KWAW P. ANSAH

Kwaw P. Ansah is one of Africa’s leading filmmakers. He was born in 1941 in Ghana, West Africa. He studied theatre design in London and attended the AmericanAcademy of Dramatic Arts and the American Musical and DramaticAcademy in the United States. Ansah studied film production at R.K.O. Studios in Hollywood. Upon his return to Ghana in the early 1970s, he worked for the Ghana Film Industry as production assistant and set designer. In 1977 he started his own production company, Film Africa Limited, based in Accra. He supported himself and his family through commercial work, but at the same time longed to make feature films that could tell African stories for African audiences.

His first feature film, Love Brewed in the African Pot (1980), tells the love story of a woman and man from very different backgrounds and develops themes relating to class and cultural differences and the modernization and loss of tradition in pre-independence Ghana. It was an enormous popular and critical success. Mr. Ansah’s second and best known feature film, Heritage Africa (1988), is considered one of the most powerful and innovative films to come out of English-speaking Africa. The film makes profound statements about colonialism, decolonization, and internalized oppression. Heritage Africa won the top prize at FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) in 1989.

Since Heritage, Ansah has limited his film work to documentaries, with Crossroads of People; Crossroads of Trade (1994), funded by the Smithsonian Institute. He was also heavily involved, serving as Co-Executive Producer, in the 1996 continent-wide project, Hopes On the Horizon. The Golden Stool: The Soul of the Asantes appeared in 2001.

Much of his time these days is spent as a crusader for African filmmaking and dramatic art, working ceaselessly for improved funding and distribution of African films within Africa. He has been chairman of FEPACI - the Federation of African Filmmakers - and a leader in the direction of FESPACO, the showcase festival for films from Africa and the African diaspora. He is the founder and currently CEO of TV Africa, an independent television network in Ghana.

Kwaw Ansah is highly appreciated in his own country, where he is a mentor to many young artists, and has received a number of Ghanaian awards. In 1998 he was awarded the Acrag Prize, the Living Legend Award for Contribution to the Arts of Ghana. It is a profound honor for us to have him here in Portland to help the Cascade Festival of African Films celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Ghana’s independence.

--Notes by Michael Dembrow

Cascade Festival of African Films

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