By Sylvester Kwentua

Veteran Nollywood movie producer and director, Obi Emelonye, is of the opinion that the Nigerian movie industry, Nollywood, is starting to catch up with the film festival movement and he is proud to be associated with the coal city film festival, a film festival movement began by Nollywood young and creative director, Uche Agbo. He made this known in a chat recently.

“Nollywood is really new to the concept of film festivals. An industry that started to run before it could crawl; Nollywood has broken every rule of the international film convention on its way to becoming the 2nd largest film industry in the world. In other climes, film festivals are for the filmmaker, a veritable platform to showcase their work, display their craft and solicit commercial interest in their work or get distribution of some sort. But in Nollywood which mastered the art of distribution before it could learn camera angles, filmmakers saw this showcase platform as redundant and a waste of their valuable time. Why seek distribution for your old project when you have already distributed your film? should you not be expending your energy on the next movie project? Also for the global organiser of film festivals, it is an opportunity to curate a bouquet of films that fit a certain remit and bring together an array of filmmaking talents for discossions, conversations, film appreciation and research. This is usually with support from government. But in Nigeria, in spite of our huge splash for Festac 1977, Nigerian government up till date have shown no interest in creating or financially supporting a celebration of filmmaking culture. It now falls on individuals like Uche Agbo to dream up the concepts and personally finance them” He began.

“But with the proliferation of film festivals across the country, and the more international facing film projects for the likes of Netflix and Amazon, the film festival circuit is heating up in Nigeria and I am proud to be part of that movement.” He concluded.

Speaking in the same vein, Uche Agbo, who is the organizer of the Coal city film festival, explained what made him think of starting a film festival that will be holding it’s second edition, later this year.

“We downplay the critical role of Film Festivals in Film business chain in Nigeria. I mean, it’s one place that affords filmmakers and actors alike to network with distributors and investors. Film Festivals brings under one environment, producers, actors, distributors, financiers as well as film lovers who are our primary audience. So there is opportunity for first hand feedback and possibilities of striking a lot of deals. I think we don’t have enough in Nigeria. CCFF(Coal city film festival) therefore is my contribution to Nation building. Again, I am an ardent proponent of building regional economies, because it is in building regional economies that we can collectively contribute to the development of the National Economy, like in the good old days that Nigeria practiced true federal system of government. So Coal City Film Festival is a sort of my contribution to the tourist and hospitality development of Enugu State and South East in general. The last but not the least is that you can’t write the history of the modern Nigeria Film Industry, otherwise known as Nollywood without mentioning Enugu. So what other ways can we appreciate a state that contributed immensely to providing locations and entertaining some of the foremost filmmakers and actors in Nollywood, than to gather these successful filmmakers and actors once a year in that city and celebrate the growth of African and world cinema. Armed with these three thoughts, my vision is to open the doors of south east Nigeria to the rest of the world through film, building capacities for the creative industry by organizing tailor-made trainings, increasing tourist potentials and encouraging cultural tolerance.” Uche Agbo stressed.

On what people should expect in this year’s edition that will be the second edition, Uche Agbo said.