Set Apart - Part 4

History:

Since the late 1980s a booming video feature film industry evolved in Ghana. While established film makers both within and

outside the state-owned Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) found it extremely difficult to generate funds for film production, formally untrained people of various backgrounds — from cinema projectionists to car mechanics — took ordinary VHS video cameras, wrote a brief outline, assembled actors (from TV or just “from the street”), and produced full fledged feature films which appeared to be tremendously successful in urban Ghana, and especially in Accra. Established professional film makers initially met the initiatives of non-professionals and their use of the medium of video with suspicion. Yet when they noticed the extraordinary success which these productions had in Ghana and realized that screening these films in local cinemas could generate sufficient funds to sustain a viable video film industry, they also turned to film production in the video format. Moreover, in order to improve the productions made by untrained — and, gradually, self-trained film makers, the GFIC offered editing services and other forms of advice to film makers in exchange for the right to show the film in its own cinemas in Accra first. Gradually, production networks and systems of distribution evolved and since the beginning of the 1990s, each year saw the relase of about fifty video movies made by private and GFIC producers.

The Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) was sold under the divestiture implementation programme.

Some famous actors inclue VanVicker, Kofi Ajorlolo, Emmanuel Armah, Nadia Buari and Jackie Aygemang (nee Appiah). See a list of Ghanaian Actors

Entertainment News: