Beverly Afaglo fights Tv stations for the influx of Telenovelas on our screens

Actress Beverly Afaglo has joined the debate on whether the Ghanaian movie industry is dead or not.

The discussion, which was raised by outspoken actress Bibi Bright when speaking to MzGee on Hitz FM’s “Showbiz This Week” entertainment show, has received divergent opinion from movie makers in the country. Mrs Baah sharing her two cents in a conversation with MzGee disclosed that the industry is not dead as her colleague Bibi Bright describes it.

She was however quick to add that things are not moving fast as it was in the past years. To her, there is a season for everything on earth so she sees the current system of the movie industry as a normal.

She later blamed television stations for not helping moviemakers in the country. According to her, television stations instead of showing more of local contents to help promote the Ghanaian movie industry travel outside to purchase foreign contents.

The actress who sounded passionate when talking to MzGee said TV stations “waste” precious time to make foreign TV series which were shot many years ago attractive to viewers but demand huge sums of money from producers when they present local TV series.

“I wouldn’t say it is dead but I think it is slow just because there is time for every kind of job. Sometimes it gets to the peak and other times it becomes slow and I think this is the slow season for our industry.

To me I think this is because some of the producers have stopped producing because they have found other jobs more vibrant than producing movies. Now most movies coming out are from the actors and actresses and we are not able to produce a lot like producers will come out and produce because one needs a lot of money to produce a movie.

The TV stations and the likes are not helping the industry as well. I wish there will be a law which will direct TV stations to show 70% of local contents just to help the local movie industry.

What we see now is the other way round. Every station is showing telenovela or Indian series for their viewers. If TV stations decide to put our projects on TV, then we will go far and it will even bring the producers back to work because they will know that the work is lucrative again.

If we bring a job and they charge huge amount before they show it and we cannot afford it, they will runaway. But you take telenovelas and put them on your TV and hype it to the maximum point that sponsors come on board. Why can’t you do same for our TV series and make sure sponsors come on board?

Most of the telenovelas we watch on TV have same scenes recycled for different episodes but the TV stations spend 30 minutes for discussion of something that has been shot like 5 to 10 years ago. They make it look interesting and it looks like it is better than what we do here in Ghana” peeved Beverly Afaglo told MzGee.