By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
(Pastor) Arthur Pratt is the National Coordinator of the Sierra Leone Film Council. He is one of the country’s most talented filmmakers, even if he hasn’t been recognized locally.
Pratt is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the privately owned WeOwnTv which makes documentary and provides training for filmmakers.
Pratt is a videographer, film editor, director, screen writer and member of the Africa Film Consortium, a pan African film movement.
In this edition of the The Interview on Politico, he talks to Mustapha Kamara Jnr on his journey to this level of his career and the film industry in general in Sierra Leone.
Please read on:
Politico: How long have you been in film making?
Pratt: I started with theater before coming into film making proper. I came into film making in 2002/3, when Bell Brothers came to Sierra Leone. It was a theatre group. They did ‘one bone en dem pikin dem’. I worked with them then and we did lots of So-Operas like Tatu and Yawah and lots of others.
Then I had a break and went to college and did African Studies and came back. Whilst I was in college I directed my first feature film titled: ‘Broken Calabash’. Funnily the movie never came out because there were no film editors and not enough professionals working around film making. But after Broken Calabash, I had the opportunity to meet with Banka White at Lungi at a workshop that was conducted for 21 film makers in Sierra Leone. It was one month training and after that I went into film making proper.
What brought you into theatre and film making?
Well, theatre for me, personally, I would say it is my life style. I have been in theatre for a very, very long time. I started acting way back while I was in the nursery school, in primary school and in church. And when l went to secondary school, the Sierra Leone Grammar School, I took acting strongly; I joined the drama club at school and acted in all Prize Giving ceremonies until l left the school.
Whilst I was at the Grammar SchooI, I was also a member of the Freetong Players Intenational for some time and for me Charlie Haffner , Head of Freetong Players, was a mentor.
I think I was mentored by two of the greatest dramatist in Sierra Leone, Charlie Haffner and Raymond d Suiza George [fondly called Papa Ray Proper]. When l entered university that was the time I met Papa Ray Proper. I had met him before entering into the university and he is one of the people that made a serious impact on me, my character, behavior, acting skills.
I also worked with Songai Theatre for a season and then started my own group after finishing university. I stated my own group called Havlet Production.
When Sierra Leone was on its transitional stage from theatre to cinema, I was one of the first persons that started the transition to cinema, coming from the stage to the screen. I started producing film. For me it was like continuing how to live your life. But in as much as we had the transition, I was still able to perform. Though it was a difficult process l was able to do film firms both with local and international film making groups. In 2009, I did several short films; one was called the Cripple And The Witch Hunter. It was a one-minute and 29 seconds film. That film won an International award at the Madrid Film Festival in 2009.
I also did a lot of short films like Sorie and the Meat, Charities, and these were the short films l did at WeYone Tv when we started and these films were short and powerful. And at some point, I later wrote and directed a movie called ‘They Resisted’, a story which came about after looking at our History. If you look at the way history is written it doesn’t do justice to Africans. It’s like Africans willingly went into slavery, like docile fools. As if they (African slaves) didn’t put any resistance.
The story tried to explain the misconception that Africans were willing to be traded as slaves by slave masters. It came out of the story of John Hawkins, a British Slave master, who later became an advocate for the abolition of the slave trade after he survived an attack in Africa.
Drawing back from those days to now, do you think there have been improvements in the theatre and movie industry in Sierra Leone?
Well, there has been some amount of personal improvements. But the transition itself was a problem. If you could remember, before my days there were powerful and respectable theatre groups that existed, like Tabule Theatre and other professional groups. Later on something happened and most of these groups stopped performing plays and then the youths then saw theatre as a means of self employment and then we had lots of unprofessional theatre groups emerge. For me it was all artistic in as much as they were raw and lacked proper mentorship and it’s these unprofessional theatre groups that evolved into the many film groups that we have today. And so because they were not mentored they came into filming and cinema with little knowledge they had in theatre, thinking that filming and theatre are the same.
That resulted to seeing theatre on their films and the way their stories are written, the way they are directed, and the way they act.
The major problem for all this was because the government refused to recognize the transition. The government refused to take advantage of the situation. They allowed the transition to go on without bringing proper polices and regulations to guide the transition, to get people to be properly trained.
And so because of that you now have hundreds of untrained and unqualified directors, writers, actors, editors and videographers going up and down in the country.
What they have is what we call natural talent; what they have personally learnt probably by observation from other people.
