Mrs. Amaka Igwe (nee Isaac-Eneh) is Nigeria’s No. 1 female film maker. Among the men also, she is highly rated. In fact, you cannot count or mention the top 5 without her. Married to Charles Igwe since April 17, 1993 and blessed with three children, the Obinagu-Udi, Enugu State indigene (her husband is from Imo State though) attended Girls High School, Awkunanaw, Enugu, Idia College, Benin (for her A-Levels), University of Ife (for her first degree in Education/Religious Studies) and University of Ibadan (for her Master’s in Library and Information Services). Forever bringing joy into our homes, courtesy some of her unforgettable works like Checkmate, Rattlesnake, Violated and Fuji House of Commotion, she is ever ready to do more. The MD/CEO of Amaka Igwe Studios, Moving Movies, BOB TV and Top Radio 90.9FM, she granted our Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, AZUH ARINZE, audience on Friday, January 11, 2013. This was at her office tucked inside the serene MKO Abiola Gardens in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos. The thrust of their discussion? You will uncover that yourself as you ‘read along’…
What sells a film?
I think the Americans are the closest to defining what’s an effective film – that’s what they call it. You know, for them, an effective film is the one that brings the audience to the cinema and the trick they use which I’ve found out from research is that they make the audience understand and empathise with a particular character and in so doing they worry along and struggle along with the character and in the end they want the character to win because the character winning is also their own win. Because really, when you look at and if you check it, the way the adrenalin rushes, if you are hungry for a while and you are anticipating food, when you finally eat it, you are satisfied. It is the same trick; it is the same use of adrenalin. So, it is the one that creates enough adrenalin rushing in an individual. That’s what the Americans have said and I think it’s true to a large extent.
Where do most film producers and directors get it wrong?
I think it’s understanding really who their audience is. Most of the time many film makers make films for themselves. Especially in Nigeria. We take the audience for granted. Oh, they are there. Whatever I give… You are not bothered about whether it will give them the rush, you are not bothered about whether it is what they want to see at this time, you are not bothered about whether the audience actually understands and follows what it is you are saying. So, basically, it’s a lack of understanding of who your audience is. Secondly is the story telling. How best do you tell stories to fit that audience that you understand, and it’s always a bit of a problem. Today, I was analyzing a foreign film with someone and the person was saying Denzel Washington did not sell too much box office last year and we were watching Safe House and I pointed out what the issues were: whose story is the Safe House? Is it Denzel or the other guy, Reynolds? Both of them, in the end, you will find out that Denzel was a good guy, the other was bad, so there was a bit of a confusion. And if it’s pitched at an American audience, an American audience will never like the American government defeated. So, in a way, they didn’t quite click with the audience. It’s the same way we do in Nigeria. You are making a film, you don’t care that the audience is made up of 250 different ethnic groups; you are speaking in a language that half of the people do not understand, you don’t even bother to subtitle. Even the way the people speak English, is everybody understanding it? What of the different idioms and storylines and themes that you carry that are heavily traditional and peculiar to a certain group of people? How do you know whether the other people understand it? I remember when I wrote Forever and I sent it across to my normal people. FAJ (Mr. Femi Akintunde-Johnson) was one of those I used to give the scripts to read and he came back and said he didn’t understand it – why would a man go and give up a child that he raised and he allowed somebody to come and collect the child simply because the man paid dowry and I said among the Igbos, the dowry determines the father of a child, not actually the sperm. It is the dowry (voices rises). So, it doesn’t matter who contributed to the child being born. The biological father really doesn’t have a say. It’s the person who paid the dowry on the mother. Then, I went back and I had to explain it in the script, to be able to take care of my audience, because I realised that most Yoruba people, non-Igbos, will not understand it. So, taking the audience for granted; not telling your story to suit the audience that you have chosen. The final one I may say is that many people, they’ve not sold in Nigeria, they want to sell in America. The Americans make their films for the Americans, but any other person can benefit.
What distinguishes Amaka Igwe from the other film makers?
I think it should be for someone else to say really whether there’s a difference. I think for me really I have a contract with the Nigerian audience to entertain them. So, my research is in what do they want to watch now; what would work? So, even when I do my script, I take it around the different strata of society, the rich, the poor, the educated, the non-educated and I tell them to critique the story and if it works for them, then it will work for a large section of the people and then I have also this company policy that we must pay attention to details. So, we work hard to make sure that if we are doing a film that is situated in the early 70s, there should not be a N1000 note. You are very careful about the details of production. We don’t do something in a hurry or production in a hurry. We try very hard to carry the audience along, make sure that technically we are at par within the construct of your environment; we are at par with anybody in the world. So, you can’t watch my film anywhere and say okay, we used a Steadicam wrongly. Technically we are bad; no! But you can say that you heard a generator sound. That’s okay. It’s the problem of Nigeria. But when it comes to using the equipment professionally or telling the story professionally, you can’t fault us. That’s what we try to do.
What must one do to succeed in your line of business?
