The relevance of the movie profession in the effort toward realization of peace and harmony in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. One of those that made that relevancy a reality is Charles Olumo, the Abeokuta-born prominent Yoruba artist that has successfully spent 54 years showcasing Yoruba culture through movies.
The 83-year-old man, popularly called Agbako, the movie name that shot him into the limelight, spoke to Bashir Adefaka in Lagos recently. Excerpts:

What can you tell us about your background?

I was born in Abeokuta and had my early education there. When I was in school I was into sports because I ran a lot and did well in other sporting activities. This year I’m 83 years precisely.

When did you join the movie industry and why did you choose to play the role of Agbako (trouble) in the many movies you partook in the past?

First and foremost, I must tell you that today I am one of the happiest living persons on earth because I live to realise that I am still alive.

I embraced the Theatre in 1956 and I chose to be Agbako (Misfortune) in movies because I wanted to drive home a point that bad and good go together. As there are bad people so there are a lot who are wonderfully good.

My bad role in movies was to enable people identify bad people and be able to understand also what is bad. It was also my idea to make people know the consequences of being evil.

“All of them are our favourites,” Sam says about the Nollywood movies in her store. “They remind us of home. Here, we are homesick.”

Nollywood is Nigeria’s multimillion-dollar movie industry, which produces more than 1,000 titles a year. It’s the world’s third-biggest, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Nollywood movies—offering fictional representations of Africans in their homelands with dialogue in African languages, English, or French—are shot straight to DVD and distributed internationally. They’re made on a tight deadline, two weeks or so of shooting, and an even tighter budget, up to a few thousand dollars. They’re often poorly shot, using digital cameras, and badly edited, with substandard sound quality, but these are Africans “telling our own stories our own way”, as director Bond Emeruwa says in the 2007 documentary This Is Nollywood.

Nollywood exploded into being with the 1992 production of Living in Bondage by director Chris Obi Rapu. But this was not the first movie made in Nigeria. The Nigerian film industry had existed since the ’60s but had not made much headway due to the high expense of production. In 1992, businessman Kenneth Nnebue needed to get rid of several thousand blank VHS tapes when the opportunity to make a movie became available. Living in Bondage was dubbed in widely spoken pidgin English and made cheaply available.

which produced Segun Arinze as the factional president of the body. Kanayo O. Kanayo and his faction disagreed with the emergence of Arinze as the president and he declared himself as the president. In the middle of this ongoing battle, another election was conducted producing Emeka Ike as the AGN president to the discontent of the likes of Arinze. Embattled Arinze attempted to halt the caretaker committee of the guild from conducting the election that produced actor Ike. Arinze, last month, was appointed to head the alleged Government of National Unity set up by the Ifeanyi Dike-led Board of Trustees of the guild, with Ike as his deputy as a way of moving the troubled guild forward. Arinze allegedly stormed the guild’s secretariat with a team of policemen from Area D, Mushin, with the intention of stopping the election. However, he failed as the Kanayo team, armed with a court order, refused to be intimidated.

They were calling me and asking to know when I was planning to leave and I told them I wasn’t sure yet. I eventually decided to leave on a Monday with an 11.45 a.m. flight. Do you know that at precisely 11.45 a.m., a woman appeared at the airport screaming at the top of her voice that I should leave her husband alone. She told officials at the airport that she was hundred percent sure that I was aboard the flight.” There are similar stories on some other Nollywood people, indicating how competitive the industry has become, and the need for a unified Nollywood to address its mounting challenges. Mercy is one of the Nollywood people I have been studying to develop the characters of a novel I am planning to write on the industry. Another person is Mike Ezuruonye. I like it that outside the “scandals”, some of which look too silly to believe, Mercy has defied another of Nollywood’s dirty fads to commence marriage processes to her fiancé.

cont… http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=162550

Although very derogatory and the story makes the audience reel off in deep laughter because the joke bears some semblance to what plays out in the real world of Nollywood movie production, more salutary stories have been told about Nollywood, and these stories not only raise the profile of the industry, but also that of the country. Nollywood is an industry that Nigerians ought to be proud of….

cont … http://www.modernghana.com/movie/6004/3/nollywood-and-africamagic-pushing-the-nigerian-mot.html

With this in view, Del York International is partnering with the prestigious New York Film Academy to conduct film-making and acting training programmes in Nigeria.

Del York International hosted journalists in Abuja, on Tuesday, November 24, 2009. The press briefing held at the International Conference Centre, and was attended by Nollywood actors, Stephanie Okereke and Francis Duru. Miss Okereke, who is a graduate of the New York Film Academy, spoke about the success of her debut work, “Through the Glass” – a film she wrote, directed, co-produced and starred in.

The special guest speakers were the Minister for Information and Communication, Dora Akunyili; and Emeka Mba, the director-general of the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board.

Mrs. Akunyili stressed that the film industry is one more tool in laundering Nigeria’s image. Making reference to the controversial Sony advert and Hollywood film “District 9″, she implored “Nollywood, please help us to tell our own stories.”

Mr. Mba pointed out that local storytelling could be inadequate, citing the difference in the portrayal of magic and witchcraft in the Harry Potter series and Nollywood films.

The Del York-organised programme is the first outing of the film academy to Africa and will cater for 1000 students in both Abuja (February) and Lagos (March). Tuition for each student is $3,500.

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5489926-146/story.csp

Product Details
Actors: Mike Ezuronye
Directors: Ernest Obi
Format: Dolby, Subtitled, NTSC, Original recording
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: OODUA Afrik Fliks
Run Time: 230 minutes

Product Description
Best of Friends become best of enemies when a rich law student gets in their way. Later after shcool life they reunite…for better or for worse?

Nollywood is the 3rd largest film industry in the world behind Hollywood and Bollywood

Nollywood films are made on shoe string budgets with an average movie only taking around 10 day to complete with a cost of just $15,000

In only 30 years Nollywood has gone from zero to bring a $250 million dollar a year business.

Nollywood produces more movies yearly than Hollywood and Bollywood

Yoruba Movies are very popular in the home video arena.

There are around 300+ producers who churn out movies at an astonishing rate.

30+ new titles are released in Nigerian shops and markets every week where an normal film will sell about 50,000 copies.

Movies revolve round issues of romance, comedy, the occult, dodgy cops, prostitution and HIV/AIDS/

Nigerian stars are well known in Ghana, Zambia and beyond.

Star actors sometimes work on several movies at the same time.

Yoruba Movies are popular and growing in popularity in Europe and America.

Whilst filming on on location the directors of Nollywood, Yoruba Movies works harder than any other members found in the production crew, including the actors and actresses. Most of the time they spend on the artistic parts of their creation working with the actors to get the character down to perfection. Yoruba movies contain some colourful character which can be identified by the viewers for their fulfilment.