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Tag: AMAA 2018

  • Nse Ikpe, Arthur Nkusi to host AMAA 2018

    Nollywood actress, Nse Ikpe Etim and Rwandan comedian and radio presenter, Arthur Nkusi will be co-hosting this year’s edition of Africa Movie Academy Award (AMAA), organisers have announced.

    In its 14th edition, the award ceremony is scheduled to hold at the Intare Conference Arena in Kigali, Rwanda on Saturday, October 20, 2018.

    Nse will be hosting AMAA for the third time, having helmed the show when it took place in Lagos, Nigeria last year and the Nomination Gala in Lilongwe, Malawi in 2013.

    Nkusi, otherwise called Rutura is Rwanda’s foremost stand-up comedian, radio presenter and former Big Brother Africa contestant.

    The event is being supported by the Rwanda Convention Bureau, Rwandair, Rwanda Development Board, The Radisson Blu Hotel and the Kigali Convention Centre.

    Chairman of the AMAA Selection Committee, Mr. Shaibu Husseini who announced the nominations revealed that over 500 films were entered for this year’s edition of the Awards.

    Husseini who represented AMAA 2018 Jury President, Dorothee Wenner made this known during the nomination announcement at the Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos, recently.

  • AMAA partners Cuban school to train aspiring filmmakers in Kigali

    AMAA partners Cuban school to train aspiring filmmakers in Kigali

    The training arm of Africa Film Academy (AFA), parent organization to the popular Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) is set to hold a film training workshop for aspiring filmmakers in Kigali, capital of Rwanda.

    The training which is in partnership with The International Film and Television School Cuba (EICTV) is part of the activities leading to this year’s edition of AMAA on October 20, at the Intare Conference Arena, Kigali.

    Holding from October 18th to 20th, the workshop series called Film-In-A-Box will take place in Rwanda for the first time, following previous outings in Nigeria, Gambia, Malawi and South Africa.

    As part of the three-day activities, AMAA announces that there will be an Africa Cinema Business Roundtable as a sideline event, focusing on content distribution with the theme; “Unblocking Distributions: The Key to the Success of African Cinema.”

    AMAA’s Director of Administration, Mr. Tony Anih, in a statement on how well the scheme has impacted the continent described the founder as a visionary.

    According to him, “A lot of people already know that Peace Anyiam-Osigwe has the agenda of making the African Cinema more acceptable, the world over, some of the big films that have won the AMA Awards in previous editions include: Viva Riva, October 1, The Figurine, Eye of the Storm, Run, I sing of a Well, How to Steal 2 Million, Rising Moon, Of Good Report and lots more. And these films made very successful runs at international film festivals and were also box office hits across markets in Africa, Europe and the United States.”

    AFA, he noted, “has trained of 10,000 filmmakers  across Africa and continues to do so with the support of the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe foundation and other partners.”

    Anih reveals that one of the key resource persons that will take classes at the workshop include Rebecca Roos, guest lecturer at EICTV who will focus on visual story telling for both fiction and documentary films, adding that the intensive workshop will entail theoretical basics and practical exercises, pitching and the production of a few short films.

    The training also includes an Animation Class to be presented by Edward Lapang, Nigerian animator, painter and motion graphics artist whose goals are to place emphasis on the creation of quality animation and special effects in the African film and television productions.

    On the partnering institution, Anih disclosed that the vision of the EICTV is in tandem with AMAA in the area of support to national audio-visual industries in countries that lacked the infrastructure.

    He said: “It is important to note that Cuba’s world renowned International Film and Television School (EICTV) was founded by a group of intellectuals, led by Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez, Argentinian poet Fernando Birri and Cuban filmmaker Julio García Espinosa, leading figures in Latin American debates about revolutionary and politically committed art.

    “Its initial aim was to support the development of national audio-visual industries in countries that lacked the infrastructure or resources to train their own professionals.

     

    “Representatives from the film school will present certificates to the students that complete the workshop and will also take part in round table discussions sharing their knowledge in how to train filmmakers within an industry that lacks infrastructure.

