The improvement of Nollywood in recent time in some quarters have been credited to the crop of young Nigerians traveling abroad to study film making bringing back to Nigeria the experiences gathered overseas. Trained in Bollywood which is regarded as the 7th largest film industry in the world in terms of revenue generation, Hamzat Bashan in this interview shares his experience with Seunmanuel Faleye on studying abroad and returning back to Nigeria. Enjoy excerpts.
For the benefit of those reading about you for the first time, Let us meet you?
My name is Hamzat Olaiwola a.k.a Bashan. Ace Cinematographer of the Federal republic.
The name Bashan is alien to us in Nigeria, how did you come about that?
Actually I trained as a film maker in Bollywood. I trained at Center for Research in Art of Film and Television ‘CRAFT’, New Delhi. I got the name from my friends in India. They drew this similarity between me and Amitabh Bachan, on the long run I decided to fine tune the name as Bashan.
Why did you take the initiative to travel to India to study film making, was it that you didn’t
feel the appropriate training here in Nigeria?
I see a lot of Indian movies and I got thrilled by the way Bollywood filmmakers balance colors and use Aesthetics. So I always fancied the idea of traveling to India to understudy their film industry. After i left Lagos state polytechnic, I was doing video making and also driving public tricycle ‘keke Maruwa’. The choice to study in India was boiled from the fact that our dear ‘Nollywood’ was crawling at that time and we as aspiring makers needed to go learn the success story of other industries.
Returning back to Nigeria, do you think being a film maker from BOLLYWOOD has
leveraged you over Nigerian film makers?
Yes, studying abroad has given me leverage. We have a lot of incredible productions springing up right now in Nigeria. It might interest you to know that a lot of people ruling the industry right now were my colleagues in India. After i came back to Nigeria, I started a community film school called Iganmu Film School. I grew up in that community so for me it was a way to give back to the community. I partnered with the Orile Iganmu Progressive association to facilitate the first community film school in Africa. So whenever I’m not on the field shooting, I’m in the class lecturing film making. That’s a leverage.
What Jobs have you done lately?
Since i returned I’ve been doing more of educating films. I have shot quite a few jobs including TV commercial too recently I shot a shot film with Tayo Afolayan one of the Afolayan dynasty ‘Behind the Tunnel’, I did a feature film with him too shot in their home town Agbamu, Kwara state. I have been doing more of film education, less of Film production. I’m just finding time for film productions. I’m currently working on a talk show that would hit the air waves soon. Some other jobs i did in the past are with Former Mr. Nigeria Deji Bakare. Recently I did something with the Jigawa State government.There is also Kinabuti an Italian fashion outfit and so on. I also just shot a documentary titled Children Of the NorthEast, created by Wale Ajayi, and Directed by my humble self.
Why have you not had jobs flooding the market and your name everywhere yet?
Because of the kind of training i got from abroad, I need to reject some jobs, mainly because they seem not up to standard. There is a beam light on us when we are a part of jobs below par.
Name 3 Nigerian Film makers you admirer and why?
Firstly that would be baba Tunde Kelani, I admire him because he uses his films to create marketable African contents. Showcasing our African contents across the world is a good one and highly commendable. Then Kunle Afolayan, I admire the way he handles the business angle to film making, he is good at it. I also admirer Seun Afolabi, he is an upcoming film maker, but I love his drive.
No comments:
Post a Comment