Premiering at the BFI London Film Festival 2020. ‘African Apocalypse’ from award winning documentary film maker, Rob Lemkin explores the long shadow of colonialism in Africa that continues to shape lives today. Rob (‘Enemies of the People’ and ‘Getting Away with Murder’- the TV investigation of the killing of Stephen Lawrence) takes young activist, Femi Nylander, on the trail of a colonial killer: a French military commander who burned his way across Niger. These are the contemporary events that inspired Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. As well as the website, the content I planned and delivered fleshes out deeper issues touched on in the film.
Delivering a website that an Impact Producer can run with and journalists can use in 3-4 weeks on a tight budget (documentary film making is like that) means the focus – as it should be – is on the content not the code. If you right click you’ll see it’s just a simple wordpress website. As an MVP tool, the results are pretty cool.
Traditionally a film website will show the trailer, a synposis, filmmakers statements and biogs and where it can be seen. I wanted to go a step further.
Documentaries have big stories to tell, and within them there are often many other stories that are part of that, and that draw out interesting angles, colour and context. So when I was asked to be involved in the production to deliver the website it sounded like a classic granular content strategy was going to drive. I dug deep into the cutting room floor and unearthed some fantastic, horrific, illuminating stories which I pulled together working closely with the film’s director, Rob Lemkin.
