Changing Faces set for the Christmas and New Year Holidays

The much awaited Nigerian film at the cinemas Changing Faces will open to the public at the Silverbird Cinemas and other cinemas in Nigeria and Ghana from December 23, 2011. It is the Silverbird Cinemas Nigerian Movie for the Christmas and New Year holidays. It is the first Nigerian movie on the supernatural experience of the transference of evil spirits through sex. Changing Faces is the first major Nigerian movie to be dubbed in French for commercial distribution in France and francophone countries.

The gripping romantic thriller has an international cast of Nigerian and British stars led by Marc Baylis, Keppy Ekpenyong-Bassey, Alex Lopez, Rachael Young, Ayo Mogaji and Adebowale Adesanya.

Marc Baylis


Keppy Ekpenyong

The young filmmaker Faruk Lasaki is an international award winning director and one of the best graduates of the famous New York Film Academy (NYFA) where his short film Six Feet Below won the best short film prize for graduating students.

See "Not a normal Nigerian movie industry product!" Interview with Faruk Afolabi Lasaki on Changing Faces by Olivier Barlet on http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=7694 and http://www.changingfacesmovie.com/interview.htm.

Changing Faces is a 92 minutes metaphysical romantic thriller on the transference of evil spirits through sex as ‘Two unlikely bedfellows share a night of passion’ and their lives were never the same again.

Changing Faces was premiered at the Pavilion les Cinema Du Sud of the 61st Cannes Film Festival, Black Diaspora International Film Festival of New York in 2008, featured in competition at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in 2009, Cairo International Film Festival in 2009, and a Special Official Selection and opening film of the 2011 Eko International Film Festival in Lagos, Nigeria. And it is the first Nigerian film to be dubbed into French and screened at FESPACO and Ecrans Noirs in 2009. And on the 3rd and 6th of August 2009, Canal France International (CFI) presented it as the first Nigerian feature film on its network and interviewed the director Faruk Lasaki.

Alex Lopez


Rachael Young

SYNOPSIS:
Young reporter, Lola and Architecture whiz kid Dale, are the antithesis of each other; she is fun loving, free spirited and lively while Dale is conservative and a reserved workaholic. However, their paths still manage to cross at an Architectural conference in a beautiful hill top hotel. From the minute the bored Lola sets her eyes on him, she decides she's going to have him, and she goes to all lengths to get him into her bed. Dale doesn't make this easy for her at all as he is not only married but a born again Christian who holds a high premium on fidelity. But Lola is determined and after a lot of scheming and manipulations, she finally gets Dale into her bed on the last night of the conference. The next morning they both return to their normal lives, only to discover that things have changed and they have exchanged personalities. Lola finds herself saddled with scruples and morals... Written by Becky Muikia.

CAST:
Marc Baylis as Dale
Alex Lopez as Franca
Rachael Young as Lola
Keppy Ekpenyong-Bassey as Bade Cole
Adebowale Adesanya as Dale's Androgynous Man Black
Ngozi Elumelu as Kaisha
Victor Eze as Shaman
Emmanuel Fagbure as Lola's Androgynous Man Black
Izebuno as Devil / Androgynous Female Angel
Elizabeth Rainbow as Penny

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Del-York International is not ripping off Ignorant Nigerians

The goal of Del-York International has always been to raise sponsorship to cover full tuition, feeding and accommodations for all participants of the training program from Nigeria's public and private sectors.

While we recognize that the price for world class training by the New York Film Academy is a shock for most Nigerians, we have been able to raise support from Local companies who are invested in building the capacity of our nation's youth in the creative industries, which was recently recognized by the World Bank to have great potential for job creation and poverty alleviation.

This year we received the generous support from our partners: NDDC, Edo State Government, Riverdrill Group, Pepsi and NAFDAC to sponsor 96% of the students currently attending the program in Lagos.

We hope that this group of students will exceed the success rate of the graduates from the 2010 training program in Abuja, where 122 of the 400 graduate are presently employed in the entertainment industry, with some on the BBC film crew, and others already creating jobs for many by opening their own production studios.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

We invite you to visit our training facilities in Isolo and observe our trans formative operations.

