Film

An African City was a huge TV sensation in Accra and among the Ghanaian diaspora. Time Out Accra caught up with the director Nicole Amarteifio for an exclusive online interview. Here’s what she had to say 1. When writing the early scripts who was your intended audience? Young Africans whom believe that poverty, famine and civil war are not the only stories to be told about the continent. I also wanted to encourage young Africans abroad to return home – that's the Marcus Garvey in me. 2. Were episode ideas taken from your own real life experiences? Yes, many scenes are a reflection of what has either happened to me or to women or returnees that I know. For me, as soon as the character Nana Yaa (played by actress MaameYaa Boafo) arrives at the airport and heads to immigration, that scene pretty much sums up my life and my journey of self-identity. When she proudly displays her Ghanaian passport to the immigration officer and he exclaims in disbelief, "you're Ghanaian? You don't look or sound Ghanaian?" Yep, that's my life. But, the thing is - what is a Ghanaian supposed to look or sound like? Why are so many people always so ready to define others? 3. How many hits did the most popular episode get? Our first episode has the most hits, but it is normal for the first episode of any web series to have the most hits. But I believe episode 7 on "condom etiquette" has a lot of hits comparable to other episodes. And, I completely understand that! This was an important episode

Semi-naked women are essential, preferably holding a knife dripping with blood. As some kind of ninja, evil zombie and a decapitated head are preferable. A humanoid tortoise vomiting money is optional, although certainly desierable. With Ghanaian movie posters, gore, blood, nudity, violence and general nastiness are the currency of commerce. In the 1980s, travelling cinema was the way that most Ghanaian’s consumed movies – and still is in some areas. Touring rural Ghana with a TV, VHS tape and player, the moving cinema would roll up in town, set up a tent and litter the area with movie posters – fabulous, fantastical movie posters to advertise the show. Whether it was the latest Hollywood blockbuster, Hong Kong action flick or the latest from an African filmmaker, the artist would hand paint a poster on flour sacks, with an enticing image, often without having seen the film at all. It was the portrayals of monsters, superheroes, half naked women that attracted German gallery and art book publishers, Bongoût, to release two books, Ghana Movie Posters, and this year, Ghanavision, a second volume which collates dozens of unique hand-painted movie posters from their private collection. Cristina Ayala of Bongoût told Time Out , ‘The art works are particularly charming. They can be quite naive but they possess such a bewitching quality. ‘We learned it is not unusual that the self-taught artists often only saw a few photo stills. These wild translations of film to canvas, with s

The film deals with a heartbreaking subject matter. What was it that brought you to this subject? A very good friend of mine has a child who has Down Syndrome and she wrote a short prose that expressed her personal rationale to why she had such a child. I read the prose and I was inspired to tell a bigger story about women who have kids with special-needs. My goal was to let mothers all over the world know that it wasn’t their fault their babies were sometimes born with health issues or with deformities. There’s no such thing as a perfect child or human, all children are a great gift, and they should be loved and accepted no matter how they come. I especially wanted to reach mothers  in developing worlds who face far more challenges amidst blame and criticism for having “imperfect” babies and then not having adequate health care that caters to children with special needs. How did you go about casting the people in the film – what were you looking for in the protagonists? Some are well-known actors, but others perhaps not? What about Jessica? We held a casting session and we had a lot of well-known Ghanaian actresses, but none seemed to be the perfect fit for the protagonist especially. I was quite worried. I needed a beautiful, simple and natural looking woman and of course a very good performer who could carry the weight of the character’s journey. When I saw a photo of Rukiyat Masud, I knew right away she was the one. She wasn’t famous and nobody knew her, but her audit