By David Ajiboye

Come 27th to 30th October 2009, the beautiful city of Abuja Nigeria will witness the convergence of two great events in one city. It will be a meeting point for film and soccer enthusiast as the 6th edition of Abuja International Film Festival and the FIFA U17 world cup tournament take center stage.
 
The festival will be declared opened by the Honorable Minister of Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili at the Bolingo Hotel and Towers Abuja by 5pm on 27th of October with a red Carpet opening cocktail for the invited delegates.
 
Expected at the festival are delegates from over 20 countries who will partake in the festival screenings, awards, exhibitions, panel discussions and seminars that will run for 4 days at the Bolingo Hotel and Towers Abuja. The Theme of the festival is NOLLYWOOD What NEXT?
 
According to Fidelis Duker (Festival Director), Some of the confirmed speakers include the Director General of The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation Otunba Segun Runsewe, DG Censors Board Mr. Emeka Mba, President Association of Producers Mr. Paul Obazele, Managing Director of VIASAT Network Ghana Mr. Lenon Jack, President Actors Guild of Nigeria Mr. Segun Arinze, The CEO of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, DG National Broadcasting Commission Engr. Bolarinwa and DG Nigeria Copyright Commission Dr. Adebambo Adewopo amongst several.  From the International scene, speakers will include beat, a delegation from Kenya, Ghana and the United Kingdom will be running a workshop on script development.
 
The Festival Manager also informed that Some of the films for screening and the competition category of the film festival will be CLOSE ENEMIES (USA/NIG), Perfect Picture(Ghana), Smoke and Mirrors (Nig), Disoriented Generation (UK), Man is Star (Tunisia),  The PACT (Canada), Traumology (Spain), Men Enough (Uganda), Flower Bridge (Romania) and Razor (Australia) amongst  among the over 60 films that will be screened during the festival.

Ali Baylay

Starring:  Desmond Elliot, Magid  Michel, Tonto Dikeh,Uru Eke, Ejine Okoroafor;  Producer: Okey Okonkwo, Director of Photography: Alex Effiong; Production Managers: Ifeanyi Udokwo, Boniface  Ogbonna; Executive Producer: Okey Okonkwo; Director: Daniel Ademinokan; Story: Ral Nwankwo. 100 mins. 2009

 All I Ever Wanted is a story with voice over narrative told from the point of view of Didi (Sandra Uchemba), the oldest daughter of Eddy (Desmond Elliot). She is not warming up to the girl friend and soon-to-be wife, Binye (Mercy Johnson) of her father. Didi’s idea of a happy family is nothing more than her, her two siblings, the father and the aunt, and she considers any other person, be the girlfriend of her father, as an intruder. She is at a tangent with her sibling sister, Kachi (Chidera Anih) who cunningly put both her father and Binye together, as she wants mother figure in the household. Didi abruptly stops eating, leaving her family at the dinner-table and bursts into tears, when her father announces he’ll soon be marrying Binye.

 With not much ado in this straight-jacketed story, Binye comes to the rescue of Didi, when Didi experiences her womanhood and gets really scared at the sight of blood. For the first time, Didi values the presence of another member in her father’s household and even goes on to cherish the child, a son, Binye brings into the family.

 Chinelo Uzoigwe’s screenplay, except for the wonderful acting of Desmond Elliot and Mercy Johnson, has poor plot mechanics, and no tearjarking incident that makes the story stand out as memorable.  In other words this story falls flat. It is the same run of the mill story: One character doesn’t like the other character for some reason, and bam, incident occurs that will unite the two. If All I Ever Wanted has had a radio or any other form of communication that will enable Eddy and Binye to get together, it would have been the classic case of the movie, Sleepless in Seattle. One thing in All I Ever Wanted that didn’t escape my notice is I can’t quite get a grasp on the scene of Eddy’s altercation with his wife in the bedroom and to the point of reference that his wife died in a plane crash. I want to believe this scene is a flashback but on the other hand, it seems in the present. You bet I wouldn’t have been confused if this scene had appeared in a prelude.

 Voice over narrative “I” as intended in All I Ever Wanted, is a beautiful device that can tell story from personal point of view, but just as useful as it can be, it is sometimes mostly overused or underused as in this film.

