Ex-CEO of African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Peace Anyiam Osigwe, has expressed disappointment in Nollywood actress Omoni Oboli over her recent comments that the AMAAs and Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCAs) are politicised award ceremonies.
Peace described Omoni’s comments as ‘unguarded’ and said she found them rather regrettable.
Omoni in an earlier interview with the headline, ‘AMAA, AMVCA politicise their awards,’ which was posted on dailytimes.com.ng, suggested that the two award ceremonies were biased award events.
She made the statement while responding to a question on why movies from other African countries outshine Nollywood movies at awards like AMAA and AMVCA, and what Nollywood was doing to assert its dominance as Africa’s leading movie industry.
She said: ‘The truth is that our leadership in Africa has not been in question at all, in my opinion, and you can quote me on this. The reason it seems that they are getting more awards is not because they are doing better than us. I see their movies and, I’m not being biased here, I assess my movies and I begin to think ‘I should have done this here and there’ and ‘this is not the kind of expression I should have used here’ and all that. I criticise myself and I’m not in any way biased. I think they are waking up, and they are just being encouraged. The organisers are just trying to encourage them by giving them awards, and not necessarily because they have acted better in many instances.’
But Peace Osigwe challenged the reaction and described her comments as unfortunate in a facebook comment.
She said the AMAA was the most transparent award system in the world for black filmmakers.
‘It’s so sad that an actress such as Omoni will make unguarded comments, especially as I do not know that she has the credentials to say we politicise AMAA. AMAA is the most transparent award system in the world for black filmmakers and the fact that all our jury are of the highest level of curators of African Cinema in most of the most credible film festivals in the world. Nigerian filmmakers, we all know that it takes a lot to make a good film and sound. Acting and the post production of a film is important.
I can speak my mind as I am not more the CEO of AMAA and I am simply a filmmaker. If your film is so good please send it to major festivals and other film-related events that are on merit and not who you know or can convince so that you use that to judge.
People say a lot of nonsense as regards awards especially if they do not win, but you cannot be the judge of your own work. Let the critics decide. I believe that the AMAA has distinguished itself by its quality of films, even though we have had logistics issues as per the event itself,’ Peace said.
There has not been any response from AMVCAs yet.
By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected])
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