LOVE BREWED IN THE AFRICAN POT (1980, Ghana, 125 min.), directed and produced by Kwaw P. Ansah; screenplay by Kwaw Ansah; cinematography by Chris Tsui Hesse; music composed by Kwaw Ansah and Sammy Lartey; edited by Tony Palmer & Bernard Odjidja; with Anima Misa (Aba Appiah), Reginald Tsiboe (Joe Quansah), George Wilson (Kofi Appiah), Jumoke Debayo (Araba Mansah, Aba’s mother); Kofi Yirenkyi (Lawyer Bensah), Emmanuel Agebenowu (Father Quansah), Kwesi Kay (Fred Dickson), Emmanuel Dadson (Kolo Appiah); George Browne (Councillor Benson). In English.

Boiling water is poured onto a heap of tea leaves resting on the bottom of a teapot, sending them swirling and roiling until they eventually settle again at the bottom. But the water is now suffused with the traces of their pungent, complex flavor. This is the very apt central metaphor evoked in the title of Kwaw Ansah’s first feature film. It is an appropriate metaphor for all good drama, but particularly so for a film set in an African country in transition, trying to achieve a new blend of the traditional and the modern, of values old and new. Love Brewed in the African Pot was in many ways a ground-breaking film when it was made in 1980, and its central themes remain relevant today.

Ansah set this film in 1951, during the last years of the colonial period (independence would finally come in 1957), but his interest here is not in the politics of colonialism, nor in the struggle for independence. Rather, he shows us the way that the conflict between the traditional and the modern plays itself out within individuals in an individual family. Appropriately, he chooses a middle-class family, a member of the emerging African “elite,” caught in the double-bind between conflicting allegiances to their African heritage and to their new European-imposed values. In this film, unlike Ansah’s later film Heritage Africa (1988), little of the political dimension of this conflict is directly articulated.

On the surface, Love Brewed is a fairly straightforward and familiar melodrama, one that could be found almost anywhere in the world. Kofi Appiah, a retired functionary, has sent his daughter, Aba, away to school to “get a good education and learn to be a lady.” The son of a poor fisherman, Kofi has been educated in the Western ways to which he now clings. Bespectacled, nearly always in a tie and vest, his pipe and a piece of sanctimonious advice always at hand, Kofi is a faintly ridiculous figure, but he is at heart a decent man, and he clearly feels great affection for Aba, his first-born daughter. He and his wife Araba have great hopes for her, namely that she will marry into a good, middle-class family (either a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer would do), have an ornate church wedding, and live in blissful, traditional respectability.

Aba, needless to say, has other plans. Soon after her return, she falls head-over-heels in love with a poor fitter (a mechanic), Joe Quansah, one of her brother’s friends. Joe is sweet, simple, and handsome, an easy-going guy with a nice voice and a great smile. He too is quickly smitten, and they are soon planning a life together, despite all that separates them. It is unclear, though, that Joe will have the strength to stand up for the two of them. Does Aba? Will Kofi, a “Modern Man,” force his decision on his daughter? Can the couple remain oblivious to social pressure? All these questions, and many more, drive this story as it walks the line between melodrama and tragedy, as initial bliss turns to ultimate despair.

Ultimately, it is Kofi and Aba who change the most, though in very different and unexpected ways. In the end, we see that the central conflict is not a simple either/or choice between “the traditional” and “the modern.” Rather, it comes down to strength of character and the deep values of generosity, respect, and acceptance that transcend such categories.

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Unlike many African filmmakers, Ansah did not look to agencies and co-producers outside Africa for help in financing his film; he was committed to funding this film entirely through internal commercial means, through bank loans. He believed that this was his best chance of retaining artistic control over the project. He finally received a loan of two million ceddis (about $50,000) from the Social Security Bank, but he had to put up his father-in-law’s house as collateral! Fortunately, the loans were paid off in a timely manner, and his father-in-law was able to keep his house. And Ansah was able to make the movie that he wanted, a skillfully made film geared to a Ghanaian audience, not a Western one. Unlike so many movies made in Africa, where Africans are merely the backdrop to a European story, this film presents us with an all-Black world—not a single white person is to be found in it. And the issues and relationships depicted are completely African.

The primary roles in the film are all played by veteran stage actors. George Wilson, who plays Kofi Appia, was one of Ghana’s foremost actors and a leading force in the promotion of Ghanaian theater. Jomoke Debayo (Araba Mansah), from Nigeria, was well-known for her dramatic work with the BBC, with British ITV television, on the radio, and at the Royal Court House Theatre in London. Reginald Tsiboe (Joe) had also performed extensively in Britain with the Royal Shakespeare Company and on the BBC. Anima Misa, (Aba), is a product of the University of Ghana’s School of Dramatic Arts; she would later play the role of Bosomfield’s wife in Ansah’s 1988 film, Heritage Africa)

Ansah’s hope in making the film was that it would prove to be both popular with African audiences and well-regarded by critics and peers. He was successful on both counts. The film was an immediate popular success throughout English-speaking Africa, handily beating all previous attendance records for a film by an African director, in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. At the same time, the film earned critical acclaim and respect. The film earned awards world-wide, including the prestigious Omarou Ganda Prize, for “most remarkable direction and production in line with African realities” at the seventh Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO)--the first to be awarded a film from an Anglophone country; the UNESCO Film Award in France, and the Jury’s Special Silver Peacock Award, “For a Genuine and Talented Attempt to Find a National and Cultural Identity” at the 8th International Film Festival of India.

Ansah had a third hope in making this film, that its success would help to provide the impetus for the creation of a stable film industry that would assure ongoing film production, freeing directors from having to spend years scrounging for money to make their films. In this, sadly, he was not successful. It would take him nearly ten arduous years to make his second film, and he would not make another feature film after that one.

But there, we tread upon the larger problematics of filmmaking in Africa and the Third World, not to mention the even larger problematics of the global economy today.

--Notes by Michael Dembrow

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