Movie industry woes our own fault - Socrate Safo

Industry players have assigned several reasons why the Ghanaian movie industry has been stagnant for years.

While some have mentioned lack of funding, others have talked about the lack of original stories, the poor quality of movies and even bad acting but for film producer Socrate Safo, it is the ‘stupidity’ of industry players that has brought the industry to its present state.

“What the industry is going through now is as a result of our stupidity; we are the cause of our own downfall. I mean it is the same people who gave their movies to media houses to show for free.

How can you make money when you give free access to something you spent money to build? You cannot. We were in so much of a hurry to catch up with the changing trends that we did not consider the effect.

“We uploaded our movies on Internet platforms free of charge and if people have free access to the movies, do you expect them to pay to watch them or go to the cinemas? No, they won’t. We are the cause of what is happening now,” he told Graphic Showbiz in an interview recently.

In answer to how the industry can get back its glory, Socrate said: “We just have to go back to the drawing board and strategise. This industry has lots of prospects and we should be able to take advantage of it.”

Talking about the recent sod-cutting for the construction of a Creative Arts Senior High School in the Ashanti Region, Socrate, who is also the Director of Creative Arts responsible for Programmes & Projects at the National Commission on Culture, commended the government for the initiative.

“I really want to applaud the state for such a gesture; it is very timely. Sometimes we complain that our productions are not up to standard so it is good that we have decided to catch them young at the senior high school level.

“Now if anyone gets done with junior high school and has interest in anything arts, there is a specific school they can attend. There are different courses in the creative arts school, so whatever one has interest in, it will be taken care of,” he said.

Socrate said in due course, the initiative would be replicated in the other regions.

“In fact, we are looking at bringing it down to the basic schools in the coming years. Instead of the down-up approach, we are looking at using the top-down one.”

Socrate Safo is the head of Move Africa Productions and has to his credit movies such as Hot Fork, Love and Sex, Sexy Angel and God Is Wicked. Read Full Story