The founder of the Africa Movie Academy Awards , Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, is happy that the seed she planted 18 years ago has germinated to become a global platform through which filmmakers from Africa and the diaspora have been recognised and celebrated. In this interview with GREGORY AUSTIN NWAKUNOR, she spoke on the challenges of founding, financing and sustaining the awards scheme.
She explains, “we have had some interesting partnerships with different brands. We’ve worked with different countries, in terms of building up their film industries and having the AMAA nominations there. And I think one of our most interesting nomination parties was the one we held in Los Angeles, as well. So, sustaining AMAA is hard work, because it does cost a lot to do. You have to take off a lot of costs from African filmmakers; most of them struggle to make films.
A lot of people know about the rewarding arm of the academy, which is AMAA. Not many people know about its partnerships and capacity building, especially with the Lagos State government on the growth of the film industry. Some people also believed it was a Nigerian awards ceremony, “but we continued to make consistent and concerted efforts to enlighten and meet with other African film practitioners on the need to submit entries for the awards. We also had the support of the Bayelsa State government under the leadership of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan.
She breathes heavily and smiles: “This year, we worked very closely with the Lagos State government in training people on the field. On what the African Film Academy has done over the years, we’ve done over well with the amounts of people who have trained this year, we have closer to 12,000 people in our training database. And what have we done, we’ve basically gone to the field, and trained people in something we call film in a box.
“I feel it was impactful. I feel it would be seen and felt very soon in the ecosystem of the Lagos film industry.” To the AMAA boss, filmmakers across the continent actually look forward to the awards. She reveals, “AMAA is what a lot of these continental filmmakers look forward to. I actually have a joke that I tell people all the time, I say, Africa and the rest of the world appreciate AMAA more than even the Nigerian filmmakers, who don’t really see the value in winning the AMAAs, except for a few.
Keith Shiri is the Head of 2022 and I can tell you for a fact that the jury is the best you can find in Africa. We can’t help sore losers but as I noted earlier, nominees and winners of AMAA have gone ahead to do well at international film festivals and global film fora.” She continues, “my fulfilment is building a platform, an avenue where filmmakers can be rewarded for professionalism and not just glamour only. In the next two years, AMAA would have done so much for the African film industry as a whole.”