The Gods Must be Crazy is the first film that 24-year-old Daniel Karanja Ng’endo vividly remembers watching. Perhaps it was this film that spearheaded his career in the entertainment industry. This Kenyan filmmaker, who studied Journalism and Communication, believes that he can add uniqueness and creativity to Africa’s video entertainment industry. He draws his inspiration from watching TV programmes such as Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, as well as the local productions Varshita and Lies that bind.
Twenty-five-year-old Jane Mashao Moshi nurtures high aspirations for herself and hopes to be a scriptwriter and film producer, as well as the owner of a production house. “If money and talent wasn’t an issue, I would create the ultimate African story!” she says. “Imagine the year 2040: all the African nations have agreed to join forces, there is one president, one supreme government and one currency. This would be a kind of modern-day, African Game of Thrones. It would involve the endless hunt for power between the former nations.”
“In many parts of Africa, there are certain misconceptions regarding the creative industry, whereby people think of it as something of a hobby. It is, unfortunately, a misconception shared by both the audience and some professionals. This misconception has greatly diminished the creative industry to the extent that even government support for the creative industry in various countries is non-existent,” says 23-year-old Jamal. He has hopes that the MultiChoice Talent Factory will slowly but surely help to change that and grow Africa’s creative industries from strength to strength.
“There will be a day when Africans won’t be surprised to see a production set in the streets, when tickets for African film premieres will be sold out, when going to the cinema will be the best way to watch local productions and African televisions will play 95% big-budget local content because our stories will have flooded the market,” says Hillary Sabuni Sitati, who works as a freelance filmmaker and music video director. His role model is Nigerian music video director Clarence Peters.
It’s always been Hilda Monica Awori’s aspiration to be involved in the creative industry, which is why she studied a Bachelor of Arts in Drama and Film and works as a filmmaker and artist. Her qualification helped her understand that we can become better storytellers by taking from the example of Jerzy Marian Grotowski, the Polish theatre director and theorist, whose approaches to acting, training and theatrical production showed that you don’t need money to tell a good story.