Nigerian Filmmakers: Beyond Nollywood, Beyond Netflix
- Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
Nigerian filmmakers must capture the big picture of the future of Nollywood.
Majority of the filmmakers in Nigeria should know and understand the importance and significance of Art Direction and Production Design in filmmaking.
Many of them don't even know the definition of Art Direction.
There is no filmmaking without Art Direction.
Netflix in Nigeria: It is No Longer Nollywood As Usual
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The filmmakers in both Nollywood and Kennywood must now be more adventurous and ambitious in the content and context of filmmaking beyond mere narrative storytelling.
Any dummy can play guitar.
But any dummy cannot be Carlos Santana or Sir Victor Uwaifo.
Nigerian filmmakers are still using having their movies on Netflix for bragging rights when none of them has made the official selections of the most competitive and prestigious international film festivals in the world after decades of making movies.
We are still waiting for them to be in the official selections for the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival and compete with the best filmmakers in the world and not competing against themselves in Nigeria.
They have been making movies even before C.J Obasi got his GCE and he has gone ahead of them to win coveted awards at the Sundance Film Festival, FESPACO and other esteemed international film festivals where they have failed to make the official selections or failed to win any prize.
The future of Nollywood is bigger than Netflix.
Beauty is more than having a pretty face.
99.99 percent of the biracial actresses in Nollywood can't act.
Three of them are annoyingly amateurish.
They have been featured in movies just for having a pretty face by intellectually challenged filmmakers in Nollywood who think having white looking Bimbos in their movies will attract more viewers and moviegoers.
Having a pretty face and being photogenic can attract filmmakers, but acting begins with learning how to act and not pretending to act when you don't know how to act.
We are two years to the epoch of 100 years of filmmaking in Nigeria. But I doubt if the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy had a clue until I have mentioned it.
How much have we achieved in a century of Nigerian Cinema?
What are milestones in the history of filmmaking in Nigeria since the production of the first feature film, "Palaver" in 1926 by the Academy Award winning English filmmaker, Geoffrey Barkas?
The making of "Palaver" was published in the second edition of the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series in 2014.
- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
The Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series,
The first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry.
1 comment:
A.well written expression. However,.sir, the idea that Nollywood.producers don't engage or know what art direction and production design is, is somewhat not so fair. In TV commercials, we have been employing art direction and production designs for ages.. This is because we have good enough budget for this arena. A filmmaker in Nigeria is an orphan. It would have been great for critics of the Nigerian production spaces to also embed themselves in the production process of a Nigerian film so they realise the enormous sacrifice a producer goes through. I am willing to include a critic on my next project. I will include that person as crew member if such a person is willing to take the pay the position would entail, and also do the work while noting the experiences. Many producers suffer huge sabotage from crew, cast and even equipment owners, editors can make a producer's well articulated dream on location a nightmare at post; you would suddenly realise that shots you took on set, which you marked down as print are not to be found in the bin. Then you'd begin to wonder what is going on. When you find a mismatch between continuity log sheet and what the editor says he has in his drive, you'd know that the game is only beginning..
Many times a director on set forgets all his high ideas.and plan for the movie when the game of.shoot begins, because , one the budget is not working, and two crew is not.marxhinf in line with the day's schedule, and on the 4th day he is still struggling to clear the backlog of the last three days, and equipment houses are not.jokers, they will whisk their.ewuioment away on the day his pay finished, so what is his plan now? He forgets any big ideas and begins to battle how to just shoot the story and go. This is an acute survival mode..and this I have known all my life as I veered into movie producing. Before then from my TV commercials background, I'd lambasted Nollywood worse than you.
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