International actors urged to learn African languages, culture for films

Clement Manyathela speaks to actor Anthony Oseyemi, and award winning filmmaker Godisamang Khunou, for more

In recent years, America has often been guilty of problematic stereotypes, and the inaccurate portrayal of accents, when it comes to films about Africa and its people. This leads to the question: Do international production companies and actors need to invest in learning more about African languages and culture, when making films about the continent?

Movies like Black Panther received backlash about African languages accents, including badly spoken IsiXhosa.

Countries like South Korea have been advancing in creating films, in their own languages, for worldwide distribution. African filmmakers and creators are being urged to invest more into being advocates, for indigenous languages and culture, in international films.

Clement Manyathela spoke to actor Anthony Oseyemi and an award-winning filmmaker, Godisamang Khunou. They were in the studio to talk about the importance of African stories, told by Africans, in African languages.

Khunou has praised research done for Black is King - a movie by Beyonce Knowles-Carter.

If people speak vernacular, then you also need to get the vernacular right. There is a lot of stuff that us filmmakers and creators we still need to go through the processes, we need have to abandon the idea that we have to emulate anybody else, and the other thing is you need to be prideful and speak your language fully.

Anthony Oseyemi, Actor

It is authentic, the more authentic it is, our films do very well internationally if it is very authentic to us. I was just thinking Black is King by Beyonce, it was just so stunning because there was research when the Kenyan's jump, all of South Africa, people were watching, seeing and hearing us, in songs was beautiful.

Godisamang Khunou, Filmmaker

Hollywood needs to let go of this fantasy and see how beautiful Africa actually is, how beautiful and colourful the accents are, and take that.

Godisamang Khunou, Filmmaker

Listen to the full interview below...

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