Socrates Safo, a Ghanaian director and filmmaker who doubles as the Director for Creative Arts at the National Commission on Culture (NCC) in Ghana, has mentioned a few challenges his production faced back in the day.
Ghana’s once-thriving Twi-speaking movie industry, known as Kumawood, is not really showing signs of recovery.
Kumawood, based in Kumasi, was previously a strong force to reckon with in Ghanaian cinema alongside its rival Ghallywood.
Speaking on the Max Morning Show, Socrates Safo mentioned how his production collapsed their market (business) by dealing with TV stations.
“Dealing with TV stations, that’s where we got it wrong.”
“Now we put the movies on the screen where people could watch them without paying, and that is what we are doing now, so nobody pays for films again.”
“You shoot a film, and then there is no market for you because people are waiting to watch them on TV.”
He claimed that their mistake was done out of ignorance and that they have still lived in it, which keeps repeating itself.
“We made our first mistake out of ignorance; now stupidity is making us keep it there.”
“We have graduated from ignorance to stupidity,” he said.
He added that because so many people were complaining about the foreign films, they considered sending Ghanaian films to TV stations to be screened.
“Cinema has a five-year life span, and every five years, it has a new market.”
He talked about canning film, which is the process of maintaining the films in good condition. However, because they were not oriented on that, they were unable to maintain the films in good condition so that new people who came to see them could view them.
Source: Ghana/MaxTV/MaxFM/max.com.gh/Belinda Quansah
