Ghana’s first feature film was shot in 1950 with a non-professional cast. The Boy Kumasenu reached Venice and the BAFTAs

Before Ghana was independent, before Kumawood, before Nollywood, a boy from a fishing village walked into Accra on film.

The Boy Kumasenu, released in 1952, was the first feature film made in the Gold Coast. It was produced by the Gold Coast Film Unit and directed by Sean Graham, the unit’s head, from a script by Graham and John Wyllie. It was shot between October 1950 and September 1951, using a cast of non-professional Ghanaian actors.

The story

The film follows Kumasenu, a boy from a rural fishing village who leaves home for the city of Accra. There he discovers the attractions and dangers of modern urban life: work, money, music, and the temptations of crime. His journey was meant to reflect the experience of many young people moving from villages to towns in the late colonial period.

The Gold Coast Film Unit

The Gold Coast Film Unit was set up by the colonial government to make documentaries and educational films. Most colonial film units produced short instructional films about health, farming or citizenship. The Boy Kumasenu was more ambitious: a full dramatic feature with a story audiences could follow.

Graham and his cameraman, George Noble, cast local people they knew rather than trained actors, which gave the film a sense of authenticity.

International recognition

The film was recognised at the Venice Film Festival and nominated in 1953 for a British Academy award for Best Film from any Source. For a film made in a colony by a small government unit, that recognition was remarkable.

A hit at home

Unlike most colonial films, which audiences found preachy, The Boy Kumasenu was popular with Ghanaian audiences. Scholars have noted how it used highlife music and scenes of Accra life that viewers recognised. It showed a Gold Coast that local people could see themselves in.

After independence

After independence, the film unit became part of the Ghana Film Industry Corporation, created under Nkrumah to produce Ghanaian films. The corporation made features and documentaries in the 1960s and 1970s, and its studios in Accra became the base of Ghana’s state film industry. Later, the video boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and then Kumawood, transformed Ghanaian filmmaking into a popular, commercial industry.

Preserving the past

Many early Ghanaian films are at risk because of poor storage. Archives and researchers have worked to preserve and digitise colonial-era and early independence films, and The Boy Kumasenu is among the most studied.

The boy in the film moved from a village to Accra looking for a new life. The film itself marked the start of a journey that led to Ghana’s modern film industry.