Togo, a country without cinema
It was probably Carl Müller, a German filmmaker, who filmed the Togo landscape for the first time in 1906. However, these films were not intended to be screened in the country, except for a few wealthy people, because the colonizer's organizations had no interest in setting up a distribution system for the local population. The first public screening of cinema in Togo took place in 1913 not far from Atakpamé, when another expedition crossed the region to film an Anglo-German production entitled The Lost Girl
. In the 1910s, it was mainly itinerants who projected a few views or cinematographic curiosities here and there, without much trace for film historians. The peace and the passage under French domination in the middle of the decade did not contribute to the development of a cinema economy, because the new masters of the place had little confidence in this mass medium that they preferred to keep away from the locals. Worse still, the implementation of the Laval decree in the French colonies in 1934 purely and simply prevented the development of national creation, forcing the small cinemas to close, even though they were beginning to spring up in Lomé on the initiative of Togolese who were fond of cinema. After independence, it was not until the 1970s that real policies for the promotion of the seventh art were put in place by the State, with the creation in 1976 of the Service du cinéma et des actualités audiovisuelles, under the direction of Komi Ati. At the same time, Sanvi Panou, a Togolese musician and filmmaker, played in Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967) as well as in La Grande Lessive (1968) alongside Bourvil, two French productions. In 1990, Panou opened the cinema and arts space La Clef in Paris, promoting a cinema of diversity, before moving on to directing in 1998 with Pressions, a short film on political exile. A career that he still pursues today.Break-up and reconstruction of Togolese cinema
In the early 1990s, the fragile economy of the cinema collapsed when subsidies from the National Organization of the Francophonie were cut off, due to the political unrest in the country. Few national films managed to find their way into the few active Togolese cinemas. Among the active directors of this period, we can mention Anne-Laure Folly, who travelled the region and made several documentaries on the situation of African women. Femmes aux yeux ouverts, released in 1994, won the silver medal at the Monte Carlo documentary festival. Since the 2010s, Togolese cinema has taken off, supported by figures such as Christelle Aquéréburu, who opened Togo's first film school in 2009. Since 2018, a Togolese film week has been held every year, and a new Code of Cinema and the Moving Image established in September 2021 now regulates and supports a growing sector. Among recent productions that have crossed borders, Madie Foltek's series Oasis , with a cast from many countries in the region, is doing very well on Canal+ Africa, while the projects of La Maison Junior, an animation series co-written between Africa and Europe, brings together young people from France and Togo. Finally, festivals such as Émergences or the Francophone Film Festival, both held in Lomé, contribute to the dynamism of a national creation that is now, finally, on the rise.
