DGN harps on capacity building for better movie industry

The President of the Directors’ Guild of Nigeria, Victor Okhai, on Thursday described   capacity building as very strategic and essential for the country to have a better movie industry.

Okhai who spoke with newsmen also identified welfare and partnership as some of the keys needed toward achieving a global standard movie industry.

The DGN boss also said that the issue of piracy had become a general challenge in the movie industry which all guild members and other relevant stakeholders must come together to fight.

“I always say there are no two standards in filmmaking, there is only one which is the global standard.

“We want to make sure we build the capacity of our members to be able to compete favourably within the global standards and practices.

“This is to fortify our movie industry in a way that we can compete with our colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Okhai said that the Nigerian movie industry is highly respected around the world, adding that his members and other stakeholders would not get carried away by that international recognition and  lower the  standard.

He said that for the guild to maintain its standard, it had continued to train and retrain its members to be the best while also taking into consideration their welfare and health conditions.

“The welfare of the directors is very important. We want to put an end to the era when people would have worked for so long in their youthful age only to end up in their old age miserably.

” Then, they will not even be able to pay their hospital bills nor take care of themselves. We want to put a stop to that.

“We are looking at issues of getting better remunerations, negotiation of better contracts and royalties as well for our members, apart from other welfare packages.”

He said that the guild was planning how to engage the government, because ‘they are our partners’.

He also added that there were plans by the guild to engage other guilds, both locally and internationally, too.

“One of the things we will be taking advantage of is the African Continental Free Trade agreement. For us, it is very important because that’s an agreement that covers both goods and services and we have both.

“We have films, skills, these are things we can market across the continent.”

He said that many of his members should not be jobless. “There are several genuine job opportunities here in the country.

“It will be better if they can go out there and earn money, and bring such back to Nigeria. So we intend to take full advantage of it.

“I am already talking to my colleagues,  the presidents of directors’ guild in other countries as well. One of the things we planned to do is open a diaspora chapter.

“We are also opening new chapters across the country in schools and film schools. These are some of the things we have been working on.

“Also, distribution if films are important to us. The works of our members must be better remunerated so we are working on that and more.”

Okhai also said that though piracy was not really in the realm of directors but that they were concerned because it was affecting some of his members who are also film producers.

“We are working very closely with the government, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), we are sending one of our members with the support of the Film and Video Censors Board for super luminary training.

“They will be involved in enforcement. We are working with other guilds as well.

“More importantly, we will be looking at creative ways of curbing piracy. We will be talking to our colleagues in other parts of the world on the best practices for curbing piracy both at the physical and digital level.” he said.

Okhai also identified other areas that needed improvement in filmmaking to include  the recruitment system which he said  would be solved by training and retraining of  his members.

“It is a problem, I spoke earlier on building capacity. One of the problems we had before is the recruitment system.

” There is nothing you can do about it because the people are already members.   But going forward, we will make sure the recruitment system is better and not only that, we will continue to build the capacity of our members.

“I said it earlier, we do not have two global standards, only one and we want to make sure that what we do is at par globally.

” We do not want to be having half baked directors anymore. We will make sure they are properly trained and can compete anywhere.

“Going forward, it’s a new dawn. It’s not going to be business as usual.

“I will be working alongside my colleagues to ensure our future is guaranteed financially, physically, socially and in all other ways possible.” he said