Right now, it’s a very, very difficult business to be in because the super structure that we expected that by now, 20 years down the line, 21 years down the line, you know, it would have been in place, is not there. So, you will find out that a lot of film makers like Ije producer, the young girl that did Ije, she’s running around. She made the film, she does the cinema, she does all by herself while if the super structure were on ground, all she needs to do is to concentrate in film making. So, the person who wants to succeed right now, apart from understanding film making as a process and as a language, he must understand the audience; then he must be willing to work extra hard to supply his or her own super structure in terms of distribution, because film making is not just about making the film; it’s about taking an idea from script to screen and to do that, there is a lot of process. Many people get stuck with the script, many people get stuck with the film, but it has to get to screen; either big screen or a small screen. And the work to get it down for that place sometimes costs more than just making a film. So, anybody who wants to succeed now should be ready to work the whole gamut because it doesn’t exist. Gone are the days when you make a film and you take it to a marketer, you make a film, you take it here. Here, you must do your own distribution. You produce the film, you do the distribution, which is really very bad because any other place in the world, all you need to do is to make your own film and someone takes over.
Why do some people attain success in their chosen endeavours and find it difficult to sustain it?
I think because people just get carried away by success and their definition of what success is. For some people, success just simply means buying a very good big car. So, once you’ve bought it, there’s no more ambition to do anything else. Or some people think it is money. It depends on your definition of success. I don’t think I have attained success yet. I think yes, we’ve had series of success. We’ve also had a lot of not very successful ventures. But success would be when there’s a super structure for the industry for me. That for me becomes a major success, because then I will need to make films and make money. Making money on a particular film is not success. So, I think many people should check again what their definition of success is. For some people, it’s just to get married. And once it is done, then life becomes a judge. So, you must have goals that are bigger than just the mundane facts of life, you must have goals that are a bit idealistic, a bit utopian, a bit much more than just what I consider the mundane. You must have an ambition to build, to leave a legacy, to leave history, to leave the society better than you found it. That for me is the ultimate goal. To leave whatever I do better than I found it. In my industry, it’s to create the super structure that will make people who are coming behind us happy. I can say that I’m one of the top people in the industry. Even when we did competition, African-wide by Mnet, we know that we beat a lot of countries. But how is it that nobody has actually said let’s support Amaka Igwe to be the global brand? And no matter what we do, I have never taken a loan to do anything that I have done because there is nobody to give you loan, anyway.
Which of your works gives you the greatest joy and why?
Each one is peculiar…
We know that they are all peculiar, but we want you to single out one?
I can’t, I can’t…I like Rattlesnake because it was my first born, I must say. That’s among the films. If it’s soaps, then I love Checkmate. These are my kids, the things that came out first and they give me peculiar joy because when people turn around and tell you that we are waiting for you to surpass those two, it becomes an ambition that you will want to work on. For me, if you must insist, then those two are it. Well, I like Violated also because the mistakes I made in Rattlesnake I corrected in Violated.
Which of your works do you feel you could have done better anytime you watch it?
All of them, all of them and that is why I don’t watch my films after I’ve made them.
How easy is it for you to combine running Amaka Igwe Studios, Moving Movies, BOB TV, Top Radio and so on with your home? And also turn out successful in all of them…
I think every human being without exception has the capacity to do more than they are doing. I’ve learnt recently that the brain, no matter what it takes, we are not using up to 10 percent of our brain capacity. If you think somebody like Da Vinci could be doing Maths with one hand and painting with the other hand; he didn’t know the difference between right and left, like in Nigeria where we say the right is stronger. No! For him, he could do Maths with one, and he could draw with the other one. He was a philosopher, he was an engineer, he was an artist, he was a mathematician, he was everything and he could use the two sides of his brain. You know one side of our brain is science, one is arts. By birth in Nigeria, especially if you grow up in Igboland, they kill the science part and then everybody is an artist more or less. And down the line, the teacher tells you, you don’t know how to do it. I think it’s possible. If you can train and trust people, you know where your limits are, you know what you can do…Like the radio station, I’ve been there only once. There’s a fantastic COO who is running the place and we talk all the time on the phone or we meet in one of the other offices and we talk. So, when it comes to policy and management, yes, I do that. But when it comes to the day to day running, he’s a thoroughbred radio man. So, he’s handling it. I don’t even need to do that. When it comes to programmes and issues, yeah, we talk about it, we discuss it and all that. But when it comes to the day to day running, he understands it better than I do. So, when you know your limits, you know what your strength is –my strength is management and I’m a writer, I’m a director. When it comes to Amaka Igwe Studios, it’s broadly a production company and when we have jobs to do, we do it. Like Fuji House of Commotion, Now We Are Married, Solitaire and all that. We are just about to launch a television station. Again, we have a powerful COO who is going to run it and I do management. Although I’m going to be more hands – on with this particular one because that’s my forte. So, it’s not that I want to do all of that; the point is that I’ve always concentrated and said to people, I’m a writer, learning how to direct. That’s been my definition of my career. But before I came into this, I was a manager. I had actually reached an Executive Director level in a big company, so I know management. I forced management into creative, more or less. So, once you have it all organised in a proper flow chart, people know, okay, when we wake up, this is what we do, this is how we do it, then you sit back and let young people do what they have to do and then you provide guidelines. But as per my family, what I try to do is, I bring them into my work and I also make sure that they see me when they need to see me. I’m there when they close from school, I’m there when they leave. I don’t compromise on that. Everyone of these things is important to me.
