Nigeria's movie industry has come a long way, with a popularity that transcends the country today. Mightyfoss Okechuckwu, more known by the stage name Dr. Foss arguably saw Nollywood evolve. Dr. Foss is a scriptwriter, director, and producer, with a passion to raise professionals in the industry and help the industry rediscover itself. In this interview with Emeka Chiaghanam, he speaks on the developments in Nollywood and the issues confronting it. Excerpts:
Compare film
production today and back in the days
Well, there
are too many changes. When we started producing films here in Onitsha, Anambra
State, it was under the Okpuloanyanwu Drama Group. The group comprised Late
Solomon Eze (Mike Orifedinma), Steve Anijemba (Uwaezoke), and me as its only
members. We produced a film called Akalaka Adanma that spanned from parts
1 -7.
I believe that was the beginning of what we
have today as film production. Then we were having challenges because the
camera we were using then was an M7 (VHS), too large and heavy to carry.
However, we moved from VHS to Betamax, from Bitamax to so many other brands and
today it is the Mac camera. When you look at the quality of today’s film and that
of the 1990s, the difference is obvious in every department of film production.
What was the
spread of Akalaka Adanma?
Then every
Friday in Anambra State, once it is 4pm, nobody is on the street, because
people would like to go and watch Akalaka Adanma, aired on Anambra
Broadcasting Service (ABS). With Akalaka Adanma, We thought we had
arrived until one Kenneth Nnegbue came to us, telling us that we can do better.
He urged us to come up to Lagos, and be part of the film he wants to do.
The truth is that Solomon Eze, Steve
Anijemba, and I told him point black, it is either he brings this film to
Anambra State or goes away and does whatever he wants to do. As the case may have
it, his agent went back and produced Living in Bondage, and today people
know Living in Bondage as the one that blazed the trail, whereas it
wasn’t, because we sold up to 3 million copies of Akalaka Adanma, before
people begin to know that Nigerian films could come on cassette. Therefore,
when Living in Bondage came, people embraced it because they were seeing
something new.
Unlike what we used to have, the packaging
now changed. Before then we use VHS, to record whatever we want to record, paste ordinary pictures on it and sell, from there it graduated to printing
sleeve, from printing sleeve we started selling TV rights. That was when people
started going to Singapore to mass-produce our work on CDs for sales, and we are
happy. Then they buy our work at peanut price and mass produce it and make
millions of naira out of it.
Peanuts in the sense that they buy it at
50,000 or 100,000, take it to Singapore, mass produces it, and continue in that
fashion. You see, Okoroanyanwu Drama Group, besides the sense of satisfaction we
derived from acting, we had foreign films to contend with. At that point, there
were more foreign films than Nigerian films. Our preoccupation then was how to
eradicate foreign films from the Nigerian market.
Then we were contributing money as little as
10 to 40 naira to produce movies and give it free to marketers to mass produce
and sell. We were just happy seeing ourselves on television, and every
December the marketers gave us money that ranges from 20,000 to 40,000 and we
were happy for that besides the recognition it accorded us on the street.
Does that
imply that you weren’t money conscious?
Actually, we
weren’t. We had one target and that was to eradicate foreign movies from
Nigeria's market. That target alone was enough for the assignment. We handle
the production ourselves without any outside input and still give it free to
marketers, and that goes to show that we were not money conscious. Can we be
money conscious when we demand no money from anybody, even marketers?
What
informed your decision to turn down Kenneth Nnegbue’s offer, seeing that it
could have accorded your group national recognition?
To every man, there is a price, especially, when you have blazed the trail for something.
There is something we call the comfort zone. We basked in our achievement. We
have made the market and already sensitized the public. The man that cashed in
on it was Kenneth Nnegbue. Having that kind of recognition we had then was
wonderful, and the smiles we put on people's faces were just enough for us. We
were just too comfortable, where we were.
