Celluloid films: We lost the battle – Adesanya

According to the NFC boss, this happened because people had come to accept movies on video. A lab was commissioned at the NFC headquarters in Jos in 1994 it was grossly underutilized. What has happened really is that Hollywood tried to introduce video production to South East Asia but it failed. He added that out […]

According to the NFC boss, this happened because people had come to accept movies on video. A lab was commissioned at the NFC headquarters in Jos in 1994 it was grossly underutilized. What has happened really is that Hollywood tried to introduce video production to South East Asia but it failed.

He added that out of desperation and a desire to express ourselves we took to video production and it worked.

“Nigeria is the only place where it has worked. Others have tried to copy us but they failed; including South Africa.

“The closest competitor we have, if can be so described is from our sister country, Ghana. Even at that, they still have to come here to get the best technical crew and the best the best actors.”

Adesanya said the Nigerian film industry is on the move and has captured not just the imagination of people globally it has come to represent the definition of African cinema.

“Hitherto, it used to be films from Francophone when you talk about African motion picture you are in essence talking about the Nigerian motion picture.  It is all about the African story being told by Africans in their setting which has caught the imagination of the world particularly those in the Diaspora.”

This, he said, has placed a huge burden on the NFC. “What we accused American movies of doing to us is what we are being accused of doing today – cultural imperialism. It’s not something to be ashamed of really but to be proud of because we are giving something original to the world.”

According to him, there is a lot of improvement in the films today. “We are very up to date in terms of production and cutting edge equipment. We have better trained manpower now than we used to when the home video industry took off. So things are getting better. We need now to strengthen our production base and have proper marketing and audit of what we sell.

“The audience is now demanding more. It is not enough to say I’m telling a true to life story we need to entertain. In the course of mirroring society, we need to interpret because the same value judgment that formed the yardstick of assessing foreign films can now be used to assess our own films too because we have a global audience. Nobody will take it from that because it is coming from Nigeria you shouldn’t expect much.

“If you are going to a film festival, the rules are not going to be different. The same rules will apply to all the entries. So there will be no exception to say this is from a third world country.” We therefore have to make our films bearing in mind that it is a global world, a global cinema and the competition is worldwide, he added.