-My recollections of a prominent Ethiopian filmmaker
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
A life entirely devoted to the cinema
My first encounter with the filmmaker started 14 years ago. I met Solomon Bekele Weya for the first time sometime back in 1991 when I was assigned editor-in-chief of the short-lived Dawn English language magazine, the successor to the defunct Yekatit magazine. A few years earlier, I had seen his movie entitled Aster, which impressed me very much as the first full-length Ethiopian feature film with a very interesting story line. Before he made Aster, Solomon had produced a number of documentaries soon after he returned from Europe where he stayed for more than 14 years and studied film, as his major area of interest while at the same time enrolling in the department of literature when he was living in France.
When I met him at that time, Solomon was a younger, handsome man with a rather medium height and big eyes that combine with his smile to make him a very charming man. His eyes were so vivid and his smile and speech so energetic that they left a lasting impression in me. I realized Solomon had a deep commitment to his craft because he never tired talking about movies and movie making with an adult’s professional touch and a childish obsession. His was frank about his career as well as his life and spoke with characteristic honesty whenever he raised any topic for discussion. His sense of humor and truthfulness left a lasting impression in me and we had many encounters afterwards, all devoted to cinema and the highs and lows of movie making in Ethiopia.
At a time, when the local motion picture industry started to make some baby steps back in the 1990 and when there was much confusion about what a movie was, Solomon stepped forward to tell his audience that there was a radical difference between what is a film made with video camera and the authentically modern cinema made by big studios with big budgets and professional cameras. Solomon’s arguments in some way helped to clear the confusion and helped the public and younger filmmakers get a scientific notion about what modern cinema was all about.
Strangely enough, those years were not fruitful ones for Solomon as far as making films was concerned. The change of government and the advent of a new regime to power did not augur well for the young professional who refused to produce movies with video camera that he considered to be below his dignity as a professional. The advent of the video camera almost made everyone a potential “cinematographer” which was as he once remarked, had a demeaning impact on the growth of truly professional producers and directors.
Nevertheless, Solomon was nor discouraged by the above turned and he continued to preach the gospel of genuine cinematography while refusing to turn his film scripts, that were of high professional standards, into movies. He repeated attempts to solicit the support of European film companies to finance his movie projects ended in failure because Solomon’s scripts were serious with theme and storytelling as they dealt with serious political and social issues. European film companies did not favor them simply because they radically depart from what the studios wanted to produce, namely films with Eurocentric touches and contents.
Solomon belongs to the generation of African filmmakers such as Sembene Ousman who were devoted to the continent’s political liberation from European colonialism and expressed these ideas with radical cinema products that advocated true liberation of Africa and Africans. European film companies considered these ideas expressions of dissent and a new wave in African cinema. Solomon Bekele’s ideas were too big and perhaps too radical and too un-European and failed to convince studio managers to consider these projects.
In a way, Solomon’s fate was similar to that of his friend Haile Gerima who faced insurmountable difficulties during his filming career with one difference that Haile was a much more aggressive character when it came to defending his views and finding other alternatives than that of knocking at the doors of big American studios that were closed to radical filmmakers like him.
Solomon had a much more calm and tolerant as well as patient personality and the capacity to survive the odds and wait for more favorable days. In my view, Haile is much more restless, much more vocal in speaking out his mind and in rebuffing any quarters that tried to undermine his career as a filmmaker. Yet, both of them belong to that generation of highly conscious, articulate, well-educated and patriotic generation of artists who did big achievements to their credit in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds.
Politically, I found Solomon to be subtler in expressing his views while Haile was unafraid to express even the most radical of his views maybe because he had a double nationality that might have protected him against state repression and provided him a relatively larger window of opportunity to speak his mind during radio interviews or one-on-one discussions of serious matters, including the fate of Ethiopian cinema in the hands of the so-called new generation of producers and directors.
Haile was critically of these guys who tried to be everything at the same time and made movie making a one-man show, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Many younger filmmakers who called themselves, script writers, directors, producers and actors all in one pack, did not of course like Haile’s critical utterances although the veteran man of cinema did not care much about the verbal counter offensive by the new generation and the tug of war between the two generations.
