There is Hollywood, Bollywood and even Pinewood – but now,
the latest addition to the global silver screen is Ethiollywood

Words | Michel L’Huillier / TCS

TRUE, IT MAY NOT rival Hollywood just yet, but
Ethiopian cinema has undergone an unexpected
growth spurt of late – so much so that it is now
to have its own film academy, the Blue Nile
Film and Television Academy, in Addis Ababa.
Funded in part by a grant from the Rotterdam
Film Festival, it is the latest in a series of encouraging
developments for the country’s film industry, which also,
last year, saw the renovation of one of its most revered and
symbolic institutions: the National Theatre in Addis Ababa.

Built in 1955, at the order of Emperor Haile Selassie,
Ethiopia’s leader for 45 years, the Haile Selassie I National
Theatre, as it was originally named, was once the largest
cinema, theatre and dance venue in Ethiopia, with seating
for 1,200 people. Selassie was overthrown by a Marxist coup
in 1974. His theatre, the symbol of his power and largesse,
was rechristened the National Theatre by the Marxist
dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and went into decline.

It took an international team to later turn back the tide;
the makers of the 2005 IMAX movie Mystery Of The Nile. It
tells the story of the first expedition to navigate the entire
length of the Blue Nile and Nile, from its source in Ethiopia
to the Mediterranean Sea, a journey of 5,000 kilometres, led
by the North American geologist Pasquale Scaturro. It had
already been seen by more than six million people around
the world and finally, Ethiopians would have the chance to
Words | Michel L’Huillier / TCS
see a film about their own country, in their own cinema.

An initiative to provide a copy of the film, restore the
National Theatre’s old projector and change the screen and
sound system came from the film’s producer and director,
Jordi Llompart, Scaturro and Dieter Buchwald, a German
businessman and film enthusiast. They had been fascinated
by the enormous beauty of the scenery of Ethiopia for years.

“Our intention was to make a very special contribution
to Ethiopia; we wanted to offer something which would
awaken hope and enthusiasm in people,” Llompart explains.
Buchwald adds: “We wanted initiatives which help them to
dream… films that illuminate the soul.”

This aim, however, was the least of the challenges they
faced. Mystery Of The Nile had to be transformed from IMAX
film into 35mm format and dubbed into Amharic (the official
language spoken in Ethiopia). For screening purposes, a madeto-
measure screen had to be imported from England (the
original was so dirty that it was impossible to make out a
single image on it) and an expert projectionist was flown out
to “reconstruct” the cinema’s two old projectors.

The movie opened on the Orthodox Christmas Day
(which according to the Ethiopian calender is 7 January) and
before the show began, the authorities blessed the initiative.
(Christianity was embraced in Ethiopia in the 4th century and
for half the population it’s an auspicious day.) However, to put
it into context, the country, which has been devastated by
droughts and the continuous conflicts with Eritrea, remains
one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual per
capita income of less than £75. With basic necessities still
a scarcity, cinema was for most people an unthinkable luxury.

Even so, after months of hard work the National Theatre
now glows again like it did in its heyday. Some, like Carlo Lori,
who was born when Ethiopia was occupied by Mussolini’s
Italian forces, can remember its earlier days.

“The current building was built on top of an older, more
modest one called the Marconi Theatre, which was built
by Italians,” Lori recalls. “It was one of the first cinemas in
Africa and after the expulsion of the Italians in 1941, was
converted into a rubbish dump. Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile
Selassie ordered the Marconi Theatre to be cleaned up,
rebuilt and extended to accommodate the main celebrations
of theatre, dance and folkloric shows to commemorate the
25th anniversary of his coming to power.”

Faced with a lack of local theatre companies, the venue
was first used as a cinema. There was a film in English once a week and another day reserved for Italian cinema, both of which were attended mainly by the well-off. Weekends were
more democratic: you could see three films for the price of a dollar. “On those days,” remembers Lori, “the cinema was full of students and more humble people.”

Otherwise, for the first 20 years, Hollywood dominated.
“That was the golden age of cinema in Ethiopia,” explains
Abebaye Haile, who worked as a secretary for Egyptian
businessman Fathy Ibrahim, the owner of the then only
distributor importing films to Ethiopia, and is now in charge
of importing films for the three cinemas run by the Addis
Ababa Cinema House Administration.

“The same films were on as in European cinemas. This,”
she says, posing next to a poster for The April Fools [1969],
“is one of my favourites, with Catherine Deneuve and Jack
Lemmon, both very young, although The Great Gatsby
[1974] is my all-time favourite.”

The posters that she unfolds are almost completely
obscured under a thick layer of dust; in 1974 Ethiopia’s
new communist regime passed a law that prohibited the
screening of foreign films. “With this law came the end
for lovers of good cinema,” explains Abebaye. These days
she buys in old North American B-movies and secondclass
Bollywood productions, the only films shown since
prohibition was lifted in the 1990s. “It’s a pity,” she laments,
“but there isn’t any money available to bring in better films.”