By David Ajiboye

Recently, the African Movie indus­try has seen a sig­nif­i­cant surge in the pop­u­lar­ity of African films  around the world. This is mainly due to the amaz­ing tal­ents of some of Nigeria’s finest actors. One notable Actor who has made an impact is Nkem Owoh. He has secured for him­self a mas­sive fan base from the liv­ing rooms of Lon­don to the countryside’s of Free­town.  Nkem Owoh is a Niger­ian come­dian and movie actor. His name, Nkem, means, My own. He starred in the 2003 film Osuofia in Lon­don.

 In 2004 Owoh was one of sev­eral actors who was tem­porar­ily banned from
appear­ing in movies by Nigeria’s Asso­ci­a­tion of Movie Mar­keters and Pro­duc­ers, who argued that the actors demanded exces­sive fees and unrea­son­able con­tract demands.

There have been rumours of Nkem Owoh being paid 1.75 mil­lion Naira
($14,000 US Dol­lars) for this film, although in real­ity he may have earned sub­stan­tially more than that, con­sid­er­ing his pop­u­lar­ity and that the movie was filmed across two con­ti­nents.

He is also known for per­form­ing the song  “I Go Chop Your Dol­lar” about advance fee fraud. The song was fea­tured in the film The Mas­ter in which Owoh plays a scammer.The Eco­nomic and Finan­cial Crimes Com­mis­sion and the Niger­ian Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion banned the song. Below is an excerpts of an interview with the comedian.

How has it been so far?

There has been the neg­a­tive and the pos­i­tive sides. It’s like every other thing in life. I believe once you have the zeal and God gives you the health, you have to forge ahead. When­ever I meet the hill I believe I have to climb the hill and that’s life. So I just take this indus­try and what God has given me and I thank God for the spe­cial tal­ent which I never rec­og­nized, until peo­ple started rec­og­niz­ing in me. Now, when I look back­wards I always feel I have
some­thing that peo­ple love and I am happy and I thank God for that.

Com­edy in Nige­ria

Com­edy was intro­duced at the incep­tion of this branch of art as slap­stick. At that time, you would come across peo­ple putting on funny glasses, like the one I am putting on. I am the only per­son autho­rized to wear a sun­shade at night. You see peo­ple try­ing to whip up laugh­ter from dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. But now we have grad­u­ated to a level that you can really make peo­ple laugh even if you are putting on suit. If God gives you a gift, it is not an easy thing. I talk, you laugh. I don’t know how I do it, some­times. I am embar­rassed.
A long time ago, I was asked to say the prayer at a func­tion and I said in Jesus name and peo­ple started laugh­ing. I take my prayers very seri­ously and I became very embar­rassed. You see there are good and bad sides to those things. Any­thing you say, you wouldn’t be taken seri­ous even when you are dis­cussing seri­ous issues. It hurts when such treat­ment is meted to you. But I think it is more on the pos­i­tive side.

Most paid comic actor

I haven’t said that I am the high­est paid. It depends on what you mean by pay­ment. I feel very happy as one of the high­est paid comic actors, and I am not com­plain­ing.

Embar­rass­ing moment

It depends on your def­i­n­i­tion of embar­rass­ment. What you might con­sider embar­rass­ing to you might not be embar­rass­ing to me. Except when you begin to go into my fail­ures in life that’s when I get embar­rassed. But if you are talk­ing about every­day life, I don’t get embar­rassed eas­ily. I might, I don’t know. May be along the line as some­body might do some­thing. I have not seen or heard before and be embar­rassed.

Stronger than pain

It went like any other movie. We are not act­ing for our­selves, but for the peo­ple. The crit­ics and view­ers’ opin­ions deter­mined the qual­ity of the film. Act­ing with Kate Hen­shaw was fan­tas­tic. Kate is some­one who has a mea­sure of the char­ac­ter­is­tics I have. So we blended, it was nice and the film came out fine.

Niger­ian movie indus­try

The indus­try is very big and heavy. The thing is that we stay here and do not know the weight of this indus­try because prob­a­bly every body knows the other per­son in the indus­try. But when you go out­side the shores of this coun­try even out­side your state, you could see the impact we have been mak­ing not only in Africa but around the world. I am talk­ing from expe­ri­ence.

