Writing and producing in Africa 2, results 2019
Related project
Writing and producing in Africa 2In 2019, CFI provided support for the production of several projects for African television series in the areas of writing, coaching actors, directing and production management.
One of these projects was Oasis, a Togolese series comprising twenty 26-minute episodes produced by Yobo Studios. A workshop focusing on production management and all its components (production assistants, general production, etc.) run by a Senegalese expert, Ousmane Fall, provided training to five young people from Togo, who then joined the film crew. This series has been broadcast on Canal+ Afrique since December 2019.
For the series Doame, produced by Senegalese company Prod Sympa, a writing workshop run by screenwriter Alain Patetta was held in Senegal for five young people aged between 25 and 30, to teach them the basics of writing a television series and produce all the scenes for the eight 52-minute episodes in the series with the help of remote supervision. Filming is scheduled to start in 2020.
Tool for raising awareness and generating debate in sensitive areas
In 2018 and 2019, CFI organised numerous writing workshops in Dakar and Saint-Louis, run by showrunner* Charli Beleteau, for the series Wara (ex-Bruits de tambours), in order to train six screenwriters on how to write episodes in a 45-minute format. Wara was the central element of an awareness-raising programme, run in Senegal and financed by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), for social change and promotion of a participatory and inclusive democracy, in favour of women and young people in particular. This series was also part of the activities carried out under the MediaSahel project developed by CFI and funded by the AFD in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. For this project, the televised series will be adapted for radio and translated into four local languages to serve as a tool for raising awareness and generating debate in sensitive areas of Sahel. The radio adaptation will be called Dianké.
Produced by Senegalese company Keewu Productions, Wara will benefit from significant visibility as it will be broadcast exclusively to 291 million households that make up the TV5 Monde audience over the course of 2020.
Finally, the second edition of “Afrique au féminin” brought together seven producers from seven different countries to discuss and report on the subject of the role of women in African society. The reports envisaged and produced were shown on Canal+ Afrique on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2019 during a special edition of the programme Enquête d’Afrique.
* Somebody who directs the writing and coordinates the screenwriting team of a television series
