Of Lionheart, Oscars Disqualification, and National Identity Crisis

(By Daniel Chukwuemeka) – The disqualification of Genevieve Nnaji's Lion Heart from Oscar's Best International Film Award category is a very controversial topic. It'll certainly attract the usual discourse about colonialism and debate around nationalism and identity. In all, however, I think that Americans are indirectly telling us, "go home, Nigerians, and resolve your identity crisis. Go home and think, and act."

English is our official language, but if you watched Lion Heart, did you see the part where Pete Edochie is fuming before his prospective Hausa in-law? The Hausa man mutters some words in Hausa without knowing that Pete Edochie understands the language. Pete joins him in Hausa and speaks it away at the amazement and excitement of the Hausa man. That alone seals both their business and family connections.

             I said it in a post yesterday. We had work to do, but failed to do it. Noah Webster jnr. woke up one morning and said that God came to him in a dream and ordered him to write a dictionary of American English.

No Oscars for Nollywood at 2015 Academy Awards

EVEN though a local Oscars selection committee has since February 2014 been constituted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to select an entry that will best represent Nollywood in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the annual Academy Awards, Nigeria did not feature on the list of 83 countries that have submitted films for consideration in that category of the prestigious award.

Chairman, Nigeria Oscars Selection Committee (NOSC), Chineze Anyaene, confirmed during the week that though the selection committee received a number of entries, none of them, according to her, "met the basic criteria for selection'. The academy insists that entries for the foreign language film category must be feature-length movie produced outside of the U.S. with a predominantly non-English dialogue track and accurate English subtitles. But according to Anyaene who produced and directed the commercially successful movie Ije, most of the entries the committee received were "either in English and some of those that were not in English were not properly subtitled and quite a number of them were lacking in some technical details".

Oscars Recognizes Nollywood for Awards Category

Ahead of the 2015 Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has approved a 12-man committee of Nollywood stakeholders, the Nigerian Oscars Selection Committee (NOSC), to consider Nigerian entries for the world's most prestigious awards for films.

Each year, countries with an approved selection committee may submit one film for consideration for the Foreign Language Film Award Oscar; only five films are chosen from all international submissions for Academy members to cast their votes and choose a winning foreign language film.

"This is a great opportunity for Nigeria to have a voice in the international film arena," said Chineze Anyaene, filmmaker and committee chairperson.

The NOSC members comprise of outstanding professionals who have over time proved their mettle as some of the finest in the movie industry. They include Chineze Anyaene, Ngozi Okafor, Olumide Amure, Ramsey Nