Guardian

In Temptation, Kardashian Plays Shallow

YOU know the girl who plays the dumb, shallow character in Temptation, the new film by Tyler Perry? It’s Kim Kardashian. Of the six main characters in this emotional story of far- fetched love and searing pain, Kardashian’s character has the least intelligent lines and, what’s worse, she even struggles with the standard, basic material she’s given, including quotes like: “This is the best day of my life”. The African American flick, released in late March, has pulled in quite some audience in Lagos Cinemas. With movie goers having taken in enough of all that action in Iron Man3 and all the gore in Olympus Has Fallen, they are filling all the seats in the rooms whereTemptation is showing(on two weekdays last week, it was near standing room only at Screen 5 in Silverbird and Screen 3 in Genesis at The Palms, both on Victoria Island). Love films sell in Lagos, particularly when it’s about betrayal of marriage vows.  Jurnee Smollett-Bell is absolutely brilliant in the lead role of the philandering wife. She knows how to handle the emotional range. There’s one reason why the movie may have appealed to Lagos. It’s drama and neo-realistic story -telling, very much the ingredients that make Nollywood so successful. True, in New York and Johannesburg, the press is writing a lot about The Great Gatsby, the movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. But here, everyone is going to see Temptation.

National Theatre: The Idea Or The Built Environment?

GOETHE Institut, the German Cultural Centre, is hoping to revive the long dead building that once hosted the Federal Government Printing Press and declare it as National Theatre Of Nigeria. “For one week, in December 2013, it will be a mockup of the cultural heart of Nigeria hosting performances, exhibitions, lectures, talks, concerts, and parties – a visionary think tank on the future of art spaces in Nigeria”, the centre says in a press release. The colonial structure, built in 1896, had gradually gone to seed since the Printing Press moved to Malu Road in Ajegunle in the 70s and then finally, most of the printing work journeyed to Abuja in the 90s. The Germans are not interested in this journey. What they are interrogating is what constitutes a National Theatre?. German video artists Constanze Fischbeck and Daniel Kötter, familiar with the Lagos art scene since 2007, will, in the week beginning Monday June 3, 2013, start interview sessions in the Printing Press, asking artists, researchers, performers, filmmakers, sociologists and urbanists to develop their first ideas about the following topic: “If the Printing Press would be declared National Theatre of Nigeria for one week, what would you want to do in it?”

The collection of first ideas should open up the think tank for the needs of the art society in Nigeria and describe the relation between artists and society. One of the main focuses will also be to discuss cultural spaces in a city like Lagos. Each interview session will involve a team from two different disciplines which will be filmed by the artists on location in the Printing Press. The film will act as a first contribution for the public presentation in December.

Lala’s Second Show At Taruwa Festival

THE Taruwa Open Mic Show, which popped on the scene six years ago, helped to concretise the Open Mic tradition in Lagos. Now that Taruwa (“The Gathering”, in Hausa) is kicking off an annual Arts Festival, next week, it’s as well that an Open Mic session would be a part of it. “Open Mic Theatre, The Taruwa Edition “ will be presented by  Lala Akindoju’s The Make It Happen Production company which, incidentally, had its first production VMonologues, The Nigerian Story at the Muson Centre early in May. The event holds on Friday, June 7, 2013 at the Terra Kulture Centre on Victoria Island.

Long Way To Go For Profits In Movies

 TUNDE Kelani, the widely respected filmmaker, says it is exhibition of films at the Cinemas that is the way out of the current lack luster earnings of the Nigerian movie. Current statistics do not help Mr Kelani’s argument, but he thinks that a robust investment in the exhibition infrastructure would dramatically improve the fortunes of the filmmaker. The experience of Kunle Afolayan helps to clarify things. A second generation producer, Afolayan  has made three films: Irapada, Figurine and Phone Swap. He says that his last offering, which he made for 60Million naira, grossed 22Million Naira in Cinemas, “of which only seven(7) million naira came back to me”. There are just about eight standard Cinemas around the country. “Imagine if there were 50?”, he asks.  Film exhibition thrived in the sixties and seventies in Nigeria, but that was when the Nigerian movie itself was not the default movie that Nigerians saw. While the low priced Cinemas-Jebako, Super- exhibited Chinese and Indian films, the posh Theatres-Metro, Roxy- screened American movies. The Nigerian movies that came up in the late 70s to 80s(Ola Balogun’s Ajani Ogun, Owo Lagba; Ogunde’s Aiye, Olaiya’s Mosebolatan, etc) were exhibited, true, but the widespread viewing of the Nigerian film today is associated with the CD format as a distribution platform. “The CD format, as a vehicle for distribution, is no longer working”, says Kelani.  “Every good movie has been pirated, and there are some we can’t even talk about..Pirated copies sell for as little as 50Naira. How much further downslope can you get? ”.