GhMovie-Con is an event in convention-style that gathers together film lovers, aficionados, content creators, cinema buffs, and investors. Which is held at the beginning of every year to provide a platform for exclusive announcements and big reveals of film projects and innovations to be expected within the year. The platform also serves as a kickstart for the film’s marketing and promotional activities. The convention took off in a great style by treating Movie fanatics with an incredible landscape shot of some beautiful parts of the country accompanied by a beautiful background narration.
Madam Juliet Asante, the executive secretary of the newly established National Film Industry started the series of speeches by giving a piece of insightful information on new policies and regulations by the National Film Industry (NFA) that aims to strengthen and guide the reviving Film Industry. Her lengthy speech highlighted Film Incentive taxes, the Presidential Pitch series, Film Classification under the new local content bill, and a hopeful promise of seeing 100% Ghanaian content on Television during Primetime and 70% during other times. She gave an assurance of her team diving deep and flying high to ensure the film industry resets to a potential start. She ends her note on the campaign called #ShootInGhana. A new direction to invite creatives all over the world to shoot in Ghana.
Up next to take up control over the podium is the incredible Gene Adu, the Co-Founder of Creative Inc, who took the crowd on a treaty and interesting ride through his journey of filmmaking. He points out his challenges and sends us to the point of encouraging fellow filmmakers to be brave and intentional about producing films and not to be swayed by the popular call for selling slapstick comedy and easy road to trends. He follows his presentation with a short film. A well-written film that throws light on the popular Jollof war between Ghana and Nigeria and the complicated career issues of friends. He concludes his points on his catchphrase of the night “We should make movies out of our intention”
Esi Yamoah (Creative Producer & Founder of Yamoah Entertainment) who aside from her remarkable accent is also a hub of creative-business ideas gave a great speech. She pointed out from the UNESCO report how Films and Audio-visuals of the African diaspora can create 20 million jobs every year. She is a woman on a mission, to connect creatives across Africa and boost the employment rate of creatives in the industry. She gave statistical analysis of how our films can influence and bring so many benefits to the individual, the country, and the continent as a whole.
Mark Cofie Jnr. TAFF Ambassador Ghana, ROOTFLIX presented the crowd with the rising Film streaming platform, Rootflix. He used this opportunity to empower the filmmakers by citing realistic and relatable examples. He believes we can achieve so much together and made a call for an all-inclusive Film Industry. He charmed the crowd through his brilliant response and answer to questions and he did flex his prowess on his business.
Kruz K, a Makeup, Prosthetics, and SFX artist who was the most cheered speaker at the convention took the crowd behind the cameras and showed us how he started his journey back in 2016, and showed a video of his incredible talent. He is excellent in this art and he made a call for filmmakers especially producers and executive producers to pay creatives what they are worth and not lure them to contracts and vain promises. Something everyone present happens to agree on.
The charming and daring Abu Idris brought to the screen a sneak peek of his upcoming project ‘THE AGENCY’, an action-packed Ghanaian movie that is topping up the successful Terminus. He emphasized how he has learned the hard way and has made him who he is today. He called the crew members and actors that worked with him on ‘THE AGENCY’ up on stage with him and credited how they have given their all for this movie.
Magdalenae Morton Ass. Editor, Abbson Angeles, CA who joined us via video call draw the curtains on the speeches by giving depth information about Editing and how we can leverage simple tools and make the best out of them.
Climaxing the event was a panel discussion between Kuukua Eshun (Co-Founder, Shoot Your Reality), Jeremiah Kofi-Sam (CEO of CASSETTE), and Esi Yamoah (Creative Producer & Founder of Yamoah Entertainment). They deliberated on the subject, ‘Improving our storytelling: Reaching the rest of the world’. The discussion sets in to the audience and we all realize that there is a lot of issues and so many approaches in tackling them but most importantly, we can only do it one at a time.
An insightful conversation, a call for a fix, a cry for a revival, and a fight for progress. A heartfelt appreciation to the entire team especially Tony Asankoma for coming up with such an incredible event. This gives us hope. Thank you.