Fidelis Duker is one of the pioneers of Nollywood. He is also the creator and manager of the Abuja International Film Festival which he said he started with a “token”. Today, Duker who has attended many international film festivals and is no doubt an authority in Nollywood, has breathed life into the sleepy Directors Guild of Nigeria (DGN). He discovered Nollywood stars like Bukky Wright, Uche Jombo, the late Funmi Martins, among others.
Just back from the Cannes Film Festival in France, Duker spoke with Hazeez Balogun on a wide range of issues and debunked the story making the rounds that he is speaking ill of the popular movie, Jenifa.
Can you share your experience from Cannes Film Festival in France?
The only lesson I learnt from the film festival is that I can position myself for bigger things, that is why we had to enter the short version of Senseless. Just to tell the story in a short fashion of the whole thing. So many things we have done in the film that many people even in Nigerian says they are impressed. People always hear about Nigeria, Nollywood but this film is not always getting to Nigeria market, it is either pirated or it did not get to the Nigerian market. But for me the most important thing I gained from the whole experience was that he gave me an inside thing is that the Nollywood is well sought after, because it is accepted globally, and when you say globally is means it is widely accepted, and film itself is a global language. Even if you do a Yoruba film, or an Igbo or Hausa film, a man from Australia or from Japan who has never been to Africa must be able to understand what message you are passing to people.
Maybe in the next Cannes again, I am going to do a very elaborate one and not the short ones like this. But personally to me it was a launch back to Nigerian, launch back because it gave Nigerian a sense of belonging, because if you look at the hand brochure the film was stated there and that was the only entry from Nigeria. That alone gives me a sense of accomplishment, that at least Nigeria and Nollywood was represented at Cannes, and I was the one who did that for the country. Also, Senseless we went to showcase in Cannes has been invited to Strasbourg film festival also in France come July. You see that tells you that Nigeria film can go a long way even given the chance.
You are also a director of Nigeria most popular film festival, Abuja International Film Festival, as a producer what lesson did you learn from the Cannes film Festival that you want to add to Abuja Film Festival?
Though the Abuja International Film Festival is months away, that is in September, but what I want to do now in the next three or four weeks is to run a mini work shop with the media and film maker on how to enter into a film festival, not only for Abuja Film Festival but for other film festivals. Don’t forget Nigeria have other film festivals like, Zuma Film Festival, Enugu Film Festival Lagos Film Festival, BOBTV. We also have Gospel Film Festival currently going on in Ibadan. So if we have all these Film Festivals coming up next year in Nigeria then you know there is hope in this industry. It also means we can be able to sit down and plan and even plan for Cannes next year.
The fundamental problem we have in Film Festivasl in Nigeria is lacked of funding. This festival are still very young, we just started the oldest of the festival six years ago. So if you look at it that way, you will begin to understand that there is a fundamental challenge for Nigeria Film Festivals in the sense that if government does not come into this business now, if the distribution network angle is not visible, there should be other area that can be used to attract foreign investors. For instance for Abuja Film Festival, or Lagos Film Festival or Enugu Film Festival government can ask how many foreign delegates are you expecting?, if government says ‘we will fund and bring them to Nigeria for you’, that way you are beginning to bring people to the country then when you bring them the interest begins to generate.
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