Kwaw Ansah

Kwaw Ansah
Born	1941 Agona Swedru, Ghana
Education	Regent Street London Polytechnic, American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Occupation	filmmaker, production designer, theater designer, dramatist, music composer
Years active	1964-present

Kwaw Paintsil Ansah (born 1941) is an award-winning Ghanaian film-maker, whose work as writer, director or producer includes Love Brewed in the African Pot in 1980 and Heritage Africa in 1989. His first feature, Love Brewed in the African Pot, earned an immediate popular and critical acclaim throughout English-speaking Africa. Despite all the awards and the success, it would be nearly 10 years before Ansah could complete his next major film project, the ambitious Heritage Africa (1989). Yet again, the film was widely acclaimed and awarded. Since then, Ansah has produced other films, including Harvest at 17 (1994), Crossroads of People, Crossroads of Trade (1994) and The Golden Stool, the Soul of the Asantes (2000). Ansah is a crusader for African filmmaking and dramatic art, working ceaselessly for improved funding and distribution of African films within Africa. He has been chairman of FEPACI and a leader in the direction of FESPACO. In 1998, Ansah was awarded the Acrag Prize, the Living Legend Award for Contribution to the Arts of Ghana.

Kwaw Paintsil Ansah was born in 1941 in Agona Swedru, Ghana. His mother was a trader, and his father a trained photographer (as well as a painter, musician, and dramatist). After his initial schooling at an Anglican mission school, Ansah studied for his O-Levels in the capital city of Accra, while working as a textile designer at the United Africa Company. He has expressed enormous gratitude for his success and development as a filmmaker to his father, who wanted him to engage in his own trade of photography. However, the young Ansah, having discovered his talent for drawing and painting, had other options.

From 1961 to 1963 he was enrolled in London's Regent Street Polytechnic, where he obtained a diploma in theater design. Following his education in England, he studied in the US, graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the American Music and Drama Academy from 1963 to 1965. His first theatre play, The Adoption, was produced off-Broadway in 1964.

Upon his return to Ghana in 1965, Ansah found commercial work in film and television. He worked for two years as a production assistant and set designer for the Ghana Film Industry Corporation, and also made commercials for Lintas advertising agency in Accra. He was the set designer for Egbert Adjesu's film I Told You So (1970). Ansah went on to found his own advertising firm, Target Advertising Services, in 1973. He continues to do commercial advertising work (his company is now called Target Saatchi & Saatchi Ltd), which, he says, "pays the bills." One of his television commercials won him a New York-based CLIO Award in 1989.

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