How I Fell in Love with the Cinema
My great father of blessed memory, Sunday "Sunny" Eke loved going to cinemas almost daily, because he loved movies; especially #Hollywood western cowboys movies of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, war films and #Bollywood movies such as "Sholay" and "Seeta aur Geeta" and I loved the Bollywood legends; Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini,, Dharmendra Singh Deol , Sanjeev Kumar and lest I forget the most celebrated nautch dancer in Hindi romantic films, Helen Anne Richardson Khan. My father never sat down to watch any movie on TV. He would just glance at the popular Bonanza western cowboys series and Combat series on World War 2.
I still miss every member of the Cartwright family in Bonanza played by Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon who have all passed on. They were household names in Lagos as the thrilling series ran on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Channel 10.
My father often took his family along with him to the nearby cinemas on the Lagos Island in the 1970s. My mother of blessed memory, Mrs. Gladys Eke would straddle her youngest child on her back whilst my father would hold me and my younger sister by our hands with my oldest brother, Nnamdi Godwin Eke walking excitedly in front of us to the nearest Kings Cinema on Lewis Street in Lafiaji. The cinema had a popular side with wooden seats in the open under the sky and covered side with wooden seats behind the popular side. Whenever it was raining, those on the popular side rushed to spaces in the covered side. Whenever there were hitches or bad pictures during screenings, the audience shouted "Operator!" To call the projectionist to fix it and give us good screenings. If my father did not like any of the movies on the posters in the Kings Cinema, he would take us to the nearby Sheila Cinema on the Broad Street, Royale Cinema off the Broad Street or the fully covered Plaza Cinema with upholstery seats where movie-goers paid more for tickets with popcorns and soft drinks.
My father wanted me to become a lawyer, but instead of taking me to the nearby High Court and Supreme Court, he was taking me to the cinemas to watch movies. The path he led me defined the direction of my future occupation.
My first job was working as a TV puppeteer and scriptwriter for NTA Channel 10 and then producing cartoon strips and comics for the leading children's magazines in Nigeria inspired by Walt Disney and Stan Lee of Marvel comics. And the passion for Hollywood and Bollywood led to our own Nollywood which was started by TV producers and directors in NTA Channel 10 with the first home videos by Yoruba and Hausa producers in the middle of the 1980s before the blockbuster, "Living in Bondage" of 1992 directed by Chris Obi Rapu of NTA Channel 10, written and coproduced by Kenneth Nnebue and Okechukwu Ogunjiofor and sponsored by Jafac Wine. And the sequel of 1993 was directed by Christian Chika Onu, also of NTA Channel 10. Chika Onu now has a PhD in film studies and we are coauthors of "Naked Beauty", the first Nigerian screenplay to be published as a book for commercial distribution. And following my passion for the cinema, I became a film writer since 2008, writing on movies, The Academy Awards (I accurately predicted the winner of the Oscars for the Best Picture and Best Director in 2017 won by Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water"), Cannes Film Festival and other film festivals and having my articles published by Indiewire, Shadow & Act, Black Film Maker, Nigeria Films, Modern Ghana and on my blogs, Nigerians Report Online, Nigerian Times and TALK OF THE TOWN By Orikinla. I started publishing the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series, the first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry in 2013 when I also began organising Nigerian premières of international award winning documentary films with focus on the promotion of the education, protection and welfare of the underprivileged girls out of school in Nigeria and cohosted over 1000 secondary school girls at the Nigerian premières of "Girl Rising" to celebrate the annual United Nations' International Day of the Girl Child for the first time in Nigeria on October 11, 2013 at the Silverbird Cinemas in the Silverbird Galleria on Victoria Island, Lagos; "He Named Me MALALA" documentary film of Malala Yousafzai to celebrate the 2015 United Nations' International Day of the Girl Child at the Silverbird Cinemas in the Silverbird Galleria on Victoria Island and the Nigerian première of the Canadian Giselle Portenier's award winning documentary film, "In The Name Of Your Daughter" on May 23, 2019 at the Silverbird Cinemas in the Silverbird Galleria on Victoria Island.
I have insisted on having these premières gratis without collecting any money from the secondary school students or their schools. We spent more than N1m on hosting the students and the teachers who accompanied them to have free popcorns and soft drinks with biscuits And we provided free transport in 2015 and 2019.
Bringing hundreds of secondary school girls and their teachers to the cinemas is promoting the appreciation for cinema culture in Nigeria and increasing the sociocultural and economic development of the Nigerian film industry.
We need to promote the appreciation of the cinema on it's own terms of scale of preference for cinephiles above TV and OTT online streaming services. Because as clearly defined and distinguished by the theatrical size and sociocultural importance, the cinema is unique for maximum entertainment and the romantic ambience of total cinematic experience. No TV or streamer can give you the awesome entertainment of an IMAX theatre or 4DX cinema.
- By ENYERENGOZI Michael Michael Chima, Publisher/Editor of the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series and 247 Nigeria (@247nigeria) / Twitter
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https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima.
