By Charles Aketch(charl.chotto@gmail.com)
Africa is just a phenomenon.Today we have made miles away from our “primitive” way of luring the world onto our shores,jungles and deserts by our
amazing wildlife and beautiful sceneries and begging the rest out there
to come and see these.We don’t have to live in caves anymore in the 21st
century in the name of preserving our noble savagery for the west to
come and case study us.No.Africa has come of age and the world has to
pay attention.What with our sporting talents that have dominated the
world’s sports arena?What about our amazing musicians,fashion designers,academic dons,name them?
However,bigger but not better than the fore-mentioned,the
African movie industry has budded and it has bloomed.It is bigger.It is
sumptuous.South Africa is a little older in the game but Nollywood has done me proud.Since I first watched a Nigerian movie in 2000 till today,I have witnessed
tremendous growth.The talent will always surprise you,the script
writers are rising to the sky and directors and producers like Tchidi
Chikere,Andy Chuks amongst others leaves more to be desired.I had a few
glances at Jacob’s Cross and the first thing that came into my
mind was that there must have been some American or British hand in the
-casting,directing and producing the series-don’t blame me-that gave us such a supberly matured watching piece.But is a purely continental thing!Amazing!Other countries' movie industries are coming up and let’s applaud them for their shortcomings and the strides they have made.
Read this.If you want to know that Africa is a land of plenty including geniuses then don’t go far.Africa magic in conjunction with MultiChoice that revolutioned your boring sitting room by bringing you Dstv have brought in 2013 for the first time:Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards meant
to award and recognize our movie stars,directors,producers-every who
meddle in telling the African story through our buzzing and growing
movie industry.Isn't such a brilliant idea?Round of applause everyone!
But wait even bigger.Than these is the phenomenon of the enigmatic African woman.They are smart,assertive,enterprising,creative and intelligent.And they are also very.Very.Very beautiful-dont disagree.Ahem.However,of
all the complicated poetry I have attempted to crack up is the African
woman.Does any one understand the woman seated next to him?
Our women are complicated in a variety of ways.Like most don’t like their hair and would rather die with these long European or Chinese made synthetic hair.Others don’t prefer there African names and those with one Christian name add another from probably their favourite character in a foreign novel or movie or from a music superstar from the famous USA.So
you are called Anne Oke?Too bad.Drop Oke and add Alicia after the
famous Alicia Keys,dismantle the arrangement and come up with Alicia
Annes- "s" is just a bonus.Doesn't it sound better and exotic?
A doubting Thomas still doesn’t believe me.You have probably watched the enchanting,glamorous,beautiful and talented Stephanie
Okereke’s movies.She’s just good.She fits into her characters but
something is sometimes a little odd with her persona.She struggles with
the American accent which frequently in her movies like in her movie the Pretender 1&2 wears off into her pidgin influenced
accent.The clash is corrosive but she doesn’t wear down.A number of
times in other movies Steph seems to be forcing or really grappling with
the American accent which is always slipping from her mouth.Why should
that be the case when she is really doing fine in the movies in terms of
acting?
The
big question:what is it with our women and the American English
accent?Some try.They really do try and they don’t get it and I end up
feeling guilty or ashamed on their behalf.I
don’t know why I do feel that way.Back in the days,the 98.4 Capital fm
female presenters used to make me think they were all American.But their
names were so African like Laura Walubengo and Yunia Amunga amongst
those my stars and till today I wonder where they acquired the American accent from?I spent two hours in a language lab in my four year course in English at college but my accent and my uncle's who left school in class 8 have no regrettable differences!
And
still thinking:Why is I don’t hear ladies struggling with the British
accent?And why are men always so dumb to try and catch up with our
ladies?If Stephanie Okereke is hot and talented a million times more that we beast-like men are and she twangs,why cant we men try?That is why to me,an African woman is still enigmatically phenomenal!
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