An explosive start
Gabonese cinema enjoyed a rich first two decades, with talents such as Pierre-Marie Dong and Charles Mensah. Numerous shorts and a few features were produced. One of the first major films shot in Gabon was La Cage (1963), by French director Robert Darène, based on a screenplay by Philippe Mory. This was Gabon's first feature film. It made Gabon the first sub-Saharan African country to enter a film in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Its screenwriter, Philippe Mory, is one of the leading figures of the first decade of Gabonese cinema. He directed Les tam-tams se sont tus in 1971.
On March 4, 1966, under the aegis of Radio Télévision Gabonaise, Jean-Luc Magneron presents Chouchou Cosmonaute, a hoax film featuring the flight of the first Gabonese astronaut to the Moon. For the occasion, Libreville airport was transformed into a space center, and many spectators who came to watch the take-off were caught up in the game. The event was an unprecedented experience on both a national and continental scale.
But the glitz soon came to an end: from 1978 to 1994, almost no films were produced in the country, with the exception of Serge Gainsbourg's Equateur in 1983, adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, and Paul Mouketa's Raphia and Henri-Joseph Koumba Bididi's Le singe fou in 1986.
Renewal under the auspices of CENACI
After this ellipsis of almost twenty years, Gabonese cinema enjoyed a new lease of life with the release of Bassek ba Kobhio's Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné in 1995. This rebound was largely due to the work of Charles Mensah, then head of the Centre national de la cinématographie du Gabon (or CENACI). The center helped set up numerous co-productions (to compensate for the lack of national funding). The gamble paid off, and the years that followed were rich in production: Pierre de Mbigou, by Roland Duboze (1998), Jean Michonnet, une aventure africaine, by Alain Oyoué and Claude Cadiou (1999), Le Mvet, by Antoine Abessolo Minko (2001).
Imunga Ivanga is certainly one of the most prolific of the major figures in this young, emerging cinema. His many films include La fin, Les Tirailleurs d'ailleurs (1996), Dolé (2000, Tanit d'Or at Carthage) and Un amour à Libreville (Prix Beaumarchais at Fespaco 2009). The director is now head of the Institut Gabonais de l'Image et du Son, which took over from CENACI. Henri Joseph Koumba Bididi is also an important figure in Gabonese cinema, with Les Couilles de l'éléphant, (2001) and Le Collier du Makoko (2011), Best Sound Award at Fespaco 2013.
Recent noteworthy works include Olivier Rénovat Dissouva's La Clé, awarded Best Central African Film at the Festival Ecran Noir in Yaoundé in 2013, and Amédée Pacôme Nkoulou's Boxing Libreville, awarded Best Documentary at FCAT in Seville in 2018.
Despite a promising generation and an effort by institutions, the industry faces a major difficulty: the lack of cinemas. Those that were opened in the 1980s are now abandoned for lack of profitability, like the Majestic in Libreville. The only quality screenings are offered by the Institut français du Gabon and, since December 2018, by Canal Olympia, Africa's leading network of cinema and entertainment venues, in Port-Gentil. The group is due to open a complex in Libreville in the near future.
