The 2011 edition of the ZAFAA has began in earnest with the organizers calling on movie producers to submit their movies to be considered into this year’s awards slated for October 20th to 22nd.
In a press conference in Accra to launch the awards in Ghana, the CEO of the awards Sam Anwuzia in his speech called on African movie makers to collaborate more to churn out better movies which will go a long way to help promote African movies. He said: “Even Bollywood, the Indian movie industry recognizes this fact today as most movies from their stable have Hollywood collaborations.”
He also talked about the failure of the African Movie Industry, which according to him is our inability to tap into the wealth of resources and opportunities at our disposal.
“There is one school of thought that our failure in the movie industry in Africa is largely due to our inability and in some case blatant refusal to tap into the wealth of resources and opportunities at our disposal. The underlying reason behind the foregoing is the increasing popularity of African movies in the world today”.
With the recent Ghana Movie Awards in mind, where some winners were presented with a statuette each in addition to a car and the pandemonium it has created, GhanaCelebrities.Com asked the Chief Executive Officer of the awards this: Apart from the statuette presented to the winners, what else does the award comes with?
Talking about the credibility of the trophy presented to the winners and answering the question, Mr. Sam Anwuzia said “This is an 18 carat gold trophy and I want those that have received awards from movie making in Africa to compare this statuette to what they have received.”
“This [trophy] is money. In the entertainment world, you give money’s worth, and you don’t give them money. I will not give stars a cheap trophy and give them ₤1.000 and be proud about it”, he ended.
ZAFAA is an acronym for Zulu African Film Academy Awards. It’s a London based awards. It’s an African award outside of Africa and its sole aim is to sell Africa to the international market, preferably non-Africans.
The dream is to bring all Africans to the awards but for now, the participating countries are Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania. There are far advanced plans to bring on board film makers from other African countries to expose their works to the international market.
In the previous edition, Ghana’s Majid Michel beat Segun Arinze, Ramsey Nouah and Ekpenyong Bassey with his role in a movie by Vivienne Ejike ‘Silent Scandal’ to win the Best Actor, which also happens to be his first ever award in his acting career. Kalsoume Sinare Baffoe, also a Ghanaian won the Best Supporting Actress in her role in ‘Trinity’.
For more information, visit: www.zafaa.com.
I understand the plans which you say are at a far advanced stage to bring all African Awards into this. That is a noble effort, but still it will ad a bit of flair and variety if the whole concept is based on regions. West Africa, Southern Africa and so on. For me art is like like football where you can successfully bring the whole Africa into a tournament and let countries sweat it out until you have a winner. In art that may not be successfully achieved as often there are intrinsicate qualities that may not be put up to the highest bidder. Question: Does a movie that illustrate the ancient wisdom of the Yoruba or better still Ashanti low in quality (as we are often told) compared to a hollywood style movie promoting rape, adultery and gansterism? Does a Nigerian movie that seeks to project daily life of Yoruba life low in quality to a South Africa Tsotsi movie that won an Oscar? The Tsotsi movie that simply describe in the most vulgar insensitive manner black people as a bunch of criminals and stupid? In this movie Whites write a stereotypical somewhat racial Script and Blacks acts and mouth out these scripts unquestioned like slaves.