South African filmmaker Rehad Desai has said global streaming platforms of sidelining political documentaries from Africa.
“Those guys, they’re not interested in anything that’s political,” Desai said referring to Netflix in an interview with Afrimages. “Amazon as well. I think there’s a bit of difference for countries who’s got a big footprint among these streamers, they’re a little more flexible on [a] big director or one of the big films that’s doing well on the celebrities.”
The director, who won an International Emmy for the documentary Miners Shot Down in 2015, suggested that the lack of political documentaries on big streaming platforms is a business decision.
“The prospects, the political, social, deep, personal documentaries coming out of Africa are highly limited because the market is so small,” he continued. “They need something because they’ve got an African market surely in Netflix, but Amazon’s just packed up and left. It’s a model which is not sustainable because it cannot continue to grow, you reach a cap.”
In the interview, which is also available in French, Desai criticised how streaming platforms determine what gets made and distributed. “The power of cable pay TV streamers, how we’re supposed to produce for a global audience, it’s nonsense,” he said. “You just get a really diluted point of view if that’s possible at all. These films are shaped by algorithms so we’re not in a great place in that industry.”
Support from the NFVF
Desai says he is able to receive support from his country’s National Film and Video Foundation but it is often limited.
“We were able to get development funds there, and it’s 15,000 or 20,000 euros; it’s something. But really, to develop something that’s attractive for the highly competitive documentary film funds, you need 40,000 euros to develop your story, to be able to evoke, develop a text, a trailer, and stuff where it begins to jump off the page and looks like an attractive proposition that is going to have some redemptive value.”
Desai also spoke about the difficulty of accessing funds from Europe because of the current climate. “It has become more difficult in Europe because they’ve turned inwards, they got their own problems now, the more progressive-minded ones say it’s still open, but it’s still limited.
“So, there’s more of an inward focus, less room for international productions, very hard to get anything up and running. They’re not going to take you on your word anymore, and it’s going to have to be a strong film and a couple of thousand words they want to see.”
Future projects
Despite the challenges, Desai appears committed to using film to address Africa’s social and political issues. His latest projects include a documentary on water access and climate justice, as well as an exploration of green colonialism and green extractivism in Madagascar.
“I believe the work I’m doing now can possibly help lay the foundations for the 10% of the population to understand what we’re facing which in the next 5 or 10 years will be critically important,” he said. “Unless we begin to develop an ecological consciousness, the disasters that we’ve seen across the continents will become increasingly catastrophic in nature. So, that’s where I’m heading now with the latter part of my career.”
While acknowledging the emergence of strong documentary films from Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, Desai believes that overall, the ambition and depth of political documentary filmmaking in Africa have declined. “It seems to be less. Less ambition, less depth,” he said.
