A veteran
Nollywood film producer, Chima Okereke, on Thursday, cautioned Nigerian film
producers against promoting short films, saying this tends to bury the talents of
artists.
Okereke said
that producing short films in the Nollywood Motion Picture Industry (MPI) could
also aid the killing of the industry.
He said in
Lagos that in Nollywood, several talents had fallen by the wayside because they
were into short films.
He said that
such talents thought acting short films was the destination in itself.
Okereke said
that Hollywood used to encourage the production of short films by producers but
this was alien to Nollywood.
“Hollywood
and Nollywood operate in different environments and systems and every new
filmmaker must understand that.
“Anyone that
wants to be a producer with limited resources should go straight to a feature
or tele-movie film and avoid the failure of short films.
“That is a
better thing to do in our environment. Stop burying your talents in short
films,’’ he said.
He advised
indigenous filmmakers to shoot feature films where they could make money.
Such money
could serve as the seed for the filmmaker to launch his or career, he said.
The film
producer advised indigenous film makers to desist from copying some of those
things trending in the developed world.
“They
necessarily do not work here in Nigeria.
“The beauty
of the short film route in America is that there are short film competitions,
film festivals, and monetary incentives to produce them,’’ he said.
He said that
anytime he was opportune to speak or teach in a film school or academy in
Nigeria, “I will advise students never to aim at producing short films in
Nigeria.
“For the
budding filmmaker in developing countries like Nigeria’s Nollywood, all
incentives available in developed countries are not available here.
“It is the
family and friends that encourage film makers and producers here.
“Where there
is none, so many talents fall by the way side in frustration after completing
their film studies.
“He or she
regrets going into film making as they would have spent almost all their
resources to produce a five-minute film,’’ he said. (NAN)
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