In September over 80 people joined the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) to discuss Hollywood’s role in telling stories about Africa. Human rights lawyer, Huffington Post blogger, and former teen actor Anthony Morgan joined actor, director, writer Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine on a panel moderated by AMREF executive director Anne-Marie Kamanye to lead the conversation.

1. Africa Through the Hollywood Lens
Presented by:
AMREF’S Coffeehouse Speakers Series
on global development
Featuring:
Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine
and Anthony Morgan

2. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with
stereotypes is not that they are untrue,
but that they are incomplete.
They make one story become the only story”
--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of the Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus
Quotable

3. Out of Africa, 1985

4. Reaching wide audiences is valuable, but problems
can develop when simplification edges towards
distortion.
-- “What Hollywood tells us about war and poverty” The Guardian
Quotable

5. The Gods Must be Crazy was
banned in Trinidad and Tobago
following protests claiming that the
film was racist.
The film was very popular
worldwide, however, grossing over
$100 million.
Did you know?

6. The power of film as a particular representational genre
is clearly a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that
films can convey a visceral sense of a given situation or
issue more vividly than any academic text or policy report.
--The Projection of Development: Cinematic Representation as An(other)
Source of Authoritative Knowledge? World Bank Study 2013
Quotable

7. “"Beyond Borders" has good
intentions and wants to call attention
to the plight of refugees, but what a
clueless vulgarization it makes of its
worthy motives. Of course there's
more than one way to send a
message, and maybe this movie will
affect audiences that wouldn't see
or understand a more truthful
portrait of refugees.”
---Roger Ebert Movie Review Beyond Borders
Quotable

8. Films produced in developing countries tend to be
received by western audiences as being closer to
reality. Such films, can influence poor policies by
foreign nations.
-- “What Hollywood tells us about war and poverty” The
Guardian
Did you know?

9. “It is impossible to engage properly with a place or a
person without engaging with all of the stories of that
place and that person. The consequence of “the
single story” is this: it robs people of their dignity. It
makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.
It emphasizes how we are different rather than how
we are similar.”
--- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of the Yellow Sun and
Purple Hibiscus
Quotable

10. Blood Diamond, 2006

11. Fearing that the popularity of the film Blood Diamond
would affect sales, the World Diamond Council spent $15
million on a public relations and education campaign in the
months before the movie was released.
The Diamond Council tried to persuade Blood Diamond's
director to add a disclaimer to the film that would cite the
Kimberley process and note that Sierra Leone's civil war
was long over.
--Ethics on Film: Discussion of "Blood Diamond“, Carnegie Council for
Ethics in International Affairs
Did you know?

12. “It is the storyteller who makes us what we are,
who creates history.”
--- Chinua Achebe, author
Quotable

13. It is instructive to recognize the value of films as an
archive of popular ideas about the vicissitudes
of development, as reflections of the prevailing societal
zeitgeist, and last but not least, as powerful teaching
tools for bringing alive and humanizing important,
if inherently vexing, global issues.
--The Projection of Development: Cinematic Representation as An(other)
Source of Authoritative Knowledge? World Bank Study 2013
Quotable