AfricanColours - William Owusu - Promising Film Director

Kenya Mon 23-08-2004

William Owusu - Promising Film Director
By Wanjiru Kinyanjui

May 1st was a first for William Owusu, the promising young film director from Kenya who recently attended the ‘Berlinale Film Talent Campus' in Berlin. His entry, "The Epilogue", 15 minutes long, has been chosen as the only African film featuring at one of the most renowned short film festivals, the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

"The Epilogue" joins a host of innovative and original short films which have a tradition in Oberhausen. Most films entered there come from the numerous film academies like Munich, Berlin, Potsdam, Ludwigsburg and other art and media schools in Germany and the rest of the world.

Today, about 800 short films are made in Germany alone. Others films have come from as far as Asia and the Americas. William is practically representing Africa as the sole director from the continent who will be in Oberhausen!

What is a short film? First of all, it treats a short subject, a part rather than a rounded whole story. As they say, ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, and, in the short film, wit is almost an inevitability. It handles a single theme, with few characters and in as little time as possible.

But it is an independent form of film that has established itself, just like the short story is a form of literature! As opposed to the novel, the short story cuts straight into the action: a certain happening to a certain character at a certain point of time. The novel, like the full length feature movie, is spread out in terms of time, characters and plots. A short film has only one plot. It has no time to digress into the backgrounds of the presented characters or action.

Short films should be encouraged in Africa: ‘The Epilogue’, for example, is Willie’s 2nd short film. Willie has painstakingly with incredible resolve and determination been taking every opportunity to develop his abilities as a director by starting off ‘small’, as he calls it. ‘ I was keen to venture into the world of international TV news as a way of progressing on to film.

I assisted in covering civil wars, famine and terrorism thanks to a close friend who took me with him to Southern Sudan as his assistant on assignment for the famous Al Jazeera TV Channel. Says Owusu with a chuckle. ‘We slept on open fields barely with any protection from the elements’ he continues staring at his arms filled with goose bumps.

His films, short as they are, show the promise of interesting works to come, long or short! The making of his no-budget films and their success (he won the ‘best Student’ ‘(self-teaching!) award for his short ‘Spurts of Blood’ at the Nairobi Cine Week last year) has encouraged other young aspirants to develop their own short films and to actually direct them!

The short film can be used as a calling card. Indeed, most famous film directors begun their careers with short films. All film training academy students make them. Some of these short films have gone ahead to win prizes, awards and even Oscars! So the short film form is recognized as part of the film family. Numerous festivals now showcase short films, and even television stations do broadcast quality short films.

William’s invitation to Oberhausen will encourage him to shoot more films, and also encourage our young filmmakers to make short films using whatever means possible. The digital camera has brought filmmaking closer to artists like Willie, and we have to encourage them to utilise this fact instead of waiting until, one day, they can make a full-length feature film!

It has been difficult for Africans, and East Africans in particular, to express themselves through the medium of film. The reasons for this are manifold: firstly, film is expensive and demands a certain level of technical skills. Raising funds for films cannot be left to an individual.

Without cultural policies encouraging and supporting film, it is an uphill task to get a film made. The skills, too, have been hard to come by: training schools have been concentrating on training people to work in TV stations, but not to create their own works. Indeed, hardly any training has been done in drama and fiction. Also, until the Minister for Broadcasting introduced a 20% local content requirement on Kenyan TV, our channels have not had any space for airing local films.

A local filmmaker had to pay for airtime (this runs into hundreds of thousands of shillings!) ! Local cinemas, too, were unwilling to show our films. So why make films without an audience?

As most films were development oriented and were being financed by NGO’s, the general attitude towards local productions was that it was not entertaining anyway – which indeed, was true. Things are changing with TV stations now airing local films. Audiences are surprised that there are local films at all! And, indeed, since the essence of creating any work of art is to find an audience for it, filmmakers are greatly encouraged.

The African film industry cannot grow unless it is injected with the idea that films do not have to be expensive and Hollywood-bent. We have to look to individual expressive artists who can give African film a unique identity and language.

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Posted By: Allan Kapten

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