Despite the newly-renovated National Theatre – and
the promise of the Blue Nile Film and Television Academy
– foreign producers still have to overcome the obstacle of
high taxes. While there have been Ethiopian films that have
made it onto the international circuit, the domestic film
industry has a lot of catching up to do. Prior to the founding
of the Association of Film Makers in Ethiopia in 1992, film fell
under the remit of Mariam’s Cinema Corporation of Ethiopia,
its sole objective being the control of the cinema industry.

“Currently we are trying to improve the level of our
productions through workshops, seminars and grants to
study cinema abroad,” says Tesfaye Mamo, President of the
Association of Film Makers in Ethiopia. Two shining filmmakers
are Solomon Bekele, maker of Aster (1992), an awardwinning
love story centred around a 16-year-old girl, and
Haile Gerima, the award-winning director of Sankofa (1993)
about African’s slave history and Adwa (1999) which is about
the famous battle of 1896 at which the Ethiopians defeated
Italian colonial forces. Both men were trained abroad.

However, film-making in Ethiopia remains a challenge.
“The cinema industry here has hardly developed due to
the lack of resources and equipment,” explains Ermias
Woldeamlack, director of The Father (2001), a film which
recreates the period of Mengistu’s dictatorship. “To shoot the
film, I had to dust off the old equipment that belonged to
the Cinema Corporation of Ethiopia and which had been kept
in a cellar since the fall of the communist regime,” he says.
“It’s a shame, but this equipment has been rotting away.”

Meanwhile Llompart, Scaturro and Buchwald want to
take their efforts further. Llompart says: “Our idea is to
create an itinerant digital cinema to take Mystery Of The
Nile to the rest of the country.” Buchwald adds: “We’d love
a great number of people to have the chance to discover
the beauty of their own country for the first time.”

The Ethiopian National Theatre, Churchill Road,

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, +251 11 551 6347

WHO’S WHO IN ETHIOLLYWOOD

The rising stars and the old guard:
ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the
people to know in Ethiopian cinema

THE YOUNG CARTOONIST

The first Ethiopian to complete a full-length animated film is
Netsanet Kidane-Mariam, a shy 20-something from Addis Ababa.
The film Washa (Cave, 2006) is about a young boy and an Orthodox
priest struggling under Italian occupation in the late 1930s in
the Ethiopian heartland of Gojjam. He is currently working on an
animated movie based on the story of the ancient city of Axum.

THE ‘OLD GUARD’ DIRECTOR

Solomon Bekele teaches film studies at the University of Addis
Ababa and is also one of Ethiopia’s foremost directors. The son of
a dedjazmatch (count), Bekele was born in 1945. He studied film
at the Louis Lumière School in Paris, and went on to make Aster,
Ethiopia’s first colour feature film, in 1992. He still directs and
produces, and has organised film festivals in Africa and Europe.

THE RENAISSANCE MAN

Director Tewodros Teshome is a symbol of the younger generation
of Ethiopian film-makers in that he does it all – from writing, acting
and directing to owning his own cinema. Recently opened just off
the main Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, the Cinema Sebastopol
shows only Ethiopian movies. Teshome’s work includes Kezkaza
Wolafen (Cold Flame, 2003), which deals with the impact of HIV and
Qey Sihtet (Red Mistake, 2006) about Ethiopia’s communist era.

THE ‘DIASPORA’ DIRECTOR

Born in Gondar in 1946, Haile Gerima (right)
emigrated to America in 1968. There he made a
name for himself as a pan-African film-maker,
known best for his slave epic Sankofa (1993),
and Adwa (1999) which tells the story of the
famous battle that Ethiopia won against Italy in
1896, putting a halt to the ‘Scramble for Africa’.

THE SCRIPTWRITER

Serawit Fikre wrote, directed, produced and starred in his
movie Semayawi Feres (The Blue Horse, 2006), a tale in which a
young engineer comes up with a solution to Ethiopia’s drought
problems by harnessing the waters of the Blue Nile.

THE DOCUMENTARY-MAKER

Tikeher ‘Jah’ Teffere, the founder of Exodus Films made Searching For My
Roots about a Rastafarian who comes to settle in Ethiopia, while Leelai
Demoz’s On Tip Toe: Gentle Steps To Freedom, about the African singing
group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, was an Oscar nominee in 2001.

THE BANKROLLER

Winner of countless gold medals for running
and now breaker of the marathon record, Haile
Gebreselassie (left) is a tireless ambassador for
his country. The athlete has also invested some
of his hard-won fortune in two of the most
modern film halls in Ethiopia, the Alem Cinema,
which showcases home-grown films in a modern
and comfortable setting, and the internationallyorientated
Edna Cinema, opened in December 2007.

THE DIVA

In an industry more influenced by the “boulevard melodrama”
style of performance than the Actor’s Studio, Meseret Mebrate
stands out. The young actress, who has a diploma in videography,
shone in the local cinema hit Gudifecha (2005), a story of forbidden
love by Tatek Tadesse and also in her role in Zema Hiwot (Musical
Life, 2006), the story of the struggles of a young singer.