AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch / CP Africa): The best of Nigerian movies are to be shown in New Zealand as part of the Nollywood Film Festival which opened today in Wellington.
The Nollywood Film Festival moves to Auckland on October 16.
Filmmaker Tunde Kelani’s Dazzling Mirage opens the festival and has been billed as an inspiring story of how a young sickle cell carrier overcame social stigma and prejudice.
Kelani says: "It is an interesting love story, because all of us are connected directly or indirectly to the sufferers of this ailment. I’m intrigued by the writer’s approach to weave a love story with it and that to me, it is an attraction. I have also had personal relationship with sufferers of this ailment and I consider it my responsibility to bring their story to fore.’’
Chris Dada’s Lagos Stories and Tunde Kelani’s Maami are the other Nigerian movies screening at the festival this October.
Lagos Stories takes viewers on an insiders’ tour of the city of Lagos – from the exclusive salons to the urban ghetto of AJ City, she meets characters from all works of life revealing the resilience, resourcefulness and spirit of Lagosians.
Enter Governor Fashola charged with the herculean task of organizing Lagos; Charly Boy, the cult hero spokesman for outcast bikers and the influential ghetto artists creating the musical styles and dances that spread over the entire continent.
Maami is a film about a single parent, MAAMi, and her young son, who are desperately poor. Maami's son longs for the father he has never known – a man with a terrible secret. Set over a two-day period, leading to the 2010 World Cup, MAAMi is an inspiring story of a poor, conscientious single parent’s struggles to raise her only child, Kashimawo who eventually, rises to intrnational stardom in an English football club, Arsenal, and becomes a national hero.
Adapted by Tunde Babalola, from Femi Osofisan’s novel of the same name, this film about love, perseverance and fate unfolds through Kashimawo’s reminiscences of his hardscrabble childhood in the southern Nigerian town, Abeokuta.
As part of the festival, there will be academic forums at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) and Auckland University of Technology (AUT). The forum hosts are: the Film Studies programme at VUW; and African Communities Forum Inc as well as West Indian & Caribbean Society at AUT. The theme of the forum is “Nigerian Movies in the Diaspora: Sociocultural, Political and Economic Issues”.
Ayo Olukanni, the Nigerian High Commissioner for Australia and New Zealand, said yesterday that he hoped the Nollywood Festival would "help in the construction of a new and positive narrative on Nigeria in NZ and the Pacific region in general".
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