Congrats to all the 2013 African Movie Academy Awards winners! The annual AMAA ceremony took place on April 20.
Below is the full list of winners, along with sneak peeks of select films:
Best Short Film: Kwaku Ananse (Ghana)
Best Diaspora Documentary: Fan Do Brasil (Brazil/Guadeloupe)
Best Animation: Adventure Of Zambezia (South Africa)
Best Film By Africans Abroad: Last Flight To Abuja (UK/Nigeria)
Desmond Elliot and other Nollywood directors aspire to “grow beyond the walls of Nigeria.” They aim to showcase to the world films that break out of the typical Nollywood guerilla filmmaking style. Nollywood actress Patience Ozokwor knows all too well what types of films these directors are trying to outrun. Known as Mama Africa to her fans, Patience has been often stereotyped in films as the wicked African woman who sucks her teeth, fights, and plots evil at every turn.
New Nollywood filmmakers and directors are the subject of the New York Times Op-Doc Nollywood Heights – a short documentary on Nollywood’s origins and future. The 20-year old industry, which takes in half a billion each year, is one of the largest private sector employment sources for Nigeria and stands behind only Bollywood and Hollywood in revenues.
Director: Pascal Amanfo
Producer: Yvonne Nelson
Stars: Yvonne Nelson, Chris Attoh, Nadia Buari, Kofi Adjorlolo, Kweku Elliot, Tana Adelana
Many have feared the day that you would use the words “raunchy” and “Ghanaian movie” in the same sentence. But times are a’changing.
Following the lives of six characters who love, lust, and lie, Single & Married is sex without subtly, profanity-ridden, and says ‘Dick’ so often you would think it was someone’s name.
And that’s just the trailer.
Director: Jimmy Bangura (Jimmy B)
Starring: Ramsey Noah, Lucky Lawson, Chika Ike, Martha Ankomah
Love and Lust intelligently explores the maintenance part of the marital relationship equation. Friction arises in every relationship, how we address it determines the quality and longevity of our interactions.
Lucky Lawson pleasantly surprised me with her creative contribution to this thought-provoking Nollywood/Ghallywood collaboration. Her performance did make me wonder if I had a problem with her accent. However, I now realize that her enunciation can be an issue, at times.
Lawson plays Kayla, a dutiful African wife. She supports her husband’s business, as gauchely as she can. In fact, writing construction-related proposals is not one of her gifts. After her umpteenth costly mistake, Kayla flees insults, under-performance and humiliations, to search for her true vocation. Lawson does a great job of showing what eats up Kayla.
After bagging an Oscar in The Last King of Scotland – a movie steeped in controversy over the negative portrayals of Africa as the savage or dark continent – Forest Whitaker is yet again on to something even more infamous – painting the ancient West African religion of Voodoo as ‘horror’ and ‘evil’.
Together with Anthony Mackie, Mike Epps, and Sanaa Lathan, they cut a sorry cast ready to lay down every legacy, pride and education left in them, for this ‘Voodoo Horror’ called Vipaka.
Written by Shin Shimosawa, the story follows a severely disturbed contractor (Forest Whitaker), husband to Sanaa Lathan, who seeks help from a life coach (Anthony Mackie). What begins as an honest therapy session becomes a twisted and dangerous psychological game, when he abducts the life coach and uses his spiritual messages to terrorize him and his family.
What is a Voodoo Horror? Probably, a term coined by a few people out there who lack any real sense of creativity. Except for the huge financial benefits, the premise for such stories and the profits thereof are tied in with preying on certain misguided Western perceptions of Africa. The oxymoron in Voodoo Horror, only offers Western viewers an orgasm about African savagery.
Jason Njoku is one of many African business leaders taking control of the film industry and the Internet revolution in African countries. His Nollywood Love website attracts over 2 million viewers per week. CNN’s African Voices talks with Njoku about the Internet business and future of Nollywood movies online.
Watch Parts 2 and 3 below:
Every night, when I was little, my aunty would gather all the children in the house around the fire that had just been used for cooking diner. I was always sleepy having gulped down several calabashes of water to wash down the balls of banku and spicy hot sauce that almost always accompanied these meals.
When I finally went to bed, I could hardly sleep as the tales my aunty told by the fireside constantly tormented my every imagination. I became afraid of the dark. If you were screaming for help in a room with no lights, you would wait a thousand centuries. I wouldn’t make the trek!.
Since the emergence of Nollywood and the Ghana Film industry, I have often read with much surprise and reservation the confidence with which film scholars around the world have poked at gender representations and portrayals in African film.
The African film has become the new toy over which research funding is profusely lavished. And in its wake, scores of papers are gleaned daily from these films supposedly enlightening us about the role of women in African society!
On many occasions, even black film scholars, in my opinion, have fallen for this sort of analysis and proceeded to dissect African films in ways that do not at all reflect the collective work of the filmmakers, the actors/actresses and the producers in Ghana or Nollywood. For instance, how can anyone claim and assert simple conclusions about an industry that produces more than 50 films per week in more than 40 different languages? Nollywood alone, since the mid 1990s, has churned out more than 45,000 films.
Director: Bayo Akinfemi
Stars: Van Vicker, Koby Maxwell, Tchidi Chikere, Syr Law, JJ Bunny, Chet Anekwe
Release: February 2011
Runtime: 144 minutes
Paparazzi: Eye in the Dark is a romantic drama about an aspiring photographer (Van Vicker) whose accidental picture exposes an infamous murder mystery. Filmed in 19 days, the film is credited by some as the film that could change the look and sound of Nollywood films, due to its more western approach to production quality and American filmmaker Tim Wilson’s (aka Black Magic Tim) role as cinematographer and editor.
Watch the trailer below:
Director: Moses Inwang
Stars: Uche Jombo, Kalu Ikeagwu, Tonto Dikeh, Basorge Tariah Jnr, Nicolette Indigwe, Hammond Oghomwen Ozakpolor
Writer: Rita C. Onwurah
Release Date: early July
Nollywood actress/writer/producer Uche Jombo will release the Damage film trilogy to address social issues of domestic violence, human trafficking, and HIV/Aids.
We’ve previously featured top Nollywood actress Genevieve Nnaji, but since she deserves more than one post, here she is again! Profiled on CNN’s African Voices. Watch the segment, which includes movie clips and Nnaji talking about her love for Nigeria (in three parts):
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