For a long time, men have dominated the film industry in Rwanda, mostly as directors, producers, and scriptwriters. Women, on the other hand, have mostly had their luck in acting while few of them make it to other related fields.
A Rwandan female duo with a passion for film making, however, is determined to change the status quo.
Jacqueline Murekeyisoni, the founder and CEO of Cinéfemmes Rwanda, and Floriane Kaneza festival director of Urusaro International Women Film Festival, currently under CineFemme, want to use their experience and platform to encourage more women passionate about film, to join the industry and take up bigger positions.
"Currently, the industry is mainly designed and directed mostly by men in this country. Women play minor roles, while in ordinary life they have been brave, raising and educating children.
As such, Cinéfemmes Rwanda is committed to promoting the talents of women filmmakers, women film technicians and filmmaking as a new means to express the views and situation of women and for generating income for talented Rwandan women,” Murekeyisoni explains.
Floriane Kaneza, founder of the Urusaro International Women Film Festival. / Courtesy
Cinéfemmes, an association of Rwandan women filmmakers is at the helm of nurturing a new breed of female filmmakers and strives to increase the number of women filmmakers and film technicians through capacity building, support to production and promotional services.
"Our ultimate objective is to support Rwandan women to successfully develop their interest and career in the filmmaking industry, while at the same time paying more attention to the situation and problems of women and promoting gender equality.”
They are organising the fourth edition of Urusaro International Women Festival that will take place from October 4 to 11.
Themed "Woman: Pillar of Cinema”, the festival will screen films from 16 different countries across Africa and beyond, including Kenya, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Senegal, Tunisia, Mozambique, Morocco, Burundi, Djibouti, Somalia, South Africa among others, and will provide an opportunity to bring women together to share experience on how best to improve filmmaking and take it to another level.
The idea for Murekeyisoni, came in 2011 when she had just completed her first film Rukara which was a success.
"Upon the completion of the film many young people came to me seeking for assistance. That is when I realised the need for mentorship for young people mostly women. The association mostly considers women because they are limited in number and yet only tied to acting yet the industry has a lot to it like scriptwriting, film directing, and filmmaking.”
Shortly after Cinéfemmes had opened so many women applied, among them, a 13-year-old girl. They were teamed up altogether to make their own films, and we identified different abilities from all of them. As we continued our project, we realised because of the age difference some young people due to inexperience could not learn as fast as the older ones,” she adds.
Together with her colleague Kaneza, they realised that they could attract more young people to join cinema with the help of their parents.
Kaneza reveals that she derives her inspiration from the starting point of her career.
"I started my career as the only girl in a team of boys. I joined another team of three men for an acting agency and I felt included in what I was doing. I have never been influenced to do something in-depth like I am doing today with CineFemme Rwanda. This is something that touches me as a woman in film and cinema.”
"Many young women,” Kaneza explains, "somehow drift away from cinema due to many factors like having children, lack of funds among many, but we can use our experience to help these young people by introducing them to filmmaking.
This is disturbing and so we thought of influencing them by telling them "you can have a life that we are living in today, we are mothers running companies, festivals, planning productions, working with our families, while living social lives but we continue to consider filmmaking.”
Through their upcoming project, "Let’s make Docs,” they hope to train and develop skills for girls into the field of filmmaking in general by searching their talent, and thus increasing the production in the film industry and the role of girls and women within it.
From scratch to screen, the project will offer space to girls with the purpose of learning and practice all about documentary film making, within a space of one year. The launch of the training will be made in the fourth edition while the documentaries made by the girls will be screened during the fifth edition (2020) as each edition opens up a new wave of girls in documentary film making.
"With ‘Let make Docs, as women filmmakers, we do film making, documentaries and other audiovisual works but we realized that at the starting point, girls and boys are equal in their interests but at a certain point in their career, women are less than five per cent," she said.
editor@newtimesrwanda.com