Cinema and Journalism as one — the Future of Storytelling alongside AI.
At one level there’s not much difference between a documentary ( and I would add journalism and News) and cinema. Journalists may beg to differ; I know from experience. But these aren’t just my thoughts, but the word of this man; one of the greatest filmmakers/ documentary makers of our times.
The approach by one is to tell the truth; the other is to make it up. However there’s a blurring which my years of research reveals. Both involve interpretation. And truth telling in journalism itself can be subjective and erroneous. There are ways to address this, but journalists often choose not to.
Rewiring TV Journalism from its late 1940s origins would require empathy, and seeing a different perspective within a diversity of people and thought. Note empathy and diversity don’t feature as central tenants in journalism training and its delivery. It’s historical and there are reasons why.
Then there’s Cinema which aims to tell the truth by dramatising. It’s the intention of the filmmaker/ journalist. Russian filmmakers like Dziga Vertov saw cinema as the truth and was shaken and angry when he realised what Hollywood was doing to the form.
Vertov’s Man with the Movie Camera is consistently voted top documentary, or top 3 in various polls. He was the Scorsese of his time.
New Storytelling Time
These two framings are relevant for this article: Decolonizing African cinema in the time of Netflix whose stand first reads: “Filmmakers from Africa are making an effort to fight for the restitution of the graphic memory of their continent, long stifled and distorted by the colonial powers”.
The piece highlights the plight of film director Alain Kassanda trying to tell the story of his grandparents in Congo. The narrative Kassanda uncovers is indicative of colonialism -the Belgians civilised Congo etc.
To obtain footage, which slants to this epistemology Kassanda has to pay $27,000 when it’s distributed free to Unis. He recognises just as Prof David Olusoga said recently that this is about the eradication of memory, the suppression of the African narrative.
And celebrated filmmakers, whose methodologies spawned this thing called ethnography did Africans no favours. Jean Rouch who pioneered Cinéma vérité alongside Edgar Morin is castigated by the father of African cinema Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène when he tells him: “You look at us as if we were insect”.
The task ahead is to search for archive to restore ideas, cultures and the right narratives. The same can be said of journalism. The Western model is so pervasive in its approach and content that it’s a challenge to see how it should be reformed, but it can. And evidence of our multinational six part co-production between Ghana TV and South Africa speaks to this.
There’s a new headwind which must be grasped. It’s born of a ground swell of image making across a spectrum of new and emerging talent.
In the coming weeks I’ll be announcing an academic project around AI and Storytelling focusing on Africa. Like Kassanda I too have set out to tell stories about my parents and grand parents. My father left the Gold Coast at 25 years of age to go to the UK. My grandfather from my mother’s side was a train driver.
I look at this photo and wonder.
I had the immense privilege of sharing these ideas with our former president John Kufuor.
Here’s a thought, if we look to social mystic films in one’s own language, how does that impact narrative and sales. Here’s another thought. Goldman Sachs predictions that Nigeria will be an economic super power in 2075 points to new bold ways of storytelling with an attentive market.
Below my visit to Russia to teach Russian Journalists about journalism filmmaking
