October 27, 2023
The Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Africa, Toru-Orua (UAT), Professor Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma, has identified loss of privacy, public expectations, and arrogant airs as some of the challenges of movie stardom in Nigeria.
In a paper titled, “Holding Talks on the Origin of Nollywood, Movie Stardom and Nation Building,” delivered as the keynote address at the 2023 Nollywood Nation Conference organised by the Department of Film and Multimedia Studies of the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, the professor of Theatre and Film Studies admonished film makers to, among other things, be attune with evolving trends in the film industry and upscale professionalism through regular training, check indecent dressing as role models, avoid scandals, maintain high self-esteem, and aspire to mould a better society as they strive to move Nollywood and the nation forward.
On what he called “holding talks on the origin of Nollywood,” Professor Ayakoroma observed that while the Yoruba travelling theatres, popularly called Alarinjo theatres, were at the forefront in the development of the cinema industry in Nigeria, it is incontrovertible that the production of video film, Living in Bondage, directed by Chris Obi-Rapu and produced by Kenneth Nnebue in 1992, marked the development of the contemporary phase of the Nigerian film industry, now popularly called Nollywood.
Participants at the conference, with the theme: “Movie Stardom and Nation Building,” had earlier paid a courtesy visit on the Vice-Chancellor of University of Port Harcourt, Prof. Owunari Abraham Georgewill.
@2023 Information and Protocol Unit, UAT
