Fashola’s Parents Accompany Lagos State Delegation to 63rd Cannes Film Festival

Fashola’s Parents Accompany Lagos State Delegation to 63rd Cannes Film Festival

The parents of Babatunde Raji Fashola,SAN, the governor of Lagos state accompanied a delegation of top officials of the state government to the 63rd Cannes Film Festival from May 12-23, 2010. The Cannes Film Festival holds annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, in the resort town of Cannes, in the south of France.

The mission of the delegation is to meet with experts on the development of the proposed Lagos Film City in Bagagry. They met with top executives of KODAK at an exclusive dinner on a luxury yacht last Wednesday. The successful hosting of the 6th ION Film Festival in Port Harcourt by the Rivers state government last September, and to use the global popularity of Nollywood to boost tourism in Lagos motivated the state government to include a Hollywood style film city in the Eko Mega City Project.

There is already an active Lagos International Film Festival founded and organized by Nollywood top player Mr. Madu Chikwendu, Regional Secretary of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), but poor funding and lack of government support have made it unattractive to most people in Nigeria and abroad. The poor management, poor mileage and patronage challenged Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, a Lagos based publisher and producer to create the new Eko International Film Festival (EKOIFF) last August and he got the support of M21 Entertainment of Italy as the media partner. M21 Entertainment publishes the leading Pro film and festival sites Fest21.com, Filmfestivals.com and the French online community cluster21.com. And Eko International Film Festival has been duly registered by Supple Communications Limited, a Lagos based media company owned by Mr. Hope Obioma Opara, the President/Co-founder of the film festival and Publisher of Supple mamgazine, the first African magazine covering film festivals since 2008 to date.

The Lagos state government can use any of the two film festivals in Lagos for the promotion of tourism and making Lagos the haven of filmmakers and lovers of movies in Africa and the rest of the world.