Africa Film for Impact Foundation in collaboration with High Definition Film Studio has started receiving entries for the maiden edition of “Africa Film For Impact Festival (AFFIF).”
The organiser, Bright Wonder Obasi, said the festival which will screen short and feature films for three days, will also host master classes, panel discussions, fellowships on film making geared toward creating films that will create social and behavioural change.
Bright explained that the fellowship is a community for filmmakers who share a common goal to pioneer change in Nigeria and across the Africa continent through film.
He said “Currently the fellowship is established in the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria with a cumulative of 90 fellows and 24 leaders. Six ground-breaking films produced by these zones will be premiering at the 2020 Africa Film For Impact Festival.”
According to him, entries for AFFIF officially opened in October 1, 2019 and all entries are received through the ‘Filmfreeway’ platform.
The maiden edition of the festival scheduled to hold in Abuja in May of 2020 is supported by the MacArthur Foundation.
On the challenges facing the Nigeria movie industry, Bright said the major problem is “distribution”.
He said “We have distribution problem. Films released in Hollywood, a lot of them seem to make ground breaking financial returns because there is a system.
“When a film is released and it screens across 6000 cinemas, that is a lot of windows to explore but here we have roughly about 20 something cinemas.”
He added that having effective distribution network will render piracy ineffective. “Piracy is everywhere but the thing is if your film get released and it is released broadly, within two weeks it can recover its capital investment and make a lot of profit and you won’t even bother with what the pirates.”
