NAFTI embarks on traditional story collection

Accra, March 16, GNA - The National Film and Television Institute, (NAFTI) is to embark on a programme of collection and compilation of materials on traditional story telling that would serve as a prototype of African Cinema to be adopted by African Film-makers.

The five-year programme, to be undertaken in collaboration with the Southern African Script Development Fund and some East African Film foundations would afford filmmakers on the Continent a better alternative of producing good African movies that "tell the real story of the African".


Mr Martin Loh, Director of NAFTI, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency said: "This would also enable us to do away with the witchcraft and the juju film productions that portray Africa as a dark continent full of negative practices."


Mr Loh explained that as part of the research, collected stories were to be put together and shown to the public to know their reactions as to whether they would be interested in such films.


He indicated that currently most of the foreign films shown in Ghana and even on national television were not of good taste because a vacuum had been created and most of such films were filling that place. He expressed the hope that Parliament would soon pass the Film Development Bill before it to regulate films shown in the country. Mr Loh said the Bill has put in place some mechanisms to ensure that many better films were made, produced and shown.

He said the Bill would create a national Film Board under which Government would establish a national film fund out of which those with "acceptable scripts" would receive grants to produce their films. "This would enable lots of film-makers to produce more films to fill the vacuum that the foreign films, particularly, Nigerian Films are filling", Mr Loh indicated.


He said the Bill would also establish a Film Board that would classify and determine films made in both Ghana and abroad before they were shown on "our screens."


"The appropriate penalties have also been instituted to check culprits who would produce immoral or otherwise films". According to Mr Loh, NAFTI produces many quality film producers, who regrettably branch "somewhere' because of lack of funding to produce quality films.


"In the whole of black Africa, there is no country which has better technicians than Ghana has. Ghana from the 1960s have had enormous quality film professionals", he said.