By Malia Mendez, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
Idris Elba just isn’t an absent boss.
As a part of his continued efforts to develop the African film industry, the Golden Globe-winning actor plans to determine film studios in Ghana and Tanzania over the following decade. He says he can't manage this task with a London postcode.
“I’m here to strengthen the film industry – it’s a 10-year process,” Elba said BBC in an interview published on Tuesday. “I won’t be able to do it from overseas. I have to be in the country, on the continent.”
The “Luther” star said he plans to make the move “in the next five, 10 years, God willing” and can move to varied locations – Accra in Ghana, Freetown in Sierra Leone, Zanzibar in Tanzania – in an effort to “be there to go where they are.” Tell stories.”
Elba's father was from Sierra Leone and his mother was from Ghana.
Tanzanian authorities completed this in August the allocation of a plot of land measuring almost 200 hectares in Zanzibar to Elba, who wants to build a film studio there with the working title West African Studios. The studio would be comparable to any in “Hollywood, Nollywood or Bollywood” and could become the country’s “Zollywood”. Investment Minister Shariff Ali Shariff said at the time.
“We have been working for three or four years to develop a plan that would put a facility at the center of African filmmaking,” Elba said told the Ghanaian press in February 2023, noting that the existing facilities were “poor”.
A 2022 UNESCO The report said that despite “significant production growth”, the Nigerian film industry alone produces around 2,500 films annually, with total revenue estimated at 2.5 million Hundreds of millions of dollars — African film production is hampered by problems such as piracy, inadequate training opportunities and the lack of official film institutions.
“This sector is a soft power, not just across Ghana, but across Africa,” Elba told the BBC, adding that African filmmakers with the right resources and infrastructure are changing Western media's colonial narratives about the continent can ask question.
“If you watch a movie or anything that has to do with Africa, all you’re going to see is trauma, how we were slaves, how we were colonized, that it’s just war,” Elba said, “and when you come.” If you go to Africa you will find that this is not true.”
He continued: “It's really important that we have these stories about our tradition, our culture, our languages and the differences between one language and another. The world doesn’t know.”
Outside the entertainment sector, Elba also has development plans an “ecotown” on Sherbro Islanda tropical region off the southwest coast of Sierra Leone – where his father was born. Led by Elba's childhood friend Siaka Stevens, grandson of the former Sierra Leonean prime minister of the same name, the project aims to bring wind-powered renewable electricity to that country for the first time.
“It's a dream, you know, but I'm in the fake business,” Elba said BBC in March. “It's about being self-reliant, it's about creating an economy that is self-sustaining and has growth potential. I’m very interested in redefining the way Africa is seen.”
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