Solomon was not however discouraged by rejections of his projects or by the state of underdevelopment of the domestic film industry that suffered from shortage of budgets, skills and technology. He tried to join a group of film enthusiasts who tried to open a film school in order to address these shortcomings. He joined the group with much enthusiasm but soon fell into disappointment with the people who were running the planned school because, as he told me at the time, they had no sufficient knowledge of cinema and what it takes to set up a truly effective film education center. The project soon flopped as he left the group and there were not many people who could replace him at that time.
The young man who returned from Europe to put his education and skills to the benefit of the development of the arts of cinematography was soon threatened with unemployment. His brief stint with the Ethiopian Film Corporation did not produce the positive effects he hoped he could create. As he told me later on during one of our earlier encounters, the notorious bureaucracy at the Ethiopian Film Corporation (EFC) and the very intimidating political environment at the Ministry of Culture where he was hired, tended to frustrate yet again he grand vision for Ethiopian cinema. After his disappointment with the EFC, Solomon left the world of the cinema for the time being and went to the German Cultural Institute to teach the German language he mastered during his sojourn to Europe.
Solomon’s long commitment to the silver screen started way back in his childhood and the object of his childhood obsession was a photo camera with which he took photographs that fired his imagination although they had no artistic significance. That accidental encounter with the camera contained the first seeds of an interest that obsessed him all his life and took him to Europe at a younger age. Solomon came from a patriotic family and his father, Bekele Weya, fought in the anti-fascist resistance and won public admiration for his bravery and patriotic fervor.
Unlike his father, Solomon’s personality was shaped during the peaceful decades following the end of the resistance and Ethiopia’s independence from the brief Italian occupation. He was thus a member of the generation that came of age during the post-war years and as such he benefitted from the modern education opportunities that were opened right after independence. Like the sons and daughters of many patriots, Solomon studied at the Teferi Mekonnen and then Haile Selassie I secondary schools in the capital Addis Ababa. And like many children of patriots, Solomon too benefitted from higher education when he was sent abroad to study in Europe. His first trip took him to Germany then to England and France from where he graduated after studying linguistics, literature and linguistics from the University Paris VII.
Soon afterwards, his obsession with the camera he discovered during his childhood years reared its head and led him to enroll at the Ecole Nationale de Cinematography Louis Lumiere in Paris. There, he studied script writing, camera editing and feature film directing. Back in Ethiopia after 14 year-long stay in Europe, Solomon put his education to the test of life by writing and directing the first truly feature or fiction film in Ethiopia.
Solomon Bekele could have revolutionized Ethiopian cinema had he had the opportunity to do so and the environment conducive to put his ideas into practice. Maybe his radical ideas were too much for his time as a result of which he spent much time outside the cinema as a German-language teacher or as an artist-turned bureaucrat at the former Ministry of Culture. Solomon’s toughness and his rejection of hopelessness and depression obviously helped him to swim in harder currents and survive both as a man and as an artist. It is now a long time since I last met Solomon but I know he has survived the odds. During my research for this article, I stumbled into a piece of information that said, “On November 7, 2019, as part of a Wagner College annual international film festival, and Nelson Kim, the English department hosted Ethiopian filmmaker Solomon Bekele Weya.”
The article was entitled, “Ethiopian Filmmaker Solomon Bekele Weya Discusses the Legacy of his Work at Wagner College” and went on to say that Solomon was a prominent member of the founding generation of Ethiopian cinema and that his most famous work is the film Aster, which first exhibited in theatres and in Ethiopia and Europe in 1992. According to the same article, “Aster is often noted as being the first truly Ethiopian-made fictional feature film as the cast and crew were all Ethiopian nationals.”
Some of Solomon’s ideas about the transformations that are needed to make the film industry freer and guided with a clear policy have not still found favorable reception in domestic circles that could introduce a real reform or revolution in Ethiopian cinema. As some observers of the Ethiopian film world often notice, “One of the unfortunate circumstances of Ethiopia’s cinema history is that revolutionary changes in government and government ownership of the original prints of the film mean that there is no distribution or access to most of Solomon’s works.
Others hope that better conditions might emerge in the long run to provide Solomon or anyone interested in reforming Ethiopian cinema to introduce their ideas without fear of reprisal or bureaucratic hurdles. Till then, no doubt that Solomon will keep on fighting for an industry and an art he devoted all his life and energy for. And that is what makes him an exceptional person who refuses to give up his ideals come what may.
The Ethiopian Heraled 17 January
