BY STEVEN W. THOMAS
Among the many stories about Ethiopia’s long, multifaceted past and present, an extraordinary transformation that has received less media attention is the dramatic leap forward in its movie industry. Before 2004, Ethiopia was producing only a few movies from time to time. But, by 2015, almost 100 locally produced new features were hitting the theaters in its capital city, Addis Ababa, each year.
Behind the rise of Ethiopian cinema is an even more remarkable tale of the women who – as writers, directors, producers, and scholars – were leaders in this transformation. The prominent role of women in the industry may set Ethiopia apart from most other countries. Across the globe, from Hollywood to Bollywood, film and TV industries have been dominated by men.
On frequent visits in recent years, I’ve met with some of Ethiopia’s prominent filmmakers as well as professors of film and theater history at Addis Ababa University. They are well aware of what the movie industries are like in other parts of the world and point out that Ethiopia, too, is no paradise for women. Sexism and gender disparities in financing and lending to entrepreneurs remain pervasive, despite the nation’s constitution prohibiting discrimination. And while no agency in Ethiopia has analyzed the issue of gender in the media industry, my own informal survey of the lists of films licensed by the Addis Ababa Bureau of Culture and Tourism indicates that the gender ratios are similar to the United States.
What’s different in Ethiopia is women’s influence and success in the movie business. In a highly competitive industry where many people never make more than one movie, women have consistently enjoyed more enduring success as writers, directors, and producers. Films made by women have tended to do better at the box office and have won many trophies at the nation’s annual Gumma film awards.
Quite a few of the “firsts” in Ethiopia’s cinema history were accomplished by innovative women. After the nation transitioned away from the Derg regime, under which film and television were financed and controlled by the government, the first person to risk privately financing an independent movie was Rukiya Ahmed, with Tsetzet (directed by Tesfaye Senke on U-matic in 1993) about a detective solving a murder case.
Later, one of the first movies to make the switch from celluloid to video was Yeberedo Zemen by Helen Tadesse. She originally intended the movie as a situation comedy for Ethiopian TV, but, after a contract dispute, she decided to re-edit the episodes into a single movie. In 2002, it was the first Ethiopian movie shot on VHS to be exhibited in a theater, and it sparked a revolution in the nation’s movie industry.
With the switch from celluloid to VHS, and subsequently to digital filmmaking, local cinema culture blew up, with films growing in number and diversity. Many women seized on the new opportunities to follow Tadesse’s lead, and a number quickly became industry leaders.
One such leader is Arsema Worku, a member of the executive board for Ethiopia’s Film Producers Association, which lobbies on behalf of filmmakers. In addition to being an actress, Arsema Worku has written, directed, and produced movies for theater release. Her most recent feature is Emnet (2016), about a married woman who feels trapped managing the home and caring for her baby all day and dreams of an exciting career of her own.
One of Ethiopia’s most prolific and successful directors is Kidist Yilma. Her popular movie Rebuni (2015) won Ethiopia’s most prestigious award, the Gumma. It is about a young woman, Adey, who fights to protect her grandfather’s small farm from being taken over by a corporation. For all the success of Rebuni, she told me, when I met with her and her husband, actor Amanuel Habtamu, that the film that means the most to her is Meba, a movie that takes the audience inside the head of a schizophrenic patient in a mental hospital.
Based on a true story, Diffret dramatizes the kidnapping of child brides in rural areas by focusing on the court case of a young girl who shot her would-be husband in self-defense. Four years after the film’s release, the real-life lawyer and women’s rights activist Meaza Ashenafi, who inspired the movie’s heroine, became the first woman to be appointed president of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia.
In a highly competitive industry where many people never make more than one movie, women have consistently enjoyed more enduring success as writers, directors and producers. Films made by women have tended to do better at the box office and have won many trophies at the nation’s annual Gumma film awards.
Men and women in the film and media industry have often worked together to tackle difficult and important subjects such as disease, domestic abuse, mental illness, and conflict between the rich and the poor. For example, a movie that won awards at international festivals was The Price of Love (2015), the third movie written and directed by Hermon Hailay. This brutally honest portrait of the life of a prostitute explores human trafficking and the dark underbelly of urban life. Before writing the script, Hermon researched her subject, spending weeks getting to know some of these women, which is perhaps why the movie feels so shockingly real.
Ethiopia is a diverse country of more than 80 ethnic groups. Most filmmakers, whatever their mother-tongue may be, make their movies in Amharic, the national language taught in schools across the country. However, some also choose to make movies in their own language such as Tigrinya, Afan Oromo, or Somali.
Women have shaped the industry in other ways as well. Until 2014, Ethiopia’s television stations tended to produce their own content—mostly news and a few serial dramas—and there was little connection between the movie industry and television. But an entrepreneur named Feven Tadesse envisioned a different way of doing things. She created the first show on Ethiopian television to not only broadcast new, locally made movies but also discuss them. Viewers can vote on their favorite movies via text message. Tadesse’s company, Maverick Films, has also produced two movies, including the Gumma award-winning Lomi Shita, which is a complex, multifaceted reflection upon Ethiopia’s history and its identity.
All of these filmmakers have had different experiences and offer different views on the position of women in the industry. Some consider themselves feminists, some do not. Some have had mostly positive experiences in the industry, but others feel unsupported. And some herald from diverse, international backgrounds, such as the New York-based Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir, whose documentary shorts offer poetic portraits of life. The reality on the ground is complicated, and it is changing.
Ethiopia’s various civic and academic venues contribute positively to the changes by fostering discussion of gender representation. For example, the Alatinos Filmmakers Association has provided a forum where aspiring filmmakers can meet, debate, and share work. Another organization called Sandscribe has hosted free film classes for the public. Addis Ababa University, which famously occupies the grounds of one of the former palaces of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, started a new master’s degree film program in 2014.
A leading expert on the Ethiopian motion picture industry is Eyerusalem Kassahun, a theater arts professor at Addis Ababa University. In addition to teaching classes on stage directing and film history, she has also written, produced, and directed her own movie that was quite successful in the theaters, Traffic Cop (2013), a romantic comedy about a female officer who falls in love with a taxi driver.
Kassahun also wrote the first scholarly article on women’s contributions to Ethiopia’s movie industry for a book called Cine-Ethiopia: the History and Politics of Film in the Horn of Africa published by Michigan State University Press in 2018. Her chapter in that book was a breakthrough. Before she set the record straight, virtually every account of Ethiopia’s movie industry, from scholarly journals to local newspapers in Addis Ababa, had focused exclusively on a handful of prominent men such as Haile Gerima, Michel Papatakis, Solomon Bekele Weya, Birhanu Shibiru, Theodros Teshome, and Henok Ayele. Since her groundbreaking work, perception has begun to catch up with reality.
The women of Ethiopia’s growing movie industry are inspiring. In my conversations with them, they express a love for making movies and a deep appreciation for their colleagues in the industry, both male and female. They also represent a diversity of perspectives. Some make movies foregrounding the value of tradition, family, and community while others champion the aspiration of the individual in a changing world. Some feel quite connected to the centers of power in the movie industry, while others feel marginalized from it or even live in a state of exile from their homeland. Whatever their position, their multicultural contribution to our world is vital.
The Ethiopian Herald July 2021
