In the early 1920s, individuals in the private sector brought film to the Gold Coast by opening cinemas in urban areas.
By 1923, cinema has become a new form of entertainment, and only the affluent could see the films that were exhibited at the cinemas. Later on, cinema vans were used in rural areas.
In 1948, when the British Colonial Administration discovered that film, besides its entertainment values, could be used to “brainwash and transform society” in the direction of the filmmaker, decided to establish the Gold Coast Film Unit at the Information Services Department of the colonial government.
Film became another system, considered to be scientifically appropriate, to influence society.
The Gold Coast Film Unit used green-yellow Bedford buses to screen documentary films, newsreels and government information films to the public. Attendance was free.
The films included propaganda films about World War II, which were produced by the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) in London. After the war, the unit produced educational films and feature films for their African colonies.
The films were designed to contrast the Western “civilised” way of life with the African “backward” way of life. They suggested “superstitious” customs should be ceased.
The Gold Coast Film Unit, also produced films with local interest to encourage improvements in health, crops, living, marketing and human cooperation. In 1948, the Gold Coast Film Unit began to train local African filmmakers. Films were exchanged with other British colonies in Africa.
The Ghana Film Industry started in the early part of the 1980s. Before Ghana Film Industry, the government of Ghana, who inherited the film industry from the colonial government, was the only producer of films in the country.
President Kwame Nkrumah, in 1964 established the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) at Kanda, in Accra. GFIC now houses TV3, a private Malaysian TV station. President Kwame Nkrumah sent a lot of Ghanaians abroad to learn filmmaking purposely for the running of the GFIC.
Ghana had professionally trained filmmakers who were employed by the Government to produce films for the socioeconomic development of the country. Legends such as Christian Tsui Hesse, Ernest Abbeyquaye, Kwaw Ansah and many others were all trained by the Government, under the leadership of President Nkrumah.
The Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) was established to use indigenous Ghanaian-made films to reverse the negative impact of the films made by the British colonial administration and to restore the pride of being a Ghanaian and an African in the citizens.
The Ghana Film Industry Corporation was making films to serve the purpose of building self-reliance in the African people. More than 150 feature and documentary films were produced by the GFIC by the late 1960s. After the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966, the film industry in Ghana had a nose down.
In 1980, the first independent film, Love Brewed in the African Pot, was produced by Kwaw Ansah, one of the legendary filmmakers in Ghana.
The film was shot on celluloid film. After that, King Ampaw also followed suit with the release of his film Kukurantumi – The Road to Accra in 1982. By the middle of the 1980s, the new generation in Ghana, led by William Akuffo, decided to adapt the new video technology that was introduced to the world in 1978, for the production of films.
The Video Home System (VHS) cameras were used to shoot feature-length films in 1986 in Ghana. The idea was to tell the Ghanaian and African narrative by the Africans.
Ghana was the first country in the world to use VHS cameras to shoot feature-length films. By the end of the 1980s, Ghana could boast of several films produced in Ghana on VHS tapes cassettes.
Since the late 1980s, the making of direct-to-video films has increased in Ghana. Funds for cinematography were hard to come by for both the state-owned Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) and independent film-makers.
Therefore, people in Ghana began to make their films using VHS video cameras. The independent filmmakers created their own Ghanaian stories and scripts for the films, assembled actors, both professionals and amateurs and made successful films. Income from these VHS video movies helped to support the film industry.
In the 1980s, when the filmmakers started making the video films, GFIC rose bitterly against it.
The authorities of the GFIC did not see the future of video technology becoming part of the global format of filmmaking so they practically rose against it and made it difficult for the independent producers in Ghana at the time.
GFIC prohibited their film directors to assist independent producers in making video films.
The consequence of this decision of GFIC caused the country to lose professionalism in the art of filmmaking in Ghana. The producers were forced to start directing their video films.
This culture of producing and directing without any professional training in filmmaking woud become the controllable culture in the next three decades.
After some years, GFIC started to offer technical support to the VHS filmmakers in exchange for the right to first screening in its Accra cinemas.
Their films had become very popular since Ghanaians were seeing true narratives of who they were through these films made by indigenous Ghanaian filmmakers. By the early 1990s, approximately fifty VHS video movies per year were made in Ghana. Over time, professional and amateur filmmakers in Ghana produced films of similar quality and garnered equal respect.
In 1996, the Government of Ghana sold seventy per cent of the equity in the GFIC to the Malaysian television production company, Sistem Televisyen Malaysia Berhad of Kuala Lumpur. The GFIC was renamed “Gama Media System Ltd”. This also affected the rising film industry in the country.
GFIC was in charge of about half the cinema theatres in the country at the time. The sales of 70% of GFIC collapsed the cinema industry.
The company had little interest in film making and so the film industry in Ghana continued with independent filmmakers whose funding relied on the popular appeal of the films.
In 1997, Ghanaians and Nigerians started making collaboration films that introduced Nigerian film directors such as Ifeanyi Onyeabor (a.k.a. Big Slim), Rev. Tony Meribe-White and later around 2006, the Nigerian filmmaker Frank Rajah Arase who was brought in by Ifeanyi Onyeabor as his personal or production assistant.
He also grew to become a movie director and collaborated with Venus Films, a Ghanaian production company, to produce aseveralfilms that brought out Ghanaian popular actors who could access work in Nigeria (Nollywood).
Some of the actors included Van Vicker, Jackie Appiah, Majid Michel, Yvonne Nelson, John Dumelo, Nadia Buari and Yvonne Okoro. Some Nigerian producers have filmed in Ghana where production costs are lower.
In 2017, the Ndiva Women’s Film Festival, an African film festival for women filmmakers and audiences, was established in Accra.
