NAN: Exclusive Interview With Isaac Izoya, Director and Initiator of NFFG & NEGA Wards

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1. What has been the biggest challenges of NEGA over the years?

To say the least, let me use this medium to appreciate Nollywood Film Festival Germany – NFFG and Nollywood Europe Golden Awards – NEGA Team. They are awesome in discharging their responsibilities credibly. In fact, they have been instrumental to our success.

We actually have less challenges because we borrowed leaf from the German culture of early to bed and early to rise. That is early preparation strategies. For example, knowing fully well that the demands for event halls during summer in Germany is so high, we try as much as possible to be upfront in terms of preparations. Even 2018 cinema and NEGA gala night venues have been secured ahead of time.

However, our only major challenge are our inability of subtitle or lip synch our movies into German language because of the cost implications for an independent producer.

The second major problem is last minutes rush in film submission by the producers. Many producers have the culture of waiting till the last minutes before sending out their movies thereby creating huge difficulties for the screening committee to pre-screen their movies as scheduled. You could then imagine the setback associating with what it takes to figure out what will be appealing to both Africans and Europeans audience, cinema publicities among others. Sometimes, great movies are not screened due to late submission.

 2. Can you rate Nollywood to other movie brands in the world and in what regards?

That Nollywood is world number two movies industry is simply not by accident. The industry merited that ranking contents wise.

That simply mean, Nollywood movies are quite entertaining and meaningful. Some Universities across Europe and America always request for Nollywood movies for African Study students.

Nollywood movies are narrative of African rich culture. It reduces the stress of travelling to Africa to learn some certain things when writing their final projects. So many Universities now study Nollywood as a course.

You have PHD in Nollywood study these days. That is something adorable from Africa made by Africans, in fact, Made in Nigeria for the records. That is something good from Nigeria that we are all proud of in the Diaspora.

Though, we are still far behind in qualitative productions compare to Hollywood, I am sure we will get there sooner than expected if Nollywood continue with the pace of qualitative productions of these days.

3. Piracy has been a major issue in Nigeria but in the diaspora it had been reduced to a reasonable extent. What can be done to deal with piracy to its barest minimum in Nigeria?

Though, piracy problem is a general phenomenal, it has actually been reduced to a minimum level in this part of the world. For example, YouTube doesn’t accept copyright music in any movies if loaded on YouTube in Germany. If music are played by any electronic media outlets, the musician will get compensated for it. It’s not free. But in Nigeria, Label companies have to bribe radio DJs just to play their artists music. They even tip pirates just to add their artists’ tracks in top 20 music selections. People pirate films without fear of any retribution. What is the disciplinary measure put in place by the government? What is the copyright of Nigeria doing to eradicate these menace? Absolutely nothing might be the correct but – bitter truth, sadly. That’s the difference.

Government enforced pirate eradication war through the copyright protection organs. Technology is helping a great deal in enforcing pirate law couple with government wiliness to fight piracy. Till Nigeria government show commitment and willingness to fight piracy, to your tent oh Israel. It will continue to be business as usual.