Kwame Amoaku has worked on both sides of the camera long enough to understand how the machine actually moves. His trajectory wasn’t linear. It began on the street, where he was scouted for Easy Streets because he fit a profile and could pull off a Jamaican accent when no one else could. It continued through the unglamorous trenches of production—coordinator, manager, producer—climbing rung by rung until he was directing for Def Jam and producing on Chicago Fire.
Now, as the Deputy Film Commissioner of New York City, he holds a view of the industry that few get to see: the intersection of art, bureaucracy, and cold, hard financing.
In a candid conversation with BLACKSTAR Haus, Amoaku strips away the romance of the film industry. He speaks on the mechanics of gatekeeping, the dangerous “McDonald’s-ification” of creativity, and why the next era of African cinema won’t reward those waiting for permission.
If you are waiting to be “discovered,” you are playing a losing game. According to Amoaku, the industry isn’t just difficult; it’s a “rigged racket” designed to keep outsiders out.
The barrier to entry is a catch-22: To get a role on a major studio picture, you need to be in the union (SAG-AFTRA). But to get into the union, you have to have already booked a role. Even possession of a SAG card acts only as a base-level entry ticket. Having a card doesn’t mean much if you don’t have an agent with the “juice” to access the casting directors.
His advice for the diaspora and young creatives is stark: stop looking for validation from legacy structures.
“Stop asking for a seat at the table. Build your own table. The intellectual property owner has the power. Producing your own work is how unknown actors and directors get seen.”
We are living in the golden age of “content,” but Amoaku warns against confusing content with craft. In a world obsessed with 30-second hooks and algorithmic trends, the discipline of storytelling is eroding.
“I hate the word ‘content,’” Amoaku says. “It’s a homogenized, processed-food way of creating. It’s like fast food. It’s the difference between a McDonald’s snack wrap and a home-cooked meal.”
For Amoaku, the democratization of cameras has led to a saturation of mediocrity. The creatives who will survive the next decade are not the ones who can go viral, but the ones who can cook from scratch. You have to learn the history, know the style, and understand how to develop a character. Otherwise, you are just making garbage in a sea of garbage.
A common refrain in discussions about the Ghanaian film industry is the lack of infrastructure. If only we had the studios. If only we had the soundstages.
Amoaku rejects this premise entirely.
“A studio is just a big empty box,” he states flatly. “You can turn a gymnasium into a studio. You can turn any building with four walls into a studio. In Chicago, we turned an old steel mill into one.”
The bottleneck isn’t the building; it’s the intellectual property. The mistake, he argues, is waiting for Western infrastructure to validate African stories. The bigger mistake is building studios before you have the work. You build the industry first, then the infrastructure grows with it.
“Africa needs to stop looking to the West for anything. Everything you need is there. You have the market, the resources, the youngest demographic. You have the ability to build your own industry without Western influence.”
We are entering a lean time. The post-pandemic streaming bubble has burst, major studios are merging, and the “woke” capital that fueled a brief surge in diverse storytelling is drying up. The federal government isn’t funding the arts the way it used to, and the entire industry is being reconstructed.
This contraction sounds grim, but for the independent creative, it’s a clarifying moment. When the corporate money dries up, the only thing left is the work you own.
Kwame Amoaku’s career is a template for the modern creative: versatile, business-literate, and relentless. His final word to the next generation of Ghanaian filmmakers is a reminder that attention is a finite resource.
“Ghana is a hot commodity right now. It’s seen as a progressive, creative place. But that attention does not last by default. The work that moves forward is made, owned, and put into circulation. Waiting for permission is how this moment passes without you.”
BLACKSTAR: You mentioned that the industry is contracting. We see the layoffs and the budget cuts, but what is actually driving that shift right now?
KWAME AMOAKU: It’s a huge drop in the amount of production worldwide. During the pandemic, the amount of content we were consuming was astronomical, but that has decreased. It costs more to make content now, and people are buying less of it. So the studios are bringing down production. A lot of the legacy companies are hurting very badly right now because they played a game—they tried to become Netflix, and they lost that game.
BS: It feels like the rules are changing faster than creatives can keep up.
KA: The old rules don’t apply anymore. Think about this: When you were born, Netflix used to send DVDs to people’s houses. Now they’re about to buy Warner Brothers. That’s DC Comics, that’s Looney Tunes, that’s a legacy media company being bought by the guys who used to mail you DVDs. We have to figure out what happens after the dust clears and figure out how to make money off of making movies again.
BS: For a young creative in Accra or Lagos who doesn’t have a budget, where do they even start?
KA: Write your film, then do a budget for it. If necessary, figure out how to shoot it in pieces. Sometimes shooting a proof of concept is enough to get you the money to get the rest of it. Shoot a small piece, like a trailer, and use that as a marketing tool. Show people that you can drive eyeballs to your content. Once you show that you have something marketable and viable, then you can go get money from big corporations. But you have to show the vision first.
BS: You preach “building your own table,” but does that actually work in practice?
KWAME AMOAKU: Absolutely. I did a little project called Reps. It was a low-budget reality show about high school basketball players. It was just a small thing on Fox Sports Net, but what I didn’t know was that NBA players and famous people were watching it. The producers at Russell Simmons’ company saw it, and when my name came up for a job later, they knew who I was. That tiny independent project opened the door for me to direct documentaries for Def Jam. You have to be willing to do the unknown work, because that is what leads to the break.
BS: You started in Chicago, not LA or New York. How did that shape your hustle?
KA: When you are a minority in a small market like Chicago, you have to be versatile. You can’t just do one thing. I moved through the system starting as a PA—the lowest level you can come in on. I was a production coordinator, a manager, a producer, a director. I wrote my own stuff. I wore every hat because I had to. I used the experience from one job to get the next. If you sit around waiting to just be “an actor” or “a director,” you’ll starve.
BS: You’ve said that Ghana is a “hot commodity” right now. Do you see that window staying open?
KA: It’s a great time for Africans, but especially the Brits—they are making a meal out of it. As far as leading men are concerned, Black British actors are running the table. It is a very viable time to make a name for yourself, but you have to move now. You need to get in before “dark-skinned brothers” go out of style. The attention is here now, but attention shifts.
