![]() ![]() ![]() It is an African melting pot and a city of dreams, an El Dorado for fortune-seekers from far and wide since the first prospectors came to this boomtown hoping to strike gold.Īs the Joburg Film Festival and JBX Content Market wrap for 2023, here are our five takeaways: The continent is home to some 1.2 billion people - more than 60% of whom are under the age of 25 - representing a largely untapped consumer market, as well as a source of countless stories still waiting to be told.Ī young, dynamic city of constant reinvention, Johannesburg is the natural place to take the continent’s pulse. Yet long-time players in the African industry have neither ignored nor shied away from such challenges. At least several screenings during the Joburg Film Festival were also disrupted, according to one festival source. It is hard to be bullish on the booming African mobile market when a power cut can take out a 3G network for hours on end. ![]() While much of the talk in Johannesburg centered on the continent’s boundless potential, the rolling blackouts that knocked out power across the city throughout the week were a sobering reminder that not even a country with South Africa’s wealth is immune to massive disruptive forces. The fact that English was the lingua franca at the JBX Content Market this week, however, also meant that the vast market of French-speaking West Africa - dominated by a growing production powerhouse in Ivory Coast - was largely a no-show. The major markets of South Africa and Nigeria still dominate the conversation at such events global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video see those territories as key to their expansion plans on the continent and beyond. There’s no clear-cut portrait that can emerge from an industry gathering on a continent as rich and diverse as Africa, where film and TV production and consumer trends - as with everything else - vary widely from one country to the next. Earlier in the week, the first edition of the JBX Content Market - a two-day industry confab running parallel to the fest - concluded after offering a short but wide-ranging overview of the state of play for Africa’s screen industries in 2023. The fifth Joburg Film Festival wrapped Sunday night with the caper comedy “The Umbrella Men,” from homegrown director John Barker, a local premiere that cast and crew celebrated by promenading through Nelson Mandela Square with brightly colored parasols. ![]()
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