Entertainment critic Prince Tsegah says it is a non-starter for any movie producer to blame the perceived of the Ghanaian movie industry on the current power crisis, popularly called ‘Dumsor’.
Speaking on Hitz FM’s Entertainment This Week with MzGee, Mr. Tsegah said Ghana’s major competitor, Nollywood has been able to build and sustain their standards despite their worsening power situation.
Prince Tsegah said, “Their (Nigerian) power problem is still worse than ours even now as I speak. But they don’t use it as an excuse (saying) ‘we don’t have power we cannot produce etc’. For me I feel it’s only a bad workman who blames his tools.”
He said as far back as the year 2000, the yearn for Ghanaian movies was nothing to write home about. The entertainment critic said the decision by some Television stations at the time to show more Nigerian movies which had boomed on the Ghanaian movie market crowded out the Ghanaian movies.
“And I remember back in the day we as entertainment critics were fighting that we should start showing movies of our own but then we had few movies,” Prince Tsegah noted.
He suggested that the collaborations from the Nigerians revived the industry that has declined now. The revival according to him, happened when some Nigerian producers left their home country to Ghana following a ban on movie production in Nigeria.
The Ghana-Nigeria collaborations then caused a bang in the Ghanaian movie industry but the Nigerian producers left in the early 2000s after they were asked by Ghanaian authorities to pay outrageous levies for producing movies.
But Ghanaian musician-turned-movie-director, Kobby of Rana fame, disagrees.
He argued that Ghana has equally good directors but said film making is team work and hiring Nigerian film producers to produce movies is to achieve quality.
“If a Ghanaian producer together with Ghanaian actors decides to bring a Nigerian director, I don’t think anyone is feeding on the other or anyone is helping the other. It’s just collaborations.”
Recounting that the first Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) had the Ghanaian movie ‘Run Baby Run’ directed by Emmanuel Apea of Revele Films win about six awards, Kobby said Ghana boasts top quality productions which can compete on the continent and beyond.
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