‘Nollywood children series’: Once a film culture is about profit like Nollywood, making films for children becomes more difficult to achieve

By Lancelot Imasuen

THE reasons children are absent in Nollywood films are quite obvious. Nollywood movies are purely driven by the desire to make profit, and what are the range of the viewership? It’s a system failure on our part as a people. Like we all know, classic children films are made abroad, because no part, no aspect of their society is left unattended to, because the system is designed to take care of everybody. But here, it’s a different story. The major driving force for us, why we make films, is for profit; we want to make money. The children are not thought about, because the growing child here that can afford to watch films watch cartoons, all those foreign cartoons instead. That’s what is accessible to him or her.

Whether we like it or not, whether we appreciate what the Funke Akindeles of this world are doing to our cinema is as a result of pressure. Black Panther is a film that has sold in billions in Nigeria. The producers didn’t come down here to be dancing. Those big Hollywood movies that make waves here, we don’t know the makers, yet our young people — because that is what they are tilted towards – lap them up. I attempted something in Benin City. I made Edo language movies good enough to be accepted in the cinema. Right in my presence, some young lads were telling me, ‘how can I buy ticket to go and watch an Edo language film in the cinema?’ It is painful (laughs). You see the kind of people we are? It took time before Yoruba films got accepted, because that culture is already there. Igbos are nowhere to be found. The Hausa movies we watch, but not in the cinema. They have their own local way that is working for it. For children in the cinema, it would be difficult. Where do we get the audience? These kids, growing up, they are already used to all those foreign films, foreign cartoons, foreign whatever, whatever…

But the lacuna isn’t as a result of our founding fathers in the cinema. We did. There was a big film sometime ago that was for young people; it was made by Zeb Ejiro titled, Goodbye Tomorrow. But most times, and because our industry is always about money, the film owners don’t have funds; we don’t have sponsorship. So we want to look at stories, we want to concentrate on stories that will get immediate attraction that you cannot get from children’s stories.

Again, the system is an issue, if you asked me. The way we are as a people, if that thing is not foreign, it doesn’t interest us. That is another point that you cannot take away. So these young lads need a lot to be able to galvanize them, but that’s not to say entirely that the market is not there, or the market has not been there, but right now, because the industry is primarily driven by our quest to quickly make money, we don’t think about films for children as a viable pathway.

Lancelot Imasuen

We are also a very lazy people. We, as producers and filmmakers, are also very lazy people. Everybody wants the easy way out. I think it has also not been exploited. It has not. You are talking to the right person because I am always very bothered by the next generation. I am the initiator of the Benin Poetry Club; I am the founder and proprietor of Benin Film Academy, and four years ago, we founded the International Students Film Festival (ISFF). All these were geared towards an inclusiveness for younger people. These are platforms that can be used to push this narrative.

So, that is just the bridge. I may not be able to get the story of adolescence and kids to write; they will tell their own story. What the festival does is to engage them, open then up to the basics; they then make their stories and get it to the mainstream.

We have had three editions of the festival. The first one was hosted by Igbinedion University, Okada. The second one was hosted by the University of Port Harcourt, and last year the third edition was hosted by Imo State University, Owerri. So it’s a travelling festival that moves from place to place. The idea is to catch them young, expose the students to the tenets of filmmaking and expose them to industry giants. The system doesn’t play a good role in encouraging stuffs like that. Getting sponsorship and all that to make the film festival bigger and better is always a problem. The schools hosting cannot even fund anything. So, these are the challenges. But that’s the platform that can actually push children’s films. The young people should be allowed to tell their stories by themselves. It’s about sharing their own experiences. I cannot tell the story of a child when I’m already getting old.

When you mention system, which system is working in Nigeria? What is working in Nigeria? Even the hotel that I’m now, is it working? You get into a room in the hotel, you still have to tell them there is no soap or towel. I’ve travelled to over 46 countries in the world, I’ve never seen it. Nothing is working in Nigeria. The private places, government made it worse. What is working? Nothing. So, where’s the system that is working? In some places in the world, people get grants to make films. You don’t need to kill yourself. So if you get grants to make films, you can venture into children’s films that we’re talking about. But once a film culture is geared towards making profit like we have it in Nollywood, making films for children becomes more difficult to achieve.

That is what International Students Film Festival is a sort of advocacy for films for young people. Let’s give these young lads the opportunity to express themselves and tell their own stories, but we don’t have that. We don’t get sponsorships. We can’t even fund billboards. Four years, I’ve been funding this festival by myself, because I believe in young people. We have failed; people above 60, they have failed Nigeria. Imagine eighty-something years’ old Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu saying he is a City Boy, and you see young people clapping for him! Eighty-something years’ old is a City Boy. You see the challenge?

* Imasuen is a notable award-winning Nollywood filmmaker and festival director