Of Two Generations of Moviemakers and a Famous 5

For Apr 30

Not that there weren’t things happening in town over the Easter, but I only managed to see the two new movies premiered by our two generational filmmakers, contemporary Shirley Frimpong-Manaso’s ‘Adam’s Apple’ on Thursday, and the legendary Kwaw Ansah’s ‘Papa Lasisi Good Bicycle’ on Saturday night.

On Friday night, there was the Peace FM event dubbed ‘Famous 5’ which for the first time saw both Amakyi Dede and Kojo Antwi on the same stage! They were among five top acts elected by fans of Peace FM who wanted to see the two of them, as well as No Tribe, Five5 and Kwabena Kwabena the most, given the choice. I saw excerpts on TV. The stage looked stunning, and the atmosphere, as I imagined was electric. I learnt it was staged by new events management entrant Evolution, and I dare say, that’s another feather in their cup!

And then the day after there was the Fabolous concert engineered by, another new, event house ‘233 Connect’. According to eyewitness reports, that was yet another successful show. Drew a younger crowd than the one the night before, and on that same night, at the National Theatre, many were those who throng in to see Uncle Kwaw’s latest addition to his many laurels. While the crowd at the Conference Centre where the Fabolous concert took place brought the house down with screams of excitement upon being entertained to music on very loud speakers, the more modest set that crammed the National Theatre to see Kwaw’s movie, were more sedate, a number of them walking with the aid of a stick.

No, no, I don’t mean they were all Methuselahs! After all, I was among that set, and I, most certainly am not dotard. But, it most certainly was interesting to see many of our more senior citizens who are advanced in age make the effort to come and see the film. I was just wondering why that is the only, or one of the major entertainments they would opt to be part of and not, say, come and see Shirley’s movies, I mused out loud to the hearing of my pal Kweku.

This elicited the age-old argument again; that Shirley’s movies are too foreign, not Ghanaian enough. I wondered what was “not Ghanaian” about them. The actors? Was the film not shot and produced in Ghana? Or maybe the storylines don’t reflect any aspect of how Ghanaians live today? He struggled for answers, but still insisted that, there was something missing from the Sparrow flicks, something that didn’t quite cut it out as a ‘real’ Ghanaian film, much like Uncle Kwaw’s!

Unfortunately, the view is being held by many people, including especially, some of our some of our state institutions, that if our arts is not depicted in the traditional form, displaying images and dialogue of how we “used to” dress, and act in a thespian manner, than it was un-Ghanaian.

So what, I argued, as continual as culture is, did he really expect that as many more people now lived the trendy, cosmopolitan existence in Accra today, we are to shove that reality under the carpet? As if they didn’t exist? That their stories should not be told too? Did he think all those new high-rise flats and town houses and estates in the plush Cantonments, and ‘Airport Hills’ were occupied only by foreigners? No, I reminded him. They were lived in by Ghanaians whose aspirations for such lifestyles thirty years ago.

Their formative years, spent in Europe and America, where they went to study, and begin their early life inculcated a certain way of life, and have made them become the urbane people they are today! That is something you cannot take away from them. That is the new Ghanaian! And yet, even as we speak, a newer breed is being groomed, which will manifest in another, say, twenty years, and that breed, if steps are not taken to inculcate more of what we are as a people in them, will never say ‘Agyei’ when they trip, again, but say, ‘Ouch’! And that will be their reality!

I was most excited and intrigued to see the mother character in the Shirley movie trying to persuade her daughter who was contemplating divorce from going through with it. If that is not a strong Ghanaian woman I saw, just because she was wearing a pink dress, then I don’t know. Those are the values we must hold dear, methinks.

This is why I’m all for the big call for our arts to be reignited. For more people to write, to put our narratives too out there! Just as we are, a dynamic people who remember the morals left to us by our forebears, even if we have been influenced to dance the salsa instead of the adowa! But, there’s hope yet, with young writers like Elizabeth-Irene Baitie, who has penned a fantastic book set in a ‘time and space’ in Ghana as it is today, dealing with themes that show that all is, indeed, not lost. More on Baitie’s ‘The Twelfth Heart’ coming next.