I can’t say I am someone who is enthusiastic about contemporary Cameroonian movies. For a long time, I have had my silent reserves about the industry as a whole. I grew up on Cameroonian movies like ‘Pousse Pousse’ by Daniel Kamwa and ‘Quartier Mozart’ by Jean Pierre Bekolo and these references are the bedrock of my reservations about what is done today.
Top of my list of reservations is that I’ve found in our movies a begrudging similarity to their Nigerian counterparts. That is, rush the process and have something for the market in two weeks without much ado about content. Apart from this (and perhaps the greatest testament to my reservations) is the mild obsession with having top Nigerian actors feature in what is aimed to be high profile Cameroonian movies.
For a budding movie industry which, at its infancy, I think should focus on sourcing and growing local talent, I find that to be quite a jejune manner of going about things. A typical metttre-les-charrures-avant-les-boeufs manner of execution. But the hoi polloi seems to be enjoying it, so what do I know?
Same as I have always thought that Cameroonian movies seemed at some point to be made solely for the aim of taking cool pics at the red carpet premiere and to carry around the title of ‘Producer’ around Molyko, our Hollwood-du-pauvre. No offence to Molyko
And so for a long time, I lost interest. Not only because of my opposition to the operational status quo, but simply because I had caught glimpses of a few movies and they didn’t captivate me. The last Cameroon movie I watched is “A Little Lie. A little Kill” and that was like 5 years ago. Overall, I would say I found it tolerable. But that's just me. No offence to Tebo Njei.
But to say Stephanie Tum and Embi Productions have awoken a desire in me to go watch a Cameoonian movie might be a bit of an understatement. I really, really want to watch “Saving Mbango.”
What sparked my interest is the campaign that led to the premiere of the said movie. The very first thing I noticed was that the bulk of the promotion was done from the production house’s (Embi Productions) Facebook page. Usually, it’s the actors who do the promo and it sometimes dissolves into a "m’as-tu vu" competition and then the substance of the whole thing gets lost in the haystack.
What I also noticed was the kind of Information Value approach that Embi Productions took on with the Promotion. Their social media campaign was geared on teaching the Cameroonian public about the movie industry in general. I saw a series of well-written articles about the movie industry in general and how they took this general knowledge and reduced it to how it was specific to the movie ‘Saving Mbango’.
Also, they made it worth the while of the public at some point by creating a competition out of these general knowledge questions. A series of questions were asked and winners who gave the right answers were given free tickets to the premiere and thus driving engagement for the movie. Perhaps the one thing they missed there was the opportunity to drive conversation further online.
For example, every person who won a ticket could have been asked to send in their photo to Embi productions and a have a special filter with “I’m going to watch Saving Mbango” added to the photo. The person is then asked to share this photo on his/her platform. This further drives conversation and extends the social media reach. There are other ways to go about it but you get the idea…
This value-creating-mixed-with-engagement strategy was really good. I mean, I didn’t know that the first film in Cameroon was directed by Dia Moukouri, or that in 1973 there were 32 movie theatres in Cameroon!
And the pictures! Oh my goodness, the pictures! It was clear that Embi productions carried a professional photographer everywhere they went. The pictures of the media tour and every picture featured on their page to promote the movie are of good quality. And then there were all the pictures of the premiere that was released on their Facebook page.
The backdrop too was well done, and not crowded with 25 sponsors, looking like a rainbow shat on it… like we so often see.
In all honesty, I’m a fan of their Facebook page.
Going forward, a tough road now lies ahead of Embi Productions. After Saving Mbango must have run its theatrical run, the question we will be asking is what else? Will the page go dark? What kind of content will they produce? How will they keep giving us value and growing their community and thereby ensuring that moviegoers and theatres play their movies? That is the nut they have to crack now. And I can tell you from my experience producing content for PoiseSocial that it is not easy. Already, I'm seeing fewer and fewer posts on their page
As for the movie, I have not watched it yet. I will whenever I am able to. I just hope I will not be disappointed. I may admire what Stephanie Tum and her team have done so far in promoting the movie but I still carry my reservations about the industry in my pocket.
I sincerely hope that Mbango will save me from it. . - Wandji Wilfred.
.📸: Stephanie Tum's Instagram
*Enter the Ballantine's #TrueMusicChallenge by submitting a no-more-than 59 secs video of yourself singing to any song of your choice here: https://www.ballantines.com/…/competi…/true-music-challenge…
**Stephanie Tum and Embi Productions are not associated with Ballantines or with the True Music Challenge.