Worst day

The worst day in my life is when I will make peo­ple laugh too much. I don’t like mak­ing peo­ple overdo things. I don’t think I have ever had a worse day. I am a per­son who believes that the world is like that. You go up and down. If I have some­thing peo­ple could describe as the worst, I have hope that I can always sur­mount it.

Between fam­ily life and act­ing

It’s very tough thing to do but by the grace of God we are try­ing to marry every­thing together.

The Hol­land expe­ri­ence

I was not arrested in Hol­land last year. It was a kind of expe­ri­ence that left a bit­ter taste in my mouth. For a bonafide cit­i­zen of a rec­og­nized coun­try to enter another coun­try and peo­ple saw him as a sec­ond class cit­i­zen. I was there and their police came in their num­bers about one hun­dred of them. They came in their ambu­lance, on air, police dogs and all that. They told me to end the show. I told the man it’s unfair. I told them that if I was the per­son they were look­ing for, they should take me, but should not embar­rass the audi­ence. The man said no and that caused my anger. After that, we arranged and staged a demon­stra­tion to relate my own side of the story. If that was the option left to us, I don’t think we were wrong in fol­low­ing it. Nobody arrested me the way it was reported.

By Ali Baylay

Cast:Emeka Ike, Van Vicker, Prince Ike, Tonto Dikeh; Produced by Pressing Forward Productions; Black Star Entertainment; Screenplay: Greg Chyke Inawodoh. 145 Minutes.

There’re really guys like this: wise guys, fast talking, tough-talking, smooth-talking and confident- building guys who can present before you a heaven on earth. They’re not your 9 to 5 kind of guys. They live by scamming, pilfering, lying, deceiving and robbing, peddling guns and drugs. They’re the best dressed, they hang out with big shots-governors, ministers, bank managers, board of directors; and they shop for, and use beautiful women and later wad them off  like flies, and beside the cordon of securities, there’s always one henchman hanging around them with a briefcase full of money. These days in modern African countries, stringent financial difficulties creates certain nostalgia for their brand of lifestyle-easy living.

Andy (Emeka Ike) is a medical doctor who cannot find job or client so he can feed himself, as he sits lamenting and soliloquizing in his little scantily dressed apartment. Then saunters in Emeka (Prince Eke), dejectedly looking after another interview flop. While both are blaming their misfortunes on the government and their gods, then comes in Jerry (Van Vicker) who is offered N15000 for a job not quite made clear in the film. These three characters assumingly bunk together in this apartment. At certain point they look like the three stoogies.

Their luck soon change when per chance Andy saves a client’s life from heart attack and this client, Chief Braimor happens to be a big time drug dealer. Being poor, and down on their lucks the three idlers soon become Chief Braimor’s drug delivery people. The three are still living together, except their condition has changed a notch up, and we see them showering party girls with lots of nairas and dollar bills at a private party, in their new marble floor apartment.

Here’s where Marshals as a story has pitfalls: First,the story doesn’t justify the title. We see Jerry and Emeka ones in the traffic, each with a briefcase, one getting in a car, and the other on a bike. What makes them become marshals doesn’t have to be just a single shot of delivery. What happens to the principle of three in story telling? I did not see any action out of the ordinary (eg. mob) that could make them  marshals for what they do except seeing them getting  in traffic.  

There’s too much telling and no showing: We never ever see what the said marshals are trading in (cocaine, pills, marijuana, counterfeit etc), nor the type of people they do business with. There’s no establishment of link between Andy, Emeka and Jerry. All these do not have history to connect them together except the fact that they live in one bedroom apartment.  Lastly, the plot line involving Cathy (Tonto Dikeh) takes so much steam out of this lackluster story.  I wonder why this plot is necessary because it doesn’t  move the story at all. Excuse me if Andy’s  gonna fall in love with her, or she’ll hire Emeka to kill Chief Braimor, in part 3, but that remain to be seen.

Until I see part 3 and see these interactions in the resolution, Marshals does not measure to its name. Indeed not all. I can guess here the writer’s aim for this story is to take a pardoxical shot at the ills of our society, and which is somehow achieved. But as a story form, and structure, the goal is not achieved.