Some successful women don’t have successful marriages, where do you think they get it wrong?
I think most of the time most women come from the point of being on the defensive. They are apologizing for being women and for being successful, so they are trying hard to beat the menfolk, to compete with the menfolk. They forget that they are women also to their husbands. You are not competing with the man. So, it’s really a struggle for so many people. People have called me a female film maker and I said there’s nothing like that. I don’t remember I’m a woman when I’m doing my work. I do not even try to say oh, Chico Ejiro or no! I don’t see them as men. I see them as film makers. I don’t even want anybody to apologise on my behalf and say the work is not good, she’s a woman and so…No! My work, there are standards. Professional standards for my work and it has to be that way. But when a woman has to like fight to prove herself in the male world, she becomes combatant even when she doesn’t need to be. I think that is one of the problems. The second one is the husbands. Very few men, very few men will tolerate a successful woman. They feel that their wives show them up, especially if they are not as successful in whatever they are doing. But I’ve found a lot of men who when they talk, I tell them, but your wife is able to do what she’s doing because of you, and that’s all the man needs to know. That he is important in that particular equation. Like there are certain decisions I need to take in my business and my husband has to go there and help me see, because there are certain things that he sees that I don’t. So, he’s my biggest supporter and my biggest fan. He’s there; he created the brand more or less. And he’s not intimidated; he’s not competing with me, because I’m not competing with him. He’s a fantastic person, he knows what he knows and he’s an expert there. He doesn’t attempt to make the films. He will tell you no, this might not work out and you listen. You can have the argument, but in the final analysis, it’s my decision because it’s my company. The same way when he has issues in his company, he tells me; if I keep quiet, he knows I don’t agree with him and then he says okay, what’s wrong? So, I think like I said earlier on, success is not just about achieving one or two things. It’s a long term thing, it’s a marathon. So, in your life, when you’ve achieved success, you become big and you have some good bank account, it doesn’t mean that you should now be relaxed. You should look out for the people who made that happen – your husband, your children, they are as important as what you are doing. And women should stop being apologetic about who they are. Being successful is being successful. It’s not because you are a woman, it’s because you are doing certain things right. And then the husbands should be more accommodating. Many people should understand that we are in a cultural milieu and in our culture – a man is the head of a family and the head of the wife. That’s what he is. He is not the head of the company. My husband is not the MD of Amaka Igwe Studios. He’s not! I seek his advice all the time, but he will not take the final decision. But when it comes to his house and his children and our lives together, I dare not. He takes all the decisions. Even if I suggest to him.
It’s been long that you made movies last, when should your fans expect something new from you?
In fairness, we have about six films that we have not released. It’s not that I’m not making films, the point is that we are not releasing it because of those super structures that we talked about. We have built a film set in Enugu, we are about to shoot one soap and two films. But this time we are beginning to finally get to what we need – to get films released and to make money without having to go through all the rigours. We are almost there. But for the ones we want to make which I’m going to start shooting in February or early March, I’m not going to wait for the super structure. I’m going to release it because I think that it’s high time we put back into the environment good films. I mean, the people who made the early films, we all slowed down because of these super structures and okay, because it was too crowded. Oya, let them do. But I don’t think it was a good idea. The Opa Williams of the world, NEK, Gabosky, even Zeb (Ejiro). Most of the people pulled back. So, I think we should come back and put back leadership, hoping that things will change. Because you can prepare all you like and come out and the film is a bomb. But I think the ones we are working on now, people should watch out for them.
The Almighty God has been very nice to you, what more do you want from Him?
Honestly, to ask for more will be good. But I think health. Very good health, perfect health is what I want. Ability to do what I want to do without the blood pressures, the back pains, losing a lot of weight and to feel good. Apart from that, for my children to be healthy. I think that’s it. For me, I’m as content as you can; even with little I’ve always been a contented person in my life. But I think if we can have good health, we will be able to do more, we will be able to progress and enjoy our lives. It’s not enough to do things and then you can’t enjoy them. But with good health, you can. For me, the present challenge I want is perfect health to be able to do more.
Outside of your own works, which is the best Nigerian film that you have watched?
Oh, I love Igodo, I love Igodo. I think it was a very well told adventure story. I’ve even promoted it beyond Nigeria. People have asked for it and I’ve bought for them. Beyond it, I can’t remember immediately any other Nigerian film that I have seen that caught me like that. It kept me and I watched it all night. Igodo for me was a very good film. The editing also was very good.
NB: First published December 2013