President of the Association of Nollywood Core Producers (ANCOP) and Vice President of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), Comrade Alex Eyengho, has called on the international community to collaborate with the Nigerian film industry popularly called Nollywood, particularly in the areas of co-production, financing, buying, selling and contents distribution which he described as “a fertile ground for potential investors and collaborators.”
Comrade Eyengho made this call recently in Cannes, France, in a paper he presented titled ‘Expanding Horizons in Nigeria: The Nollywood Case Study’ at the just concluded 2014 edition of MIPCOM, the biggest TV and entertainment market which holds in the town of Cannes once every year, normally in October.
Eyengho who was on the high-powered Nigerian official delegation to the event as a keynote speaker on the topic, spoke alongside the Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and leader of the delegation, Mr. Emeka Mba, Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Mr. Sola Omole, Ms. Mo Abudu of Ebony Life TV, and the Regional Director (MNET West Africa), Mrs. Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu.
While stressing the need for a fair and transparent business relationship between Nollywood producers and national or pan-African broadcasters, he highlighted some of the issues producers have with broadcasters as buyers of Nollywood contents to include: “ Too many broadcasters don’t respect copyright law and simply broadcast our contents without our permission and without payment as well as system of “barter” whereby the broadcaster gives producer a slot and he/she has to find a sponsor for the advertising airtime around it – is neither fair nor transparent.”
The award-winning filmmaker also emphasized the need for an efficient system to collect royalty payments in Nigeria for audiovisual producers and authors.
“Though there are on-going efforts to launch the Audio Visual Rights Society (AVRS) in Nigeria but, if this eventually comes to reality, monies collected by the AVRS must be handled effectively and transparently and must reach the right recipients.
For me, such additional revenue stream matters strategically to audiovisual producers as it may help support their efforts to spend more time and resources in creative development, such as script writing, and indeed to help move Nollywood to a higher-end standard of production,” Eyengho added.
He maintained that there is need for producers to mobilize in favour of strong international copyright legislation and to resist attempts to weaken copyright protection in the name of development.
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