The era when we could not hold more than 2 African movies in our hands owing to the fact that our movies were stored on huge cassettes have ended unnoticed.
Slowly, we have left behind those big boxes of tapes for VCDs/DVDs, making transportation, collection, storage and sharing of African movies easy and affordable.
The mentioned change has positively affected packaging, storage and sharing, thereby increasing patronize of African movies all around the world, especially those areas you can find communities of Africans.
Despite the above effort to attract more and more interest, there is still a gigantic obstacle curtailing this effort and that is; the level of acting remains tremendously poor, making patronization to increase at a decreasing rate.
It would not be unfair, disproportionate or disrespectful to say that, collectively, there have not been a single progress or improvement in the way and manner scripts are being interpreted by African actors.
With a lot being pushed into production (usage of modern Hi-tech equipments), creativity and packaging, it is only reasonably that we expect a corresponding improvement in the level of acting. Shockingly, most African movie actors and actresses are still flying high on the mediocre radar
Ironically, countless award schemes are being organized day in and out to reward these non-improving actors and actresses. I sometimes ask…why don’t we organize acting training workshops and seminars for these actors if we indeed want to reward them? Their sub-standard acting needs that instead of the countless plaques we hand over to them.
Probably, in the minds of these actors, they are the best but on screens, they remain unimpressive and forever boring. If indeed, we want to see a substantial growth of the African movie industry, we must look beyond technological improvement and consider human development.
The journey has been long, our struggle to gain international recognition and acceptance continues. But until we re-evaluate our actors, mode of recruitment and industrial training structures, the improvement in production and technology will continue, except that it will have a highly infinitesimal effect on the over all attractiveness of the African Movie Industry.
The African movie industry has travelled a long way in terms of time, but when it comes to the growth needed to match the fast developing world movie industry, it seems all we have achieved is the physics of time travel…Nothing in reality!
How far have we come? We seem to be standing on the same unmoving stone.
CHRIS-VINCENT Writes!
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You are absolutely right! A couple weeks ago, I decided to change my methods of reviewing ‘acting capabilities’ within a movie from general (I.e focused on entire cast) to individual.
And it was then that I realized that in fact most of these actors really can’t act. We tend to blame lack of talent on newbies and extras but paying attention will show you that some actors “cough cough” John Dumelo are making zero improvements. After every John movie, for instance, my review has always said “John dumelo did as John Dumelo does” and if ur face in each movie is always the same then the question arises as to whether u r really acting or reproducing your expected reactions to real life situations.
However, one must still applaud the actors that have grown through the years like Majid Michel
@Nollywood REinvented, good point. people like John are little good but over the years, they have not improved at all. after years ofacting, some of the people like john, jackie, nadia, yvonnes and others have not improve at all. they do not take challenging roles, same roles which do not improve them
i agree with you, i think ghanaian movies have improved so much i watched Shirley’s adams apple movies and that movie is the best ghanaian movie i have watch so far.they used very good actresses that has good english accent, nice costumes.that movie is just too good.i love it i hope they continue like that producers like shirly leila has made a great impact lets not forget majid an John Dumelo
You said it all… and yeah with all this awards here awards there, what’s it about?!? I mean when was the last time we heard about the European movie / entertainment awards taking place in say Malaysia?!?!
ZERO IMPROVEMENT FOR THE SO CALLED MOVIE [email protected] SINGLE FAIR LADY..
Great piece Chris and the truth is what you have said. Our so called actors are the poorest compared to bollywood and hollywood yet they get the most awards in the world. what are we rewarding them for? no improvement whatsoever
hmmm asem se3 bae. i guess that is not only a problem with the movie industry alone. but the country as a whole. ghana has so many natural resources and is yet to develop its human resource.