‘Meet demands, pirates will be out of business’

Mildred Okwo is not a new face in film production. Having upped the standards with her debut movie, 30 Days, she is set to launch another, next month. In this interview, she discusses her latest flick, and issues in the industry.

What inspired the writing of the script, The meeting?

Tunde Babalola wrote the script. He is a very intelligent writer and I think he is one of the best scriptwriters in Nigeria. You will not see much of his work around because he would not give it to people who cannot do justice to it.  He presented the script to us two years ago and I fell in love with it immediately. I felt it is a story that can translate anywhere in the world.

Is this another high budget movie?

As regards what is classified a high budget movie in other parts of the world, this is a low budget movie. However, in Nigeria, you would consider it as high budget because we are spending more money than Nigerian productions do.

In trying to mobilise funds to shoot were you able to assess the Federal Government $200m intervention fund?

The money is mine and Rita Dominic’s. It has been so difficult, which is why it took us this long to come out with another film. We tried to access Bank of Industry funds but they gave us this long list of requirements   and we told them that ours is a young company.  They really do not know how to fund entertainment business, which is different from funding a hotel or restaurant. The accounting principles are different. In Nigeria, we still have to get to where the banks will understand us and how our business works. When we go there, they ask us for our houses as collaterals. That is not it! Our collaterals are the films. It is called intervention fund.  Rita said at a public forum that, if you are intervening, you cannot be giving us the same rules you give regular businesses.

Apart from having the technical know-how, many producers rely on known faces to sell their movies, Is this same with the meeting?

I do not blame people who do that because they have to earn their money back. We do not have structures and they are not able to tell who is going to buy their movies, so what they do is shop for the popular faces to feature in their movies with the hope that it will sell their movies. However, we are not toeing that line. Our lead characters are a little bit known, we have Femi Jacobs, who is a very good actor but this is his first feature film; then we have Linda Ejiofor who appears in Tinsel, as Bimpe. She is the sub lead.  Of course we have Basorge Tariah, Nse Ikpe- Etim, Kate Hens haw, so you can see that in as much as we have heavyweights, we also have unknown faces.

Are you getting the required cooperation from practitioners in the industry?

If you were successful, people would begin to look up to you. Everybody is wary of everybody and I think the only thing that can cure it is success. If you are successful, then people can say, ‘okay she did it.’ However, right now the problem we are having in the industry is that there is no cohesive unit. All you hear about is squabbles in the guilds.

What strategies are you putting in place to stop The meeting from been pirated?

We do not have piracy problems. It upsets me when people say we have piracy problems in Nigeria. What I am saying is if you have a film for example and you have Rita Dominic in it, you have Omotola, Genevieve, and Ramsey Noah in it and then you go and produce 20,000 CDs, why would it not be pirated? If I  have done my research very well  and I know 200,000 people want my CD  and I go and produce 20,000, then I can’t meet up with the demand. A smart person will just go and start copying the DVD.

Did you study the arts?

My first degree was in theatre arts from the University of Benin under Professor Osuofisan. Then, I travelled to America, where I studied law, which for me, was a way of keeping my parents happy. I practised but while at it, I was working for some entertainment-related companies. One of the things I did was to calm myself down and understand the entertainment structures, contracts and how they do business which is different from the regular business.

So, why did you return to Nigeria?

I lived in America for about 20 years during which I practised law. I returned   home because I wanted to join the growing Nollywood industry. I wanted to be one of the people that would take Nollywood   from being a cottage industry to a massive industry that is respected around the world.

When I returned in 2006, I realised that we did not even have an industry; we just had people doing their own thing. So, for the past four or five years, what I have been doing  is trying to bridge that gap, create an entertainment  company that would be run properly, invest in films, make money and invest in more films.  For this reason, we formed, The Audrey Silva Company, about two and a half years ago. What we do is produce visual content inspired by Africa for Africans and anybody else that is interested in what Africa has to say. Our motto says, ‘we provide African entertainment at millennium pace.’ I and Rita Dominic came together to float this company. Having done 30 Days which was a hit, The Audrey Silva Company has created the first feature film that we will be launching next month. The film, The meeting, is just a simple story of a forty-something year old Nigerian that goes to get something signed in a ministry in Abuja. It is an everyday story and I like to call it a romantic comedy.