Sincerely

Chinaka Iwunze
Head, Media and Communications
Del-York International
www.delyorkinternational.com


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Are Del-York International and the New York Film Academy not ripping off Ignorant Nigerians?

Are Del-York International and the New York Film Academy not ripping off Ignorant Nigerians?

It’s prohibitively expensive, even though we do need the training. Give us half that price and we’ll get the same kind of specialized resource persons from Asia to provide the same training.
~ Prof. Femi Shaka of the Department of Creative Arts, University of Port-Harcourt in Nigeria.

The nascent popularity of Nollywood, the Nigerian digital film industry has attracted global attention since a UNESCO Report rated it the second largest movie industry in the world after the United States of America and ahead of India’s Bollywood.

The largely homegrown industry has generated millions of naira and created thousands of jobs from Idumota in Lagos to Iweka in Onitsha and the environs in Eastern Nigeria where most of the producers and marketers hail from.

Over 80 percent of the movies are home videos of what would be rated as B-movies and slapstick comedies of typical Nigerian stories from both factual and fictional experiences in Africa’s most populous nation. These very low budget and hurriedly produced melodramatic and romantic thrillers of African juju, corrupt lifestyles and dysfunctional relationships between singles and married couples have become celebrated as Nollywood, the African Magic on cable TV, viewing centres, cinemas and circulated by vendors and incorrigible pirates all over Africa and overseas. Nollywood is the child of circumstance of the never-say-die Nigerian genius.

The low quality of the home videos has made them the laughing stock of Hollywood, but film scholars and sociologists have taken up the challenges of Nollywood as an important development in contemporary African culture and entertainment. To address the problems of the poor quality and unprofessionalism, many local practitioners and stakeholders have launched various film training centres in Lagos, Abuja and other regions, but many of them are opportunists who are ignorant of the availability of seasoned Nigerian professionals and scholars who have been educated and trained in different world class film schools in America, Europe and Asia. Many of them have been teaching at the National Film Institute of the Nigerian Film Corporation for decades.

The National Film Institute has produced outstanding and international award winning filmmakers who have competed with the best in the world and the school fees are in no way prohibitive.

The introduction of the short term training workshops of the popular New York Film Academy (NYFA) by Linus Idahosa’s Del-York International is good and laudable, but the tuition fees are too exorbitant for the average Nigerian in a country where the government is still haggling over the payment of a miserly monthly minimum wage of N18, 000 only and where over 75 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.



How many Nigerians can afford the $5000 or $3500 for only a four-week film training workshop that Del-York International is charging each person?
No private university in Nigeria even charges up to $3500 tuition fee for a whole term!
Why is Del-York International charging US dollars in Nigeria?

The following is the tuition fee for the same four-week workshop at the New York Film Academy.

HANDS-ON INTENSIVE 4-WEEK FILMMAKING WORKSHOP
START DATES FOR NEW YORK CITY & UNIVERSAL STUDIOS:
September 12, 2011 • October 3, 2011 • October 24, 2011 • January 3, 2012 • February 6, 2012
TUITION: $ 3,150 (USD)

Only rich Nigerians can afford to pay such exorbitant tuition fees for only four weeks training.

Yes, the New York Film Academy can charge such an amount in the US and other rich countries in Europe and Asia where majority of the populations are very comfortable and people earn better wages and the professionals earn more money. But you cannot charge such thousands of dollars monthly in a miserable poor country like Nigeria.

“It’s prohibitively expensive, even though we do need the training. Give us half that price and we’ll get the same kind of specialized resource persons from Asia to provide the same training,” said Prof. Femi Shaka of the Department of Creative Arts, University of Port-Harcourt in Nigeria.

There are enough Nigerian resource persons who are as qualified and efficient as the American tutors from the New York Film Academy.

The exploitation of ignorant people is common and big business where majority of the population fail to get information to find out the facts about products and services as available and affordable to them.

The more people are informed, the more educated and enlightened they would be.
There are hundreds of equally good and world class film schools in the United States where the tuition fees are just a quarter of what the Del-York International and New York Film Academy are charging in Nigeria.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, Tuesday August 16, 2011.


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