After Jos, NFC’s training series arrives Lagos

The second leg of the ongoing training series in film and television production, which began in Jos, recently took place in Lagos. The one-week event, organised by Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), in conjunction with Lagos State Government will continue in other zones of the country. The workshop in Jos had in attendance 70 entrepreneurs from the six geopolitical zones of the country. Managing Director of NFC, Dr. Chidia Maduekwe, assured stakeholders at the opening that the corporations’ zonal offices were designated as centres for the trainings.

The corporation had pursued the development of domestic and foreign institutional linkages, collaborations and partnerships to deliver on its training and capacity building mandate. The institution has called on state governments, practitioners and other stakeholders to embrace the capacity building programme, which is designed to incorporate a blended learning approach that combines personal experience, classroom tutorials and practical/hands-on, and ultimately create jobs and wealth as its major objective, thereby reducing the rate of unployment in the country at large.

At the Jos training, Participants produced and presented a short film titled, Mai Goro to the admiration of guests, which included heads of relevant government agencies, filmmakers and film enthusiasts.

Mai Goro (meaning Kolanut seller) is a short movie about a beautiful lady photographer going about her business, to the admiration of the kolanut seller, who is also a fantastic flute player. The kolanut seller follows the photographer around as she goes about her business until he begins to manifest his talent of playing his flute and the photographer who saw him as an ordinary kolanut seller and gave him no heed begins to see him differently. This brought them together and like they say the rest is history.

The NFC boss gave kudos to the participants for the short presentation. According him, it showed how two different people from different backgrounds could be united according to their interests. He said, “The Yoruba’s plant Kolanut, the Ibo’s celebrate with it and the Hausa’s eat it. It means the koanut unites us as a people in ways we do not imagine.”

It is in line with the NFC’s vision that the Lagos government, partnered with the training institution to empower over 115 youths in film and television, an industry that will give participants opportunities to be self-employed.

Maduekwe reminded participants that the training workshop was designed to help participants appraise existing and new developments within the context of a broad range of traditional filmmaking techniques and applications in film and television production. He said it would equally address skills’ gap in the creative industry, especially in film and television production, and hopes that NFC would sustain the momentum of training and retraining, as well as capacity building, of youths and filmmakers in the various opportunities within film and television.

NFC’s Head of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, Mr. Brian Etuk, said, “The training workshop is part of NFC’s response to the skills’ gap analysis of the Nigerian film industry. It also fits into one of the core mandates of the NFC of providing training and capacity building for film and television practitioners. It will offer opportunities for film and television and communication specialists and practitioners to perfectly fit into emerging global trends and best practices, as a result of digital revolution.

“The training workshop is intended to provide opportunities for practitioners to horn their skills as well as raise their professional competencies. Trainees are expected to apply new skills to be learnt and improve on their film and television productions.”

The workshop covers training in screenwriting, cinematography, production management, editing, still photography and directing.In Lagos, participants asked both the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) and the Lagos State Government to sustain the partnership on the Film Training Workshop Series for the interest of their future. They spoke at the closing ceremony of the one-week film training workshop which held in Lagos, a cross-section of participants, mainly youths, drawn from the 57 Local Government and Development Areas of Lagos State, said the film training workshop had armed them with skills for alternative source of wealth and job creation, as they would not wait for government for employment.  
 
The excited participants praised the NFC for the level of resources deployed for the workshop and promised to effectively deploy the skills acquired during the training for a better Nigeria. The Government of Lagos State was equally commended for creating the opportunity for the training workshop, which the youths craved, should be sustained and expanded to accommodate more youths.

NFC’s Managing Director, Dr. Chidia Maduekwe at the closing ceremony admonished the trainees to create the impact required of them as a result of the one-week training. He assured that the Corporation has taken up the issues of training and capacity building for the film industry and is frontally addressing them. Maduekwe was represented by Mr. Simon Inegedu, Zonal Director of NFC Lagos Office.

Earlier at the opening ceremony on Monday, March 26, Mr. Dele Balogun, Executive Secretary of Lagos State Film and Video Censors Board, charged participants to ensure that they adequately took the opportunity offered them by the state government seriously, adding that Lagos State Government “remains strongly committed to capacity building, entrepreneurship empowerment and sustainable youth development.”  A total of 115 youths participated in the one-week film-training workshop.