The cinema of Gabon has had an uneven history. Though President Omar Bongo and his wife, Josephine Bongo, encouraged filmmaking in the 1970s, there was a 20-year hiatus until filmmaking started to grow again in the new millennium.
French companies made documentaries in colonial Gabon from 1936 onwards. [1]
After independence, Philippe Mory, Gabon's first professionally trained actor, organized the Compagnie Cinematographique du Gabon in 1962, and helped produce The Cage , a feature film entered into the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. [1] The national television company supported films like Pierre-Marie Dong's Carrefour humain (1969) and Mory's Les tams-tams se sont tus (1972). [2]
Though Gabon had only eight cinemas, President Omar Bongo and his wife Joséphine Bongo took a direct personal interest in film. [3] The President built a 400-seat cinema in his presidential palace, and in 1975 founded the Centre National Du Cinéma with Mory as director. He also founded a production company, Les Films Gabonais. [1] Gabon saw nine films from six directors in the 1970s. [3] Les Films Gabonais produced several films co-directed by Dong and based on the writings of the presidential couple: Obali (1976) and Ayouma (1977) were based on plays examining social themes by Joséphine Bongo, [4] and Demain, un jour nouveau (1978) was a version of the president's memoirs. [5] Another Gabonese film from this period was Charles Mensah's Ilombe (1978).
After two decades of relative inactivity, Gabonese filmmaking started to rise again in the new millennium. Charles Mensah at the Centre National du Cinéma Gabonais (CENACI) had introduced new policies to restructure Gabonese cinema in the early 1990s. [6] Imunga Ivanga started making short films in the 1990s, and his feature film Dôlè (2000) was the first Gabonese feature film for two decades. [7] It won festival awards at Carthage, Cannes and Milan. [8] Henri-Joseph Koumba Bididi made a number of short films, and the 2001 feature film The Elephant's Balls. [9] Ivunga and Mory collaborated on L'Ombre de Liberty (2006), and in 2014 Ivunga was made general director of the national television network, Gabon Television. [10] Amédée Pacôme Nkoulou's documentary Boxing Libreville (2018) has won several awards.
Canal Olympia is currently building new cinemas in Gabon. [11]
Mohamed Chouikh is an Algerian film-maker and actor.
Zeka Laplaine, sometimes credited as José Laplaine, is a director and actor from Ilebo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The child of a Portuguese father and Congolese mother, he moved to Europe when he was 18. His 1996 short film Le Clandestin was featured at the 2010 Amakula International Film Festival in Uganda. He portrayed a cowboy alongside Danny Glover in Death in Timbuktu, a film within a film in the Council of Europe Film Award-winning film, Bamako. Laplaine is a member of France's "Guilde Africaine des Realisateurs et Producteurs".
Souheil Ben-Barka is a Moroccan film director, screenwriter and film producer. He directed seven films between 1974 and 2002. His 1975 film La guerre du pétrole n'aura pas lieu was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival. His 1983 film Amok won the Golden Prize at the 13th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1987 he was a member of the jury at the 15th Moscow International Film Festival.
The Higher Institute Of Cinema, also known as the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema, Cairo Higher Film Institute, and other variants, is a film school in Cairo, Egypt. It is one of several institutes making up the Academy of Arts.
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Raymond Rajaonarivelo is a Malagasy film director.
Lanciné Diabi is an Ivorian filmmaker.
Pierre-Marie Dong (1945-2006) was a Gabonese film director, who was also Minister of Culture in Gabon at the end of his life. Along with Charles Mensah and Simon Augé, Dong "is considered the pioneer of Gabonese film".
Jean-Michel Tchissoukou (1942-1997) was a Congolese filmmaker.
Abdellah Rezzoug or Abdella Zarok was a Libyan filmmaker. In the early 1970s he made the first Libyan feature film, When Fate Hardens.
Philippe Mory was a Gabonese actor and director, born in 1935 and died on 7 June 2016 in Libreville, Gabon. He is known for acting in the film The Cage, One Does Not Bury Sunday (1960) and directing Les tam-tams se sont tus (1972).
Bassek Ba Kobhio is a Cameroonian filmmaker, writer and founder of the Ecrans Noirs film festival in Yaounde, Cameroon. He is also the Director of the Higher Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Professionals of Central Africa (ISCAC) in Yaounde, the first-ever tertiary training institution for cinematography in the Central Africa sub-region.
Charles Mensah was a Gabonese filmmaker, screenwriter and production manager. Popularly known as "The Gentleman of African Cinemas", Mensah contributed in several critically acclaimed documentaries including Équateur, Les Couilles de l'éléphant and Lybek, the crunch of the alive. He worked as an activist for the development of independent southern cinema for a career spanned more than three decades.
Tom Ribeiro is a Ghanaian writer and director. He wrote and directed several Ghanaian movies made in the post-colonial era, mainly under the production rights of the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC), which was set up by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah. These movies included Genesis Chapter X (1977), Dede (1992), Set on Edge (1999) The Visitor (1983), Out of Sight, Out of Love (1983), Rituals of Fire and The Village Court.
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Al Kanfoudi is a 1978 Moroccan film directed by Nabyl Lahlou. The film was one of Lahlou's few projects to receive CCM funding.
The Soul That Brays is 1984 Moroccan film directed by Nabyl Lahlou.
Caftan d'Amour (English: Caftan of Love or The Big Mirror) is a 1987 Moroccan film directed by Moumen Smihi.
Latif Lahlou is a Moroccan filmmaker.
Roy Armes is a British professor emeritus and film scholar who has written numerous books on the history of filmmaking and select filmmakers.