Any regret for not teaming up with Kenneth Nnegbue
I will tell
you the truth, I have no regret whatsoever, as a group we enjoyed our period
and enjoyed the stardom that accompanied it. Our excitement knew no
bounds. Then we cannot stand at the bus stop for five minutes without someone
picking us up, even dedicating the whole day to us.
How did you feel when Living in Bondage began making waves on the national scene?
Yes, when Living
in Bondage began making waves nationally, some of us said we are not going to
stay with the little education we had, especially someone like me who was
writing and directing. The group would come up with a story and someone writes
it, and another would script it or suggest how to go about its production. Many
thanks to Solomon Eze, because he was the brain behind everything, he was our
chairman then. We don’t regret anything, because the child we delivered actually
grew. I left Onitsha for Enugu to further my studies. I did Cooperative
Economics at then Anambra State University of Science and Technology
(ASUTECH).
You rejected
Kenneth Nnegbue’s offer why relocate to Lagos
What
informed my decision to move to Lagos? When you live in the Western world and
return to the country the attraction must be Lagos, because Lagos is more
developed than any other place in the country, Abuja has not gained prominence
then. When you travel to a foreign land and come back Lagos must attract you,
so you stay there and salvage whatever you can, that was why I moved to Lagos
and in Lagos, I have been able to produce many movies and train many
artists.
How did the
name Nollywood evolve?
Our group
Okpuloanyanwu Drama Group, started what people refer today as Nollywood. I can
say anywhere that we started what is known today as Nollywood. Actually,
when we started out, it wasn’t called Nollywood. The name Nollywood did not
come from inception.
I can count ten people in the formative years
of the Nigerian film industry who came together to articulate what the country's
film industry should be called. In that very meeting, held in 1998 at 10
Aderibigbe Street, Surulere, Lagos, Remigus Ohanjianya, chaired the meeting; we
were trying to package what to call the Nigerian movie industry.
We initially called it Nigeria Actors Guild but were told we can’t call it by that name, that we can call it Actors Guild
of Nigeria (AGN). The first presentation was under the name of the Nigeria Actors
Guild. When we actually constituted the AGN, we moved to National Theatre
Iganmu in Lagos, where people started coming since we tried to fashion it after
Hollywood, and Bollywood people started calling it Nollywood.
With cut-edge technology, we still got issues with quality production what could be the cause.
Nigeria's
movie industry needs restructuring. The problem of the industry is a tripartite
issue. The first one is that we have half-baked producers and half-baked
marketers. In fact, we don’t have marketers. I’m not on the same page with them
and that has been the cause of disagreement between me and them. What we have
are film vendors. The difference between the two is that a film vendor has a pecuniary attachment to quality; neither do they care for the producer’s
welfare, than their pockets. They don’t care what the producer toiled or
suffered.
They are into movie production just for the
money involved and not for the love of it. They have bastardized the system.
Look how cheap our movies are. Now supply far outstrips demand. They will sell
your film for two to three weeks and tell you it is no longer selling in the
market. When you ask questions, they call your work ‘oil’, slang for a product
that has lost its market value, yet goes on to make more money from your work.
We are finding a way to start selling films; we lose so much money having these
people market our work.
The second reason they are money conscious,
they prefer money over quality; they choose not to use professionals in the
production of movies. In addition, you know that you don’t pay professionals
peanuts. Since they are money conscious, they believe anyone can handle any
role as long as you tell them what to do. That is the reason they rather not
hire a professional cameraman, they find anybody they can pay peanuts to do the
job. Most of the storyline lacks depth. They hire a writer, put him in a hotel
room, and in one week, he churns something out. Half-baked knowledge, half-baked
information that is what you get, produce a film script in one week.
The third one is that they have shut down
most of the prime movers, these are professionals with a love for the film
industry. These people don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Remember at a time
we were competing with Bollywood but it is no longer so. Recently, we are
beginning to have Nollywood films and Nigerian movies. The difference is that
Nollywood has a professional touch, they are films that are up to standard, and you
can show and sell the movies in any part of the world, but Nigerian movies are
not.
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