Animation In Ghana Films

The history animation is very fascinating and developed alongside motion picture in the 1890s when films were at it early stages of development. Since that time, the film industry has grown alongside the animation industry. And this year the film that had made so much money and restores some sanity in financial books of Disney is the animation film Frozen (2014).

Let come back home in Ghana, the Ghana film industry started with the colonial administration in the 1940s down to the resign of Nkrumah who curve out the vision for the film industry in the 1960s. The Ghana film industry took off without an animation background.

But Ghana is a blessed country as it founding fathers laid a solid foundation for the nation. NAFTI explored all angles in motion pictures and on regular basis pass out students who do animation as their project work. Most often, you are likely to watch some great animated films during their week celebration and at certain of their seminars.

There use to be a happy marriage between National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and GBC now GTV called Time with NAFTI where some of these films are shown. But mostly the short films were shown rather than the animation. And for sponsorship reasons the marriage didn’t work and many governments have made attempt to salvage the marriage to no avail.

The impact of this on the conscience of the nation was a generation growing up with good taste for feature films and no taste for home made animation. So over the years the film industry has grown leaving behind the animation industry.

Even when Ghana films were surfing the high tides in the 1990s there were no animation films.  Many Ghanaians can recall their best films in those times but not an animated film.

So here we are today, with a growing film industry Kumawood films and Glamour films (Accra films) with no animated films. This is not to say that there has never existed a feature animated films in Ghana, they do exist, but it has not been marketed well and it has not caught up with the masses.

Animation has moved on to 3D, Ghana is still struggling with the basics Winsor McCay and Walt Disney sketched cartoons. In recent times UTV shows a man weaving kente in 3D, maybe this is something we can smile about, it shows all is not lost.