Kwaw Ansah & African Cinema

As an independent filmmaker, Kwaw Ansah has exercised creative autonomy through film to create unadulterated expression and commentary on the social, cultural, and political themes of a people fighting for unrestricted independence in such a way that his artwork deconstructs the inner workings of the oppression of the collective African identity through film.  According to Ukadike, ‘Black African Cinema has developed under the disparate circumstances of a colonial past and a neocolonial present and it has been used for bureaucratic and propagandistic purposes rather than a tool for the economic, social, and political advancement and development of the African countries.’
       
“Black African cinema did not develop under the same circumstances as European or American cinema. Besieged by European colonizers, African cinema was not controlled by Africans until the 1960’s, when Africans began to achieve independence and make their own feature films.”

Kwaw Ansah expressed remorse about the issue himself during an interview with Kofi Anyidoho when he stated, “I feel the governments of Africa should really see the need for film as a developmental tool for the continent. Developed countries would not have attained their level of development without film playing a central role.”