Story, Story Once Upon a Time.
The folklores and folktales of Nigerian people have turned out to be one of the most sought after content promotions to come out of Africa. Promoting, preserving and presenting the stories well is a big idea for Otunba Omotayo to carry on his shoulders through organised film festivals that are original and very close to the people.
The radio stations in the old western region of Nigeria drew audiences that are spectacular due to the booming of cultural music and airing of folklores and folktales with such introduction as Alo o?! Alo! Nigba kan lailai! Story! Story!! Once Upon a Time!!! And as time goes on, the radio opened their airwaves for radio theatre which later metamorphosed into television drama with ‘Village Headmaster’ becoming one of the very first to be produced fantastically and achieving global attention. From then on, the shiw cintinues ti go on, as theater icons such as Hubert Ogunde, Oyin Adejobi, Duro Ladipo, Moses Olaiya and many more cleared the thorns for what has given birth to Nollywood by using everyday story of the Nigerian social life to tell their stories.
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ideo production came as a gamble and the game has made the gamblers to know the secret to surviving. And today, the story- story is now a mega industry known as Nollywood, attracting success driving business community providing investors, distributors, now Netflix!
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or us not to lose focus, culture supporter, film enthusiast and public relations consultant, Omotayo Ogunlade runs the yearly Yoruba film and movie festival to celebrate the film industry. “The mission is to bring together every body in the indigenous creative industry for a common front in respective of the association you belong to for a single goal”
Film critics in Nollywood are still trying to come to terms with the rejection of Nigerian selection for Oscars ‘Lionheart’ shot by Geneive Nnaji, and the reasons given are not far fetched by Omotayo Ogunlade opinion about our film industry, “The vision is to see us investing in our indigenous contents to burrow into the international market irrespective of the language.”
Maybe the more we look inward and explore our local flow of communication, then, somehow, Oscars maybe knocking close by.
Omotayo Ogunlade’s indigenous film and music festival is in its third year and ran at LTV Blue Roof Pavilion from the 6th to 8th of November 2019.
Story Ireho Aito /images / Omotayo Ogunlade
