‘ArtLink’ - Encouraging students’ creative talents
Some of the works on display at the
exhibition. An art exhibition was organised recently in Ibadan, where the works of students of Community Grammar School, Elewura-Challenge, Ibadan and West Ruthland School, Vermont, USA were on display as part of an arts exchange programme tagged ‘ArtLink’, Akintayo Abodunrin reports.
Aware of the fact that quality arts education is
essential to their growth and development, students of Community Grammar School, Elewura Challenge, Ibadan, embraced it a long time ago.
Apart from the Alternative Arts Friendly Iniative Network (AAFN) project existing in the school and which involves other schools like Success Model College and Immaculate Model College, students of the school recently engaged in a cultural arts exchange programme with their colleagues from abroad.
Tagged ‘ArtLink’, the programme enabled the students create objects that reflect their lives and cultures and which they later shared with their international partners in countries like Chile, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Kenya, Palestine, Hong Kong, Albania, Cambodia, Panama, Philipines and St. Lucia who also participated in the programme.
An annual event organised by the Washington DC, United States of America based VSA arts, this year’s programme was themed “Interact” and junior students of Community Grammar School exchanged their works with students of West Ruthland School, Vermont, USA.
Saying that the project, one of which goals is to enhance the student’s creativity and create an opportunity for them to gain new insights into another culture and country was successful would be an understatement. That morning of February 14, 2008, the school was sent agog as the works of students of West Ruthland school as well as those of the Nigerians were exhibited within the school premises.
At the event, the students were able to appraise the works of their mates from abroad. ‘Fitr Eid Day’ (Holiday) a sketch depicting a boy and a girl reading; ‘My country’s customs and traditions’ done in water colour; ‘Driving Around’ done in paper mosaic and ‘Ropes course, friends’ were some of the works through which students of the school gained insights into the cultures of their mates from abroad.
However, the occasion was not only spent on viewing the works on display as talks on the benefits of arts education were also given. Mohammed Abdul Gafar, a junior secondary school one student, spoke on the arts as a way of life. Mr. Cyril Usiwe, an arts teacher and vice principal of the school who taught the project coordinator, Mr. Bamidele Adegboyega, fine art in secondary school also encouraged the students to develop their creative talents. He told them they could make a career in the arts and that they should strive to improve on their talents and skills.
Mr. Solomon Morris of Immaculate Model College also spoke in the same vein. He charged the students not to appreciate the beauty of the works alone but also to develop their skill.
Principal of school, Mr. Olofin, equally had words of encouragement for the students. Apart from this, he also commended Adegboyega for his unwavering dedication to arts education for the students.
Speaking on why he supports arts in the school to Arts&Review, Olofin said: “Every area of discipline in the school system should be encouraged. But more importantly, the areas that have to do with using one’s creative mind to put things up that would promote teaching and learning. Also, I feel the arts is a way by which students can express their creativity and then turn it into worthwhile things. It also enables them use their time wisely in turning out creative things beneficial to mankind”.
Olofin also expressed happiness about the ‘ArtLink’ programme and the involvement of the school “I feel very proud of my teacher and of course my school. It is of interest to see there is an exchange programme between our school and a school in the United States,” he said.
26 students of Community Grammar School participated in the programme and Akinteye Bukola, a physically-challenged JSS three student whose painting was selected for exhibition abroad was awarded a certificate of merit.
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Evolution of Nigeria’s current movie phenomenon
Minister of Tourism, Culture and National
Orientation, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode
(SAN) receiving Mr. Thomas Helder
(African Regional Representative of
World Tourism Organisation) who was in
Nigeria to assess level of preparedness
for the UNWTO/CAF meeting which
Nigeria is hosting in May.
A review of Ademola James’s The Making of Nigeria’s Film and Video Revolution by Taofeek Suleiman Ahmed
The Making of Nigeria’s Film and Video
Revolution is a book that could be
written only by someone with an inside knowledge of the events and developments that led to the current cinema phenomenon in the country, considering some of the disclosures it contains. Of course, an assignment of this nature could also be carried out through extensive research whose cost in time and money won’t be easily quantifiable. What lends some uniqueness to this work is that the author compiled it from the vantage points of partaking in the evolutionary process of the film and video industry as a TV scriptwriter, a one-time head of the Federal Film Unit who later became the chief regulator for the industry via his appointment as the first Executive Director/CEO of the new National Film and Video Censors Board from 1994-2001.
In addition, the writer, Ademola James, an award-winning veteran journalist, must have assembled a voluminous personal archive which apparently contained several materials on various aspects of the local film industry some of which he compiled and updated to make up the 356-page compendium. In a seemingly effortless manner the writer tried to also impose an evolutionary process on the growth of the industry. He thus lends it some antecedents as a cultural and artistic business linked to and tapping, materially and manpower-wise, from a rich resource base such as the native itinerant theatre, the colonial film units and the TV industry, all of which, one after the other, preceded commercial film production in the country.
