Akoroko Wants to Uplift African Cinema

How much of an undertaking has it been to get Akoroko off the ground?

I already knew about African cinema but I did not know certain things. There were some specifics that I had to pick up and learn firsthand. So it was just a lot of meetings, a lot of talking to lots of people on the continent and elsewhere, who serve the space - producers, programmers like [Toronto International Film Festival’s International Programmer] Nataleah Hunter-Young, [South African producer of films like Rafiki and Tug of War] Steven Markovitz of Big World Cinema, just getting their opinion: What do you guys see? What is missing? What do you think is needed?

And so I took that on a challenge, a welcome challenge, because I like to go into spaces where I know I can actually make a difference. It's been four months or so, and I've been financing it myself, so then I thought, if we really want to do the things that we want to do, which is coverage, cataloging and curating streams, we need the money to do those things. Otherwise, it's kind of a wasted effort. So that's why that's why we launched the GoFundMe.

Do you see it as essentially a conduit between the US and Africa, from Africa to the world?

Yeah. The thing is, I wasn't looking at it that way, but that's how others approached me about it, like, we need a bridge to the continent. I have one foot in the States, and I have one foot in Africa, and then I have the experience and connections needed as well, and so people were looking to me to become that person -- especially here in the States, especially as things are blossoming with Netflix and Amazon and others coming into the space and investing money. There just doesn't seem to be the kind of analysis and kind of coverage that I think it all deserves, and I think there's a space for something like this to exist and to be successful.

Akoroko aims to have a production database, listing what’s being worked on and what’s coming – what are the challenges with putting something like that together?

It's just a lot of work. It's time consuming; it's reaching out to a whole bunch of different filmmakers, producers, and [taking] this as kind of a starting point: what's in the works? We want to be tracking things that are at different stages, from development, financing, pre-production production, up until post production and then completion. Once the film is out in the world, let's say at festivals, it's pushed off the list. So, it's just accessing people who have the information but also tracking things like labs, workshops, residencies, and film markets, like the one at the Durban Film Festival, which we attended virtually.

At the Durban Film Mart, there were something like 50/60 projects. Not all of them are going to make it to the end, and I'm not saying that they're all good, but we've come up with as many as 150 total feature films [for the list so far], that are in some stages of development. And that's unprecedented on the African continent; we just we haven't seen that kind of activity at all. And that's because you have a lot of programs, like the Realness Institute, popping up and servicing the continent, and they're giving up-and-coming filmmakers the opportunity to hone their skills.

It's not difficult work, it's just time consuming to compile the list, and we're not even done yet. We just had to put it on pause because we’re focusing on the [GoFundMe] campaign. I'm not trying to get rich here. I could have taken a different path and maybe gone the Hollywood route, but no, there's passion here, there's urgency, and we see the opportunity to make a difference. We're coming in humbly, certainly; I'm not coming to change everything. We’re coming in and learning as much as we can. And we’re really focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. Because, yeah, because that's where the lack really is. We still have [coverage of] Algeria, Tunisia, [those countries with] French connections too.

What do you aim to do in terms of curating films?

Mubi has been the model for me from the very beginning. It has a curated streaming component and there's a journalism component, as well. So you have essays and conversations with filmmakers that help contextualize the films that they stream. Mubi doesn't have 10,000/15,000 films like Netflix, they're not trying to be Netflix, they have a very specific audience, and they found a way to have about 300,000 subscribers around the world, who pay about 10 bucks a month, for their curated streaming. And they have been very supportive [of Akoroko].

So we will essentially hand-select every film that we feature...because right now, what is that one place you go to for African film criticism, coverage, analysis, context? I don't know when that will take off, but we want to create the same kind of fanboy/fangirl appreciation for African films and filmmakers that you see in the States. I can't say when the streaming will come. We'll see how much money we raise because it's acquiring rights to the films for a period of time and that'll be expensive. But we're learning a lot, in terms of how it all works. A lot of African filmmakers have just been handing over their films for pittance to be on a global platform but you're not getting exposure. If it's on Netflix, great, but Netflix isn't necessarily marketing it, so it's up to you to make sure that people know it's there.