EXCLUSIVE: The Nationwide Movie Authority of Ghana has re-teamed with regional operator Silverbird Cinemas to mount the Africa Cinema Summit within the nation’s capital, Accra.
This yr marks the occasion’s second version. The summit will run October 7-10 on the Movenpick Ambassador Lodge in Accra and the theme can be “The Relevance of Cinema in African Communities.”
Final yr’s inaugural summit featured representatives from 20 African nations with dialogue centered on exploring and tailoring cinematic alternatives to swimsuit the distinctive traits of every geographic location throughout the continent. The assembly was the supply of a number of strategic good points for the regional trade. Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo pledged to approve a movie tax incentive for the Ghanaian movie trade. The credit score was formally handed just a few months later as a 20% tax rebate. Following the occasion, Nigerian operator Filmhouse Group additionally dedicated to distributing Ghanaian movies throughout Nigeria and different accomplice nations. Silverbird Ghana pledged to include native snacks into their cinema meals and Ster-Kinekor, the main cinema chain in Southern Africa, dedicated to exploring e-sports of their cinemas.
Organizers at the moment stated this yr’s version goals to “additional consolidate the progress made within the African cinema trade, fostering collaboration, innovation, and sustainable development.” The 2024 summit will deal with the “development in high quality of native content material manufacturing and consumption driving the case for elevated cinema funding.” The summit may also additional delve into “reimagining and rethinking cinema for Africa’s mass market phase.”
Attendees on the summit will embody cinema exhibitors, trade leaders and traders, filmmakers, producers, distributors, studios, policymakers, and stakeholders from throughout the continent and the globe.
The manager workforce working the occasion, led by Juliet Yaa Asantewa Asante, CEO of the Nationwide Movie Authority of Ghana, contains:
● Moses Babatope, Co-founder and former Group Managing Director, Filmhouse Group
● Rob Arthur, Founder and accomplice, Leisure Options
● Tim Yaw Struthers, Senior Advisor, International Engagement, Nationwide Movie Authority of Ghana
● Ojoma Ochai, Managing Director, Co-creation Hub (CcHUB) Africa
● Funmi Onuma, Nation Supervisor, Silverbird Cinemas
“Africa’s cinematic prowess is plain, but stays largely untapped,” Asantewa Asante advised us this morning.
Funmi Onuma, Moses Babatope, and Juliet Yaa Asantewa Asante.
“Via the largest cinema occasion in Africa, the Africa Cinema Summit, we envision a transformative journey that may create over twenty million jobs and contribute a formidable $20 billion to the continent’s mixed GDP, as projected by the 2021 UNESCO Report. I’m additionally delighted to welcome again key executives from the worldwide cinema, content material, and artistic communities to collaborate with me on this re-creation and past.”
Tim Yaw Struthers, Ojoma Ochai, and Rob Arthur.
Asantewa Asante added that this yr’s version will deal with “the expansion in high quality native content material” and discovering methods of “introducing the cinema tradition to Africa’s largely youth inhabitants who’ve by no means been to a cinema.”
“Over 80% of Africans on the continent have by no means been to a cinema, as the shortage of cinema infrastructure has meant the eroding of the cinema tradition in African communities,” she stated. “This can be a large alternative, and now we have the mindset that it’s potential to drive Africa’s 1 billion youth inhabitants to consider Cinema as a viable leisure possibility. All the cinema world should be part of us on this journey that holds the longer term sustainability of not solely African cinema, however world cinema.”
Andrew Egyapa Mercer, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Tradition, Ghana added: “Funding the movie trade is a clever funding. Alternatives for funding within the sector are huge and we name on all these all for investments in Africa and particularly Ghana, to contemplate investing within the infrastructure that helps the ecosystem, particularly in studios and cinemas. This could solely yield nice returns on investments contemplating that the way forward for cinema is that this continent. Ghana as effectively is dedicated to engaged on the coverage modifications wanted to assist propel a thriving movie ecosystem”
The Africa Cinema Summit will happen from October 7-10, 2024, on the Movenpick Ambassador Lodge in Accra, Ghana.
