Premium
PLEASE READ (OR LISTEN TO) THIS IN FULL BEFORE CLICKING ANYTHING. Seriously. What follows will save you frustration and set the right expectations. This is not a long read. But it is a necessary one. I’ve received increasingly frequent requests from both subscribers and non-subscribers for access to the Akoroko Premium reports archive. Some want a specific dispatch they half-remember from a year ago. Others want to know if I have covered a particular topic, filmmaker, or development, and if so, what I said. I’ve wrestled with how to make the archive accessible in a way that makes sense, respects the work behind it, is fair to long-time subscribers — especially those who joined at launch and are still here — and avoids turning the whole thing into an undifferentiated dump with no context or structure. This is one solution (not the only one) that I’ve been building over the last week. **Introducing Ask the Akoroko Premium Archive — Version 0.1** It’s exactly what it sounds like: a conversational interface that lets you search and query the Akoroko dispatch archive. Type a question — about a filmmaker, a film, a festival, a streaming platform, a country’s screen industry, a policy development, anything covered in the archive — and it will find what it has, synthesize it, and give you an answer in plain language. If it does not have a clear answer, it will tell you that too, and suggest where to look next. I’ve been finetuning and pressure-testing all weekend, and I think it’s ready enough to share. However, it will remain a work in progress. **What It Is** The archive currently being searched contains 1,512 select Akoroko dispatches published between 2022 and 2026. That’s all it includes… for now. Not my personal notes. Not unpublished drafts. Not raw research, data gathering, etc. Not anything beyond what has been sent to you as formatted dispatches over the past few years. That represents roughly a third of what has gone out over the years, and perhaps a quarter of what I have in total that could eventually go in. I imagine much of the rest will be added over time. This also has nothing to do with the African Film Press dataset: the larger, more structured, data-driven body of material being assembled for African Screen Intelligence (ASI), our forthcoming professional research tool. It’s a separate platform, built for a separate purpose. “Ask the Archive” is Akoroko-specific, subscriber-only, and will remain so. One thing worth stating plainly is that everything in this archive is verified. Reported, sourced, and written to a standard I’ve been defending since launching this platform. When the feature surfaces something, it’s drawing from my past work — not generated, not hallucinated, not approximate, not “trained on.” **What It Is Not** This is not an encyclopedia of African cinema. It’s not a search engine for the internet. It’s not a source of information beyond what I have actually written, reported, and published. If you ask about something I have not covered, it will say so. If you ask about something I have covered only tangentially, the answer will reflect that. The depth of any answer is a direct function of the depth of my coverage on that topic. Do not expect to ask any question and receive a comprehensive answer. That is not what this is — not yet, and possibly not for a while. What it is is a starting point for recall, for rediscovering things you read here months ago and want to find again. That is where it earns its keep in its current form. **How to Use It Right Now** Be specific. Named people, films, festivals, countries, companies, and topics retrieve better results than broad or abstract questions. “Med Hondo” works better than “famous African directors.” “What happened to Showmax in 2026?” works better than “what’s happening with streaming in Africa?” However, it will provide a synthesized answer to broader, more general questions when it believes it has enough material to do so. If an answer feels thin, try rephrasing. The system searches by meaning, not exact keywords, but some queries land better than others. A different angle on the same topic may surface different, and sometimes richer material. Follow the suggested follow-up questions. After each answer, the system sometimes suggests two related questions to ask next. These are generated from the actual content of the dispatches retrieved, not generic suggestions. When they appear, they are usually worth following. Know what you are asking. The archive selectively captures already curated coverage of African and diaspora film, television, and digital media from 2022 to the present. It is not strong on everything. It reflects my editorial priorities from the start and the practical limits of what one person can cover. **What Comes Next** I’ll keep feeding it the rest of the Akoroko archive, including material that came before the 2024 Premium launch. Of course, every new dispatch will go in. Beyond that, I have years of raw material that will be added over time. It’s a process. The archive grows. Your feedback will influence that growth. The answers get better. Eventually, you will be able to run structured reports on it, not just ask questions. I am building toward that. The more you share of your experience with the feature, the more I can act on. How you use this, what you search for, and what frustrates you are useful pieces of information. This is version 0.1; it’s not 1.0 yet. I want to know what version 0.2 should fix — beyond “more information.” I’ve been pressure-testing the feature, more than a hundred queries across dozens of topics, iterating on the underlying retrieval system, the language model instructions, and the interface design over many rounds. Still, the coverage only gets deeper. The system only gets smarter. **How to Access It** Ask the Archive is subscriber-only. You cannot access it unless you are set up. Right now, I am setting you up manually while I work out a more automated process. So… if you want access, reply to this dispatch with a simple “yes.” The email address you reply from is the one I will use to set you up; meaning, if you want to be set up with a different address, say so in your reply. Within 12 hours of your reply, I will email you with your login details and instructions for accessing the page. That is all. Reply “yes,” and I will take it from there.
