Content area
Full Text
Kwaw Ansah, one of Africa's leading filmmakers, was born in 1941 in Ghana. Ansah's career training has been rich and multifaceted. After studying theater design in London, he went to the United States where he took courses in drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, as well as at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Shortly thereafter, Ansah decided to go to Hollywood, where he studied film production at R.K.O. Studios. Also a dramatist and a musician, Kwaw Ansah has two plays to his credit: The Adoption, produced off-Broadway and then at Columbia University in New York, and Mother's Tears, staged later on in Ghana, where it met with instant popular success. In the early 1970s, Ansah went back to Ghana and set out to put into practice what he had learned abroad. For two years, he worked as production assistant and set designer with the Ghana Film Industry. In 1977, with a few friends, Ansah started his own production company, Film Africa Limited, based in Accra.
Kwaw Ansah's first motion picture, Love Brewed in the African Pot, was released in 1980. It encompasses a number of themes related to one central issue: the clash between indigenous traditions and European influences in pre-independence Ghana (1951). The film won a number of international awards, including the Oumarou Ganda Prize for "a most remarkable direction and production in line with African realities" at the 1981 FESPACO (Panafrican Film Festival of Ouagadougou) held in Burkina Faso. Likewise, Love Brewed in the African Pot was awarded the Jury's Special Silver Peacock Award for Feature Films at the 8th International Film Festival of India, and the UNESCO Film Prize in France in 1985.
Heritage Africa ,Ansah's second fiction film, was made in 1988. The following year it received the "Etalon de Yennenga" (First Prize) at the biennial FESPACO. The film had its Canadian premiere at the CELAFI (Celebrating African Identity) Conference, held 7-12 July 1992 in Toronto, Canada, where the following interview was conducted.
Pfaff: Kwaw Ansah, you stated some ten years ago that, as a filmmaker, you were engaged in making films from the perspective of "cultural revitalization." Could you explain what you meant and whether or not you are still making the same type of films?
Ansah:...