The Making of Nigeria’s Film and Video Revolution is a three-part work. It covers the historical (or evolutionary) aspect of the industry, the economic areas and perhaps what could be described as the societal connection which the author contends is not being adequately addressed by the Nigerian society. He believes motion pictures have inherent mind-bending aspects that should not be ignored but tackled by newly formed film-assessing NGOs. The industry, he argued, should not be regarded simply as “mere entertainment” by the larger society. This is especially because the various regulatory agencies for the industry only collectively “classify” finished commercially-oriented products for the viewing benefit of different segments of the society whose comprehension and decoding of the images being projected through the picture-stories may not be too accurate, thus eventually resulting in greater harm than innocuous entertainment.
As earlier stated, this is a three-in-one book made up of 33 chapters, unevenly distributed with regard to the three major areas of coverage, historical, economic and societal. Perhaps because it is a book on the motion picture industry, it is also very liberally illustrated with relevant photographs, all in black and white, employed to highlight the content of each chapter as appropriately as possible. And also may be as an innovative approach, like a magazine, the text is presented in three even columns mostly throughout the book, except for some attachments and the copious used to back up some of the author’s reports and contentions as contained in some chapters of the work.
The Book I of the three-phase work from which the entire compendium derives part of its overall title consists of 10 chapters made up of five new write-ups and five old ones ‘retouched’ for updating and necessary relevance. Chapters 1, 5 and 7 stand out among the first ten more for the way the topics were handled and the loads of fact and details in them. For instance, could you believe that Eddie Ugbomah, one of the pioneers of commercial cine-films in Nigeria, who was fond of berating video movie producers when they first began to assert themselves, was the first film producer to submit a cine-movie in the video format for censorship to the old Federal Board of Film Censors (FBFC), over which the author was then presiding as the Head of the Federal Film Unit as was the practice at that time? You will find the reason and consequence of this action detailed in the book.
But more than this, the major historical fact gleaned from Book I of The Making of Nigeria’s Film and Video Revolution is that the ‘artistic revolt’ by young movie makers over two decades ago was actually a consequence of the economic and political developments arising from some of the decisions, policies and actions of the then military regimes ruling the country. Today, the NFC/Federal Film Unit merger/demerger saga in 1989 that formed part of the story is again being played out by another series of effort by the same NFC to swallow the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) despite the possibility that the corporation might be privatised sooner or later.
Yet, almost 20 years after, the Federal Film Unit is still to recover from the near-death-embrace and its continuous decline, if not obliteration, after being ‘de-merged’ from the NFC. The author later warns in Chapter 23 (Book II) that a forcible merger of the NFC and NFVCB could lead to “a serious disaster for the emerging Nigerian film industry” as well as the censorship system now in place.
The Book II of this work focuses, more or less, on the Nigerian film economy, perhaps the most vital aspect of the industry. Chapters 11, 12, 13, 15 and 21 are particularly relevant in this respect. The writer’s proposal on distribution is not only interesting but also challenges stakeholders in the industry, particularly distributors/marketers as well as the private financiers of the industry, from the East, West and North of the country to unite, probably on regional basis and set up three competing production, distribution and film-exhibiting mega companies to ensure a tight control on the products of their industry. Such consolidation, the author seems to believe, would help maximise profits and ensure sustained viability of the business of film production in the country.
One of the other challenging proposals in Chapter 12 is the author’s call for two umbrella bodies, one for practitioners/producers, the other for financiers/investors, to help strengthen the two major pillars of the industry for the benefit and needs of each group and the business of film-making itself.
Should the NFC (Nigerian Film Corporation) be privatised or not? Check Chapter 21 for the author’s own recommendations which to my mind is a presentation worth examining by all concerned, the stakeholders, the NFC itself and, of course, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). Certainly, partial privatisation will give the corporation a fresh fillip and a new lease of life; it may turn out to be the required tonic to really energise it and help it fulfill its true destiny in the emerging Nigerian cinema industry. The objective of providing true leadership for the industry which is mostly private sector driven can only be realised through a fully or partly privatised NFC that will focus on its core mission as a catalyst and major production outfit instead of pursuing peanuts and expanded bureaucratic empire via all manners of meaningless merger schemes.
How does the Nigerian society regard the film industry in the country? Does the collective content of the industry, regardless of production language/cultural background promote or denigrate the nation’s image externally or its self-worth internally? Should the industry be directed at mainly promoting the nation and glossing over its social and other problems? Should it be a mere provider of entertainment with little or no infotainment, edutainment propaganda, social relevance or commitment to promotion of social responsibility via its story-lines? All of these issues, the writer, in Book III of The Making Of Nigeria’s Film and Video Revolution attempted to address directly and indirectly in Chapters 25, 26, 27 and 28 as well as the introductory notes entitled ‘Film and the Society: My Mindset’.
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