    “The film school has attracted many renowned international filmmakers as visiting teachers for master classes and workshops that include Werner Hertzog, Francis Ford Copolla and Stephen Spielberg.

    “The film school has  maintained its objective: to train artists of a high aesthetic and technical level with an ethical concept, capacity for dreaming, critical vision of the world, deep concern and positive position against injustice and oppression.

    “As part of its core mission the AFA uses the medium of filmmaking as a tool for community development to train aspiring artists in all aspects of filmmaking: acting, writing, directing and producing motion pictures all across Africa.”

  • Nigeria dominates AMAA 2018 nominations

    Ahead of this year’s edition of the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), scheduled to hold in Kigali, Rwanda in September, organisers on Friday, announced nominations in the 27 categories of the awards show.

    The list was unveiled by Chairman of the Selection Committee, Shaibu Husseini, on behalf of the president of jury for 2018, Dorothee Wenner, at The Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos, showed Nigeria’s dominance of the African movies’ frontier.

    Competition in the Best Film category include the entries Isoken – Nigeria; Five Fingers For Marseilles – South Africa; In My Country – Nigeria; The Blessed Vost (Les Bienheureux)- Algeria; Cross Roads – Nigeria; Road to Sunshine – Malawi; Siembamba – South Africa; Hotel Called Memory – Nigeria; Sidechic Gang – Ghana and The Lost Café – Nigeria.

    Battling for top spots include actors like Richard Mofe Damijo, Lydia Forson, Kate Henshaw, OC Ukeje, Dakore Akande, Sam Dede among others.

    And competing for the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation Award for Best Nigerian Film are the movies. Cross Roads, In My Country, Isoken, Hotel Called Memory, Ojukokoro, The Lost Café and Icheke Oku.

  • Kigali to host AMAA 2018

    In line with its pan-African and Africa integration agenda, the Rwandan government through the Rwanda Convention Bureau and Rwanda Tourism Bureau has accepted to host the 2018 edition of the African Movie Academy Awards in Kigali in September.

    According to a statement issued in Lagos by the organisers, the event will hold at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre on Saturday, September 22, 2018.

    The 2018 nominees for the awards will be unveiled on July 21 at a media and industry event. German filmmaker and Berlin Film Festival curator, Dorothy Wenner, has also been announced as the President of the AMAA Jury for 2018.

    AMAA which started in 2005 held the nominations gala event in Kigali in 2017 as part of the activities to expand the frontiers of unity and integration in Africa.

    According to the founder, Ms. Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, AMAA remains the biggest and most credible jury-based reward system for filmmakers and professionals in the motion picture industry from Africa and Africans in Diaspora.

    “It remains a fact that AMAA is the longest running Pan-African awards in the whole of Africa,” she said.

    “Similar awards in film, music and virtual arts have come and gone. Since 2005 we have worked to keep and protect the integrity of the awards. This is why we can partner with Rwanda, a country where excellence and professionalism drive business and governance. The interesting thing about AMAA this year is that visitors especially Africans will not struggle to have visa as all visas willbe processed on arrival. We want to thank President Paul Kagame and other African leaders that are making people’s movement within our continent very easy while we call on other African countries to have Visa on arrival policy if we can’t remove visa completely. Our people will prosper and there will be shared prosperity when we can travel and do business and even for holidays easily within Africa.”

    In Nigeria, the Lagos State government of Nigeria hosted the 2017 edition of the awards at the Eko Hotel Convention Centre, Victoria Island while Bayelsa State hosted the awards for straight 10 years.

    Sponsors of the awards in the past have included United Bank for Africa, Airtel, Ecobank, Sterling Bank, Skye Bank, First Bank, FCMB, Globacom and MRS Oil.

    AMAA recently hosted a social media training workshop in Kigali for young people as a Corporate Social Responsibility project sponsored by Osigwe Anyiam – Osigwe Foundation, Ecobank and Rwanda Convention Bureau which had with tech resource persons drawn from Nigeria and Rwanda.