The natural fascination of ordinary people in most Nigerian comic movies is soul captivating. The likes of Mr. Ibu, Osuofia in London, One Dollar, movie that remain superior to many of the recent one that some fans has called bunch of garbage . However, it is disappointing to realize that the African movie industry has ceased to improve their act for a long time while sales boom and the audience grow day by day. It’s time to wake up and look forward to moving the industry to another level.
My love for African movies remains the same though despite the many lack of interest story lines and the countless technical defaults. Notwithstanding, African movies is still one the most popular past time for many Africans especially those in the outside worlds.
Recently in an interview, Patient Ozokwor aka Mama Gee was talking about the nature of the Nigerian movie industry, she said, “when we started doing African Movies, we never wanted to be like the European or American; we wanted to do our movie in our own way”. I’m sure she wasn’t talking about the careless movie making that has taken over the Nigerian movies industry. Poor sound and picture quality, twisted stories lines that makes no sense just to name a few. It seems everyone is just going around recording video and putting it on DVD in the name of movie making. This is absurd and a bad way of doing business.
From some indication, movie making in Africa is one that explain itself. One Nigeria director recently said on a U.S base radio station that “African movie making is about survival.” That statement just can’t be under emphasized. Making the movie is as fragile as marketing the actual movie. One don’t have to go Nigeria to understand the act. Just buy a copy of any new African movie and thoroughly examine the characters and story, you will realize what is being discussed here. Our movie producers need to put some effort into this popular industry. One way of doing this is professionalizing the whole industry. Such as hiring and providing better training for editors, videographer, script writers etc.
Another problematic observation is the lack of job description or the actor and actresses refusal to follow instruction. For example, one insider told me that some of the poplar actors and actress don’t like to follow script and instruction from their directors. One the opposite, the directors and producers are afraid to upset the actors by telling them what they want which has created a situation of lack of understanding.
Nkem Owoh, one of the most popular comic for example doesn’t listen to any one but himself. He has become an actor and director of his own. He’s the only one who talks throughout his movies. This explains one of the most crippling aspects of the Nigerian movies industry.
Lastly, Religion, especially the Christianized movies are “simply bad, no sense at all for the Africans sense human- evangelic movies are wicked for African conscience,” said an online critic of the recent Ghana movies “Agony of the Christ” was one good example. In their sense, Africans are either Christian or maybe Muslim otherwise you are demonic, savage and sub-human. I think those kind of portrayal are awfully wrong.