Ivandro Maocha and the NetKanema platform

The revolving wheel of Mozambican cinema

When the filmmaker and entrepreneur Ivandro Maocha created the NetKanema platform, he crossed the fine line between a passion and a bigger dream. Passions are often intimate, private, but dreams, the more they grow in size the more they are impossible to keep secret and need other actors. As in films, you cannot perform the tasks of director, actor, wardrobe, lighting technician, screenwriter, camera operator, video editor, and spectator alone.

Since 2019, the platform that its mentor is proud to call “the first Mozambican platform for Mozambican cinema” brightens the repetition as well as demonstrating his state of mind, as if everything was going smoothly. But Ivandro Maocha knows the path he has chosen, he is aware of the stones in the middle of that path, but he knows how to go around. So far he has a project at NetKanema that is bigger than his profession and passions.

NetKanema has been in full operation for about three years, providing feature and short .lms and documentaries, series, television programs and cartoons.

The director owner of Maocha’s Filmes, responsible for the NetKanema brand, explains the platform as a drop in the ocean in the midst of the streaming industry boom, that seems like the pandemic only came to help affirm its inevitability. “I know that we are probably being very bold. We are aware that we are in a country where access to information and communication technologies is very low. We cannot compare ourselves to Netflix.” But he points the way, with the certainty that on this side of the Indian Ocean there may be an opportunity to “unite” cinema and make it sustainable, self-financing, that is, generating greater interest and new consumers and thus, generate an industry that can finally free itself from the shackles of funding, which is almost always “external.”

“All filmmakers or production companies should understand NetKanema as the main place within Mozambique for the exhibition of their films. Often the focus of authors is outside Mozambique. They make the films thinking about festivals, awards, showings in theaters in Europe and abroad. That’s not bad, but it’s better they leave with this seal that every Mozambican has access to them and NetKanema can be that privileged place that can gather them. Thus, we would have all the productions available, it would increase the interest of the public, which generates money from subscriptions and we could pay the authors and still fund new productions.”

“The only general database of Mozambican cinema is NetKanema. That alone makes us proud of our boldness.”

The idea is not to establish borders, but to create safe bridges that allow for sustainability, freedom of creation and a sense of belonging on the part of Mozambicans, who seem, for the most part, to be unaware of the films being made in the country.

NetKanema has been in full operation for about three years, providing a variety of audiovisual content, feature and short films and documentaries, series, television programs and cartoons. Most movies are available for free.

“We have films that are on the commercial circuit that can also be seen on the platform by paying. If, for example, someone enters the platform and wants to see Comboio de Sal e Açúcar, they will have to pay 200 meticais, valid for 24 hours. And, on the other side, which is what makes the platform sustainable, are the monthly subscriptions. There are subscriptions worth 200 meticais that give access to all content.”

There is also a live streaming component, but this is yet to be explored for reasons of market viability and partnerships. Ivandro Maocha refers to some contacts in this regard, especially at the height of the pandemic, with some festivals that had to migrate to online exhibitions due to movie theatres being closed to the public, but which have not materialised so far.

Despite the low consumption of national cinema, Ivandro Maocha only sees reasons for pride and a probable establishment of NetKanema. But with no illusion, he knows that not everything depends on him and on the exclusive investment that Maocha’s Filmes has made in the project so far.

“The only general database of Mozambican cinema is Netkanema. That alone makes us proud of our boldness. Even knowing that there is still not much credibility in national cinema, we managed to unite it in one place. Each of the production companies, AMOCINE, Ébano, Promarte, Mahla, etc., has an archive of their films. But in no other place, a bookstore, a store, whatever, can we find several works by different Mozambican film producers. In this context, NetKanema should be a matter of national pride.”

Issue 75 Sept/Oct | Download.