Ghanaian Movies: Is It The True Reflection Of Our Culture?

Modification of style is a friendly advice that one could give to the players in the fledgling Ghanaian movie industry.

The industry has seen tremendous improvement that cannot be overlooked, although more needs to be done to sky rock the feat.

Admittedly there was a strategic reformation of Ghana’s film industry on Ghallywood (2008-2016) by one Edwin Kweku Andoh.

This was one of the strategies to facilitate the development of Ghana by focussing on ailing sectors and industries through the development of a profound vision and the application of appropriate planning and implementation methods to secure the needed accelerated socio-economic and structural development transformation in these areas.

This kind of significant and substantial reformation must however be pursued in a sustainable manner.

At the heart of the Ghallywood project is to strategically instil in Ghanaians a sense of participation and ownership of the processes of developing the industry and the wider objective of nation building.

The outcome of this approach is the significance increase in employment opportunities and incomes as well as the creation of a sustainable economic sector.

This is a timely intervention since the movie industry is currently experiencing vulnerability in terms of financing, content development, infrastructure, skill training, equipment, marketability, distribution and product standardisation.

Ghallywood must not only become the centre for the film industry but should most importantly be the embodiment of an idea: an idea that reflects the greatness of the Ghanaian spirit and to serve as an inspiration to Ghanaians that we can be at the forefront of the competitive global world.

The drastic change in the movie industry in terms of the number of movies being produced and the quality of pictures and audio has brought about competition.

There is however some noticeable flaws in our movies like the use of technology and the general lack of objectives. Every movie is supposed to tell a story, with its accompanying lessons. After watching a movie one should be able to learn something from it as well as the main message of the writer or producer to his or her audience.

There are a lot of reasons why people watch movies, but the rationale behind most of them should be to educate, entertain and depict the country’s rich cultural heritage.

However some local movies nowadays contain a lot of insults and pornographic materials, which are not good for our children yet some of them, are winning awards.

Some of these movies do not depict the country’s culture and traditions. One example is the disrespect for elders in some movie scenes.

We must be careful as a nation about what we produce in our films if we want to make headway in the industry.

What are the film makers communicating? Is it the value of insults or insubordinate behaviour?

Such films are now being shown on almost all the TV channels with kids viewing. Some of the actors and actresses, who are supposed to be role models, are always using foul language and other offensive behaviour.

The movie industry should be up and doing whilst the regulators should ensure that such films are censored. The laws on indecent language and pornography must be enforced to save our youth from such mediocre films.

We must all ensure that such films are not shown to our children on TV. Let’s not wait for the harm to be caused before we search for solutions. It is better now than later.

Let us be careful about what we teach our children today, because it will be their weapon tomorrow. Let our movies be a true reflection of what we want our children to be in the future.