Beverly Afaglo has given her two cents on the ongoing conversation over whether the Ghanaian movie industry is really as dead as people are making it out to be.
Actress Bibi Bright recently made an emphatic statement that the Ghanaian movie industry is dead due to lack of sales, a sentiment that has since been echoed by Yvonne Nelson and which has sparked intense debate.
Speaking with MzGee on Hitz Fm, Afaglo said she disagreed with the characterisation that the industry is dead. She said there are undoubtedly challenges but to say it’s dead is a stretch.
“I wouldn’t say it is dead but I think it is slow just because there is time for every kind of job. Sometimes it gets to the peak and other times it becomes slow and I think this is the slow season for our industry.
“To me I think this is because some of the producers have stopped producing because they have found other jobs more vibrant than producing movies. Now most movies coming out are from the actors and actresses and we are not able to produce a lot like producers will come out and produce because one needs a lot of money to produce a movie.”
According to Choirmaster’s significant other, the problem lies with the local stations, which have taken telenovelas and spend so much time and money promoting them to the public – resources they could spend on local programming but they won’t.
“The TV stations and the likes are not helping the industry as well. I wish there will be a law which will direct TV stations to show 70% of local contents just to help the local movie industry.
“What we see now is the other way round. Every station is showing telenovela or Indian series for their viewers. If TV stations decide to put our projects on TV, then we will go far and it will even bring the producers back to work because they will know that the work is lucrative again.” she continued.
“If we bring a job and they charge huge amount before they show it and we cannot afford it, they will runaway. But you take telenovelas and put them on your TV and hype it to the maximum point that sponsors come on board. Why can’t you do same for our TV series and make sure sponsors come on board?
“Most of the telenovelas we watch on TV have same scenes recycled for different episodes but the TV stations spend 30 minutes for discussion of something that has been shot like 5 to 10 years ago. They make it look interesting and it looks like it is better than what we do here in Ghana”