Because government failed to realize this transition, Sierra Leone doesn’t have a film school to train actors, actresses, directors and script waters and film producers.
Now let’s go to the education system, the education system is another thing that has added to the state of the film industry in the country in Sierra Leone.
Having highlighted all these challenges, has the country been able to compete with other countries to over the years?
No! The Sierra Leone film industry has not been able to compete with other countries. It is very difficult because firstly we do not have proper mechanism to compete. We do not have the structure, we do not have the political structure to compete. We do not have the social structure to compete in terms of education. We do not have the market system to compete. We do not have connections to compete.
For me, I count myself and my organization blessed, because we have somebody in the United States of America who is a professional with the connections to take us out. But many people do not have. And so because they do not have this connection, they do not have access to the education.
What we are seeing in Sierra Leone is the raw effort of Sierra Leoneans to make the difference.
In terms of equipment, we don’t have the proper ones. Many film makers do not have the proper equipment to make their films. We have some amount of cameras but I will tell you the highest grade camera we have in Sierra Leone is Five D mac/mark 3 or an Ex3 or the EX family cameras.
We do not have high handed equipment. You can shoot film with these equipment, quality movies, movies that can go international but then if they lack the complementing equipment to all of these it doesn’t work.
We don’t have quality sound equipment in Sierra Leone. Sound has become a very crucial issue in film production. Now it is not even picture because the Cannon Camera is adaptable to our situation and it’s quite good. I have seen many films that they have done with it, with strong picture quality. For example “Save by Grace.” But when you watch the films and listen to the sounds you will find out that it’s not professional. If you listen to the sound track, the audio, dialogue in the film, they are not professionally done.
Let’s look at the Piracy Act that we have in Sierra Leone. We have a piracy Act without a structure. The Act itself calls for its own structure but there is no structure.
According to the Act, there is supposed to be a registrar. There is still no registrar. There is supposed to be a collective society. There is still no collective society. The structures that the Act calls for they are not there.
Go to the streets right now, vendors who sell film don’t sell Sierra Leonean films because of the price. Movies that are made in Sierra Leone are forced to be sold at Le5, 000 because they are selling pirated Nigerian films at Le2, 000. Vendors will prefer to sell pirated movies from Nigeria, Pilipino and other countries because people will prefer to buy them because they are cheap.
Those boys will buy those pirated copies from marketers at Le2, 000 and will sell at Le5, 000. But when they buy Sierra Leone films from marketers they will buy at Le4, 000 or Le3, 500 and sell at Le5, 000. They make Le1, 000 profit. So they will prefer going for foreign movies.
And the trade Ministry is doing nothing about it. The Ministry of Tourism that is also responsible for some aspects of culture is not doing anything about it.
The Ministry of Information that is responsible for cinema and film is also not doing anything about it.
When all of these structures are lacking, how can l make my film, make money and improve myself? We have few film makers that have been educated out of Sierra Leone. For example, I am only aware about three directors who have taken directorial courses out of Sierra Leone. They are Julius Spencer, John Solo, and Michael Ibrahim Kargbo.
I only know few editors that have western impact training. I only know one screen writer, in the whole of Sierra Leone, that has international screen writing recognition and I only know one actor that has actually gone through cinema and acting courses out of Sierra Leone.
All the training I benefitted from are trainings I had from international experts coming into Sierra Leone and working with us. That is the blessing we have had at WeYone Tv.
With all these things highlighted, what do you think most important to address?
The most important thing that l think needs to be addressed is education; the education of film makers should be addressed.
Access to equipment and funding should be addressed because these are very, very key, as well as fixing, at least, the marketing structure.
Now it will interest you to know that countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso are using cinema as a means to employ their youths. So therefore the government in these countries are pouring huge amount of money in cinema and the film industry. Let’s take our neighbor Liberia for example, the film industry is recognized by the government, they have a union that is funded by the government.
Now they have a budget of about a US$100, 000 or more that government gives them annually to run the film industry in their country.
If you go to Nigeria, in fact the coming of President Mohamed Buhari was pioneered strongly by the Arts industry, film makers and musicians. Even before that, the former president, Goodluck Jonathan, officially began to give the movie industry money to run itself.
The Nigerian government has also given about two hundred of hectares of land to the movie industry to build a film land. [It’s the same for Senegal and Burkina Faso. Their governments have been sponsoring the film industry in their respective countries. In fact Burkina Faso is hosting the biggest film festival in West Africa - FESPACO.
These countries also have their challenges but [they] have the structures to regulate the industry and explore other markets outside their countries.
People may say they have a problem with the market in Sierra Leone, but for me it’s with the system. Sometimes when I blame the government people think that I just want to blame the government. But when the political will is lacking, development forestalls.
Since 2011 we [Sierra Leone Film Council] have been running around the government for the implementation of a policy we have design to improve the film industry in the country. Under the then Minister of Information, Alpha Khanu and his deputy, Theo Nicol, we started having discussions. We had several discussions and plans but nothing ever happened.
Government should have used the film industry to empower the youths, but the political will is lacking.
From investigations, I noticed that many Sierra Leoneans don’t buy local films produced here, not because of the price but for other reasons?
Yes, it’s true. There are lots of issues. Before now there was a time when Sierra Leoneans were buying movies produced in the country. But then language became a problem.
When you buy a Sierra Leonean firm in which English is the medium of communication, you will find out that the English is so bad that even the uneducated recognized this.
Another serious problem is the acting. When people begin to notice these problems, which are all because of the lack of education, they can’t buy these movies.
Again another problem is the inability of film producers to portray the country’s culture. Up till now filmmakers are still doing film as if they are Nigerians. They are still doing Sierra Leonean traditional films in which you will see people especially women are being marked with ‘uli’ marks, a typical tradition of the Ebo.
You cannot see them in all Nigerian films, it’s an Ebo mark portraying the Ebo culture in Nigeria, and that is not even a practice for every Ebo prople. And you will not see those marks in a Yoruba film, it’s not possible. Things that are not akin to the Yoruba culture can never be used in their films.
Sierra Leoneans are copying culture. Take contemporary movies produced in Sierra Leone for example. There are so much gun madness in those films, something that is not normal. You don’t work about Sierra Leone and hear gun battle. The hooligans that we have in Sierra Leone don’t use guns, except in rare situations. They use knife, machetes, bottles.
For western films, the reason why you see the use of guns it’s because it’s part of their culture. For example, gun is a constitutional thing in America, so you will not find it strange to see gun been used in the films.
Sierra Leonean Film Makers are copying cultures of other countries. Even when you are doing contemporary film you need to bring in the natural to explain your story. In as much as the stories might not be real, but the settings and the incidences must be adaptable to actual things that are happening.
For example, when you take a contemporary Sierra Leonean film to America, the American will begin to ask, is there gun problem in Sierra Leone? They are asking so because your film is a depiction of the reality in your surroundings.
So all of these are the problems why people don’t buy our films. But still we are not changing; we are not adapting. You will find out that Sierra Leoneans like Zinab Sheriff, when they produce their films, they depend on the international market.
Finally, for me, there is something that l have observed and that is Sierra Leonean films are not addressing social issues.
Do you know why the film ‘Mende vs Themne: Tribal War’ received the kind of noise it received? It’s because it tended to address an issue, it touched on something that has been a core problem in Sierra Leone. Something that the government recognized might create problem.
And if we hadn’t come in then to affect a ban on the film, many copies of that film would have been sold.
If we change our strategy and begin to do films that address social issues, I tell you we (film makers) will make a breakthrough in the market.
Do you think the film council and professionals have been performing their roles and responsibilities?
I don’t think it’s the problem of the film council; I think it is still a problem of government recognition. It’s the problem of government not recognizing policy, the law.
Sierra Leone has three television stations. I will tell you, as the national coordinator for the film council, that in the whole of Sierra Leone we have 337 film groups and in the whole country, we have approximately 52, 000 people involved in the industry. It’s a huge number.
Now! We designed a policy, what the government should do is to give the power to the film council. I cannot go around and stop somebody from selling their films. I don’t have that power. And the political support is not there.
Even as a council, if I stopped somebody from producing his or her film, they will take me to court. It will become a long battle for the court to decide on the legality of the council. But if we have a policy that recognizes the council and its work, then the onus is upon the council to deliver.
As I am talking to you right now, the council is preparing the Sierra Leone Film, Television and Video Games Act to take to the government. Just imagine we have television stations in the country but they are not playing local films. Look at the country’s national television, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, it’s a disgrace. They are playing American films for the rest of the day. I do not need to talk about the other television stations. They are playing these western films without authorization and that is a disregard for international treaties.
(C) Politico 12/05/16
