In a tête-à-tête with a colleague entertainment journalist last weekend, we dissected on various issues which have bedevilled the Ghanaian Entertainment Industry. We talked extensively about movies and proliferation of awards here and there on the African continent.
I was particularly shocked when it came out that indeed all is not rosy in the make believe fraternity. Though we are in the third quarter of 2011, it appears that over 80 percent of movies produced this year inGhanaare either adopted or copied stories from mostly foreign productions.
Though this canker is unfortunate, it seems to have etched itself in the Ghana Movie Industry. This phenomenal of blindly copying has taken a new turn as most movie makers now sample three or more foreign movies and add them together to make them one complete Ghanaian movie. By so doing, scriptwriters’ jobs have been taken away from them. This has retarded the flow of creativity.
Sometimes I reminisce and miss the good old days when movies produced had no misgivings about them. Stories were told with so much maturity without anyone doubting the originality of the story. Several years ago, there weren’t any issues withAfricamovie makers plagiarising other people works. Even if there was any, I believed whoever the original storyteller was, was acknowledged.