Ghallywood is a lazy name- Ama K

Award-winning Ghanaian actress Ama K Abebrese has expressed her dislike for the adopted name for Ghana’s movie industry, ‘Ghallywood’.

The big movie industries around the world all have the “wood” in their names- Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood- but Ama K Abebrese says Ghana following the same trend is disgusting.

“Adding the wood does not make it any better; that word is a boring and disgusting word,” she said on the Big Bite show on XFM 95.1.

According to her, “Ghallywood is just a lazy name”, asking, “Because everybody else has a wood, you also do same? No, let us be more creative.”

She opined that the movie industry in Ghana had a long way to go; hence people in the industry should rather concentrate on getting Ghanaian movies to reach a wider audience than just settling on what name to call the industry.

She said if journalists and other people in the media stopped using the name, the term would eventually die.

“I blame journalists for promoting this name. I don’t know who came up with it but I feel if journalists stopped using it, it will die out. The people who have the woods have an industry”.

Asked what name she would prefer, she said, “Anything which is Ghanaian” would do, adding, “Even call it the Ghanaian Film Industry, but do not add the wood; it actually makes it feel like a joke”.

Nikki Samonas, another actress who was on the show, concurred. She said Ghanaians were not being original in the name Ghallywood and would rather wish the movie industry was given a more Ghanaian name to portray Ghana’s rich traditions and culture.

“We started with folklore and so a name like Ananse world would not have been bad.

It is the story telling that sells the movies from Africa; I mean a white man will hear Ananse world and will want to know what it is all about”.**