post-colonial African society, this gave rise to a male-dominated film sector. Continuing in this patriarchal tradition, African moving images in popular culture have become one of the critical sites of oppression and violence against women on the continent.

Capacitating and resourcing African women makes economic and social sense. The nature of work is changing and automation is resulting in more leisure time that needs to be filled with meaningful activity. Digital technology has resulted in increased consumption of moving images narrative both in the workplace and as a leisure activity. Excluding women, and particularly African women from the sector, is to exclude such women from increasingly significant economic activity.

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