By David Ajiboye

Nigeria’s government is asking cinemas to stop showing a science fiction film, District Nine, that it says denigrates the country’s image. Information Minister Professor Dora Akunyili said that she had asked the makers of the film, Sony, for an apology.  She says the film portrays Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes.

An actor from the film said that it was not just Nigerians who were portrayed as villains. The Malawian actor, Eugene Khumbanyiwa, plays a gang leader with the nickname of Obasanjo, also the surname of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The film is about alien refugees who set up home in a South African shanty town called District Nine. It is a loose allegory about apartheid and recent violence by South Africans against foreigners. Professor  Akunyili said it clearly took aim at Nigerians.

“We feel very bad about this because the film clearly denigrated Nigeria’s image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals,” she said. “The name our former president was clearly spelt out as the head of the criminal gang.”  The information minister said she had ordered the Nigerian film and video censors’ board to ask all cinemas to stop showing the film and to confiscate it.

“I have also formally written to Sony Pictures Entertainment, the company that produced this film, demanding an unconditional apology for this unwarranted attack on Nigeria’s image,” she added.  She also said she had asked them to review the film with a view to remove “all offending portions that injured our image as a nation”.

Akunyili said said Nigeria was now hitting back with a policy of “rebranding”, after allowing the international community to define the country based on the behaviour of “[a] few criminals”.  She said that Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry was also being pressed to help portray Nigeria in a better light.

But Mr Khumbanyiwa said Nigerians in the cast did not seem worried by the portrayal of their country. He suggested that the film, which depicts people wanting to eat aliens to gain the superhuman powers, should not be taken too literally.  “It’s a story, you know,” he said. “It’s not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don’t even exist in the first place.”

By David Ajiboye

One of the pioneers of the thriving Nigeria movie industry otherwise known as Nollywood, Chief Lere Paimo, MFR aka Eda clocked 70 years on Friday, 18 September, 2009. The birthday celebration was a huge success considering the known faces in the Yoruba sector of Nollywood that graced the event which was held at the Genesis Suites, Ibadan.

Eda cutting 70th B Cake

The celebrant, a profilic traditional movie producer has produced works like the evergreen historical movie Ogbori Elemesho and several others.
A holder of the country’s national honour of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (MFR), and a traditional title holder of Are Arobabojo of Ogbomosholand.
Chief Lere Paimo has won several local and international awards. He was part of the team that won the gold medal with their presentation of Oba Koso during the Commonwealth festival in 1963.
He’s married and blessed with children.

Eda and the Royal Father

Eda Dancing

Eda Posed

Actor performs at the Party

Actors Actresses at the party

Eda and friends

Performers

Faces at Eda's Birthday Party

Revelers at Eda's Party

Faleti

By Ali Baylay

A Venus Film productions.Starring: Van Vicker, Jackie Appiah, Kofi Adjorlolo, Kalsoume Sinare, Rama Brew, Gavivina Tamakloe, Yvonne Nelson; Editor: Dapo Ola Daniels; Assistant Producer: Ali Samba; Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Executive Producer: Abdul Salam Mumuni; Director: Frank Rajah Arase. 150 mins.

The princely cast of Gollywood’s finest really do an excellent performance here, to boot, and in fact this movie got me sold to Gollywood movies. As you can see, I’ve been all about Nollywood, but since  I discovered Tears of Womanhood, a Gollywood classic, I  believe  good movies do come from Ghana’s woods, such as Princess Tyra. With its fairy tale nature, this movie will take you to a fairyland where stories like Cindarella may seem a joke.

Princess Tyra is not our typical royalty versus peasant kind narrative; it is a kind of story about a royalty kicking against the mores of a palace,  in exchange for the common life. Your guess is good as mine where such kingdom exists in our part of Africa, but this prince sure looks like a future king of Morocco than the true negroid prince of lower Sudan.

I did not have the patience to sit through part 3 of this movie, ’cause I live in the first world and no one movie will put my life on hold for three hours straight. Princess Tyra  is a good movie though, one of its kind coming from Africa today. Imagine, two royal families promised each other a child in marriage so both kingdoms could cement relationships. It turns out  Prince Kay (Van Vicker) has turned liberal, scorning everything royale in exchange for common life. He doesn’t believe that in this “ 21st century people still indulge in those barbaric rites”, he queried at one point.  At the other end of this tangent,  is a saucy, spoilt brat, Princess Tyra (Yvonne Nelson), who can put on hold the hustle and bustle of a supermarket, just so she can buy an item or two.

Prince Kay is turned off by Princess Tyra’s stringent royal tradition and principles, who declares that, “the wishes of mortals the gods command.” And she has  frequent outbursts with not a dint of romance in it. He, runs from a princess, “who’ll not have my peace”, he laments. But for Princess Tyra, “Where thunder and lightning strikes birds don’t fly”, she boasts of destroying whoever stands between her and her desire for the prince, because, “vegeance of a woman is like a burning bush”.  

In the middle of it all is a common maid, Maafia (Jackie Appiah) who massages the prince’s feet in a rite once and later in a queer bathroom incident, falls under the romantic rader of the prince. We did not see the two (prince and maid) mate, but not long after the maid’s mother dies of asthma attack, Maafia leaves Ilugbo Kingdom in search of Prince Kay to report her pregnancy to him but instead meets the prince’s mother, the Queen, and reports her pregnancy. The Queen doesn’t handle this news well.

The story gets sticky when writer employs another plot  and character, Ashley to merely resemble Maafia and gets Ashley pregnant by the prince , and both by bizzare plot twist, meet side by side in a hospital. Camera and edit can pull all kinds of  tricks but this Maafia look alike coming into the story sure put a damper and unbelievable feeling to the story. I marvel the fact that writer created a three dimensional character for Jackie Appiah’s role (maid, Ashley, Maafia) , only that in narrating such a wonderful fairy tale, story and character have  to be linear in nature, or not even Cinderella could have survived as a timeless tale with such muddled plots. Prince Kay would have gone on pulling all the stops to get to his one and  only cinderalla, rather than easily fall for a look alike and gets her pregnant too.