The legacy of colonization can also be seen in the disproportionate number of Western organizations involved in African conservation. This lends credence to the “wildlife is for White people” misconception and has skewed policy-making around wilderness management to prioritize wildlife over local communities.
All of this has created a perception by some that Indigenous Africans are disengaged from the natural world. The misapprehension partly arises from the disregard for community voices and engagement at the grassroots level for environmental solutions. “Things need to be adjusted and shifted to take the people there into consideration,” said Kenyan cinematographer, Faith Musembi. “The more locals can take ownership of natural resources, then I think that can change the trajectory of so much.”
Within this unbalanced context, the lucrative, Western-driven natural-history film industry emerged and prospered, presenting wildlife-centric narratives which, though important, tell an incomplete picture.
“A sense of ownership needs to be recalibrated for many people living with the natural resources because people are not going away,” says Musembi, producer-director of Wildstar Films’ Queens series, a women-driven documentary that looks at female-led animal societies, and which is coming to Nat Geo’s Disney+ in 2024. Musembi is “the first black (Kenyan) woman to produce and direct an episode for a major landmark series,” says Chloe Sarosh, executive producer of the UK-based Wildstar Films, who is committed to making space for female cinematographers and filmmakers, especially from underrepresented backgrounds.
Incorporating alternative voices … requires radical remodeling of the tight-knit, male-dominated, and largely White fraternity of the natural world media.
Developing a robust Indigenous documentary film industry won’t be easy. Filmmaking is an expensive business, especially for countries with far bigger national development priorities. Upfront costs — including equipment and travel — can make it hard for people to start their own production companies, and government investment in the industry is small.
And exclusionary practices are highly ingrained. “Natural history is a very closed industry and can be very upper class,” says wildlife cinematographer Vianet Djenguet, whose film Silverback won the Grand Teton prize for best film in 2023 at the prestigious Jackson Wild film festival in the United States. The film, which caps a 15-year journey in natural history filmmaking that was anything but easy, follows Djenguet’s unique expedition with eastern lowland gorillas in his home country, the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville). Djenguet says it took one film executive to finally notice him and connect him to serious film gigs for his career to take off: “I went to university for this work but it’s all about who you know.”
Insiders like Sarosh say that growing diversity within the industry is essential in order to incorporate new stories and new perspectives beyond the commonplace narratives: “I believe that global audiences want more than that.” Incorporating alternative voices and narratives, however, requires radical remodeling of the tight-knit, male-dominated, and largely White fraternity of the natural world media.
THAT REMODELING MUST START at ground level. A common excuse for not hiring local talent is the lack of experienced camera people. “Mentorship and training are crucial because you can’t expect someone to walk into this industry and do the job right away,” says Sarosh.
Many African countries — including Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya — have a sizeable media sector but few people are familiar with the nuances of natural world filming and story-crafting. Animals are unpredictable and do not follow the pre-planned script, which means a great wildlife cinematographer needs patience, a passion for nature, the ability to adapt to the unforeseen, and a high tolerance for discomfort or difficult environments “just to capture one or two shots or a sequence,” Djenguet says. They also need technical skills: Camera equipment can be specialized for long-distance zooming, underwater filming, helicopter shots, or handling heat, humidity, low light, and other wilderness conditions.
“Training won’t happen unless there is buy-in from the top down,” adds Musembi, who studied visual media at Emerson College in Boston, and found a pathway to natural history filmmaking following an emerging-filmmaker’s scholarship in 2019 to the Jackson Wild summit.
“I find it fascinating they’re terrified that Africans should be telling the story.”
There’s also a gap when it comes to local support structures, such as wildlife camera repair — these services are not readily available in many African countries. “It’s mind-blowing the amount of money spent to fly in technicians,” says Musembi, adding that when technicians aren’t available, equipment has to be shipped out of the country and back “at a massive cost.”
Other aspects of the creative process can be even harder to address than filling skill gaps, such as changing the culture and collective impact of a film project, or confronting misconceptions about what inclusivity means. “Representing communities or being inclusive cannot be an afterthought but must be built into the design and budgeting from the onset,” says Lilly Bekele-Piper, a former strategic communications manager at USAID Kenya and East Africa and the technical lead on National Geographic’s Team Sayari, a pioneering 2023 children’s wildlife series hosted by African children and African wildlife experts.
Real change, she says, depends on intentionality and determining aspects like a project’s ethos, the message, composition of a team, gender structure, and cultural considerations, otherwise the resulting story is inauthentic or runs hollow. “We must continuously revisit our position, clearly define intentions, have the flexibility to course-correct, and innovate new ways of achieving diverse narratives in media portrayal of the natural world,” she says.
Source link : https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/who-gets-to-make-wildlife-films-set-in-africa/
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Publish date : 2024-03-20 02:28:39
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