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Cameroon struggle with animation film business

Cameroon struggle with animation film business

Cameroon

The eyes reverted on the small screen, Josepha Mbarga and his small brothers are watching “4×4” an animation film in Cameroon. The short film was presented for the first time at the black Screens festival 2016.

“I am quite captivated by the originality. I see the actors. The settings in scenes are magnificent. And what is even more interesting is the message that is conveyed in this animation film. It is just wonderful to appreciate. We can see the context in which it lives, mainly in Africa. We find our values our culture, it is quite beautiful” she said.

The Director of the film, Steve Ndoumbe, is one of the pioneers in the production of animation films in Cameroon. It was in a small studio poorly isolated to the ESSOS neighborhood in Yaoundé, the economic capital, of the country that Steve, shared the passion in the production of the cartoon.

“It’s been realized that in the context of film, and in the media, there is obviously no installment reserved for these young people. We are in the process of working on a series of animation, on an age range of 3 to 6 years, for more young people” he added.

Seven animation films have already been produced by his team. Once the drawings are made, then, they return to the computer where the facilitator makes the moves of the characters.He gives life to the image.

“When I say here are the movement that I must apply to a character, I try a little to make the movement, for this to be a movement, when someone is looking at, he recognizes that it is not anything imagined,“a 3D Animator,Antoine Onomo explained.

Ndoumbe wants to give the content of the animation film, an African soul. The daily experiences of Africans, math or sciences are conveyed here through the cartoon.

“Thanks to animation films, the more young people will be able to understand where they came from. Today, most of the films make reference to animals that is, it uses the animals in place of people. But if you go a back in history, you will see that this begun in Africa from our stories. The whites take what we have done, they put in their context and it becomes much better, assessing that with us also, it can be done,” he said.

The passionate young people in the animation films have decided to continue the adventure, despite the modest means. They hope to find the necessary funding to acquire state-of-the-art equipment capable of achieving animation films and even compete with those from the west.

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