The just concluded African Movie Academy Awards held in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State was more or less an eye opener to the Nigerian Movie Industry; Nollywood.It caught our film industry like a hurricane and gave us an unforgettable and unforgivable nightmare we will never forget. Our best of the best were turned into the worst of the worst. Nollywood stalwarts went home disappointed and ashamed. We were caught off guard right in our backyard before our very eyes.Finally, our fears, those of a very few were finally confirmed. Is this the end of Nollywood’s reign?
Flash back December 2009 when the ION film festival held in Port Harcourt. An unknown lady mounted the stage at the end of the Awards to express concern about the quality of films produced by Nollywood. She warned of the dire consequences of producing less qualitative movies and told our producers present point blank to urgently do something about otherwise the unexpected might happen.Her fears have been confirmed.
Movies from Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroun, Ghana and United States Of America (as usual) shone like a million stars, winning the major awards, while Nollywood movies carted away less prestigious awards. So what went wrong?
The movie of the year at the awards took a bit above five years to produce and I believe the same applies to most or all of the foreign films that took home awards. My point here is: most of our local movies are not products of research. They are just produced to make money and gain momentary popularity.Movie producers in Nigeria should better research their stories before depicting it so as to make an impact on the world.
The quality of stories is an important one too. I believe that if we get the stories right we could also be on our way back to dominate movies in Africa and the Caribbean. Most scripts are either modified remakes of American movies or even African ones or just regular stories that we hear every that. I do not intend to castigate their performance, but the story quality is comparable to that we see on a popular children’s television programme, Tales by Moonlight. The world wants original stories from Africa, because we are rich in history and culture.The African Continent is yet to quantify the impact of the South African movie Sarafina simply because it depicts a passing phase in their history.
Adequate publicity should be given to movies produced locally on a periodical basis. When you don’t publicize your services, you actually lose money.
Movie critics and practitioners should establish an independent film review mechanism within the industry. That will give the viewing public an opportunity to appraise your performance.
It is very clear now that next years’ awards might not be in our favour if we do not put our house in order and prepare. The only constant thing in the world is change. A stitch in time saves nine.
God Bless Nigeria. Amen.
