M-Net has  launched an African Film Library – the largest electronic library of feature films, shorts and documentaries from 50 years of African film production. Over the past three years, M-Net has been negotiating the rights to almost 600 works in English, French, Arabic and Portuguese and digitizing them.

African Film Library (photo: African Film Library)

The African Film Library, launched on Wednesday, 23 September 2009, consists of award-winning works from more than 80 filmmakers including Kwaw Ansah from Ghana, Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Mambety, Yousef Chahine from Egypt, and Haile Gerima from Ethiopia. Films are on offer through its video-on-demand (VOD) service via www.africanfilmlibrary.com.

The online library aims to create a new audience for existing and emerging African filmmakers through the digital archive of the continent’s cultural cinematic heritage, and making African artists’ works easily accessible via the internet to a wide viewership around the worldwide. M-Net also plans to utilize conventional and new media (digital and internet broadband) distribution approaches to ensure maximum and sustained exposure of African films across the globe.

Says Mike Dearham, curator of the African Film Library, “Making African-produced films and documentaries accessible to both Africans and the world must be a key driver of any strategy to grow the film industry. Distribution is vital, as are the platforms through which the films are delivered, and thus becomes a prerequisite to any serious growth strategy.”

By accessing the African Film Library online, users of the service are able to search by genre, director or language and pay for and download digitised footage. Similar to a DVD rental service, viewers will have 24 hours access to the content. It is important to note that the content is portable, but the license is not so viewers can download the film on to a disc or flash drive, but will be required to pay again should they wish to watch it on another device or after the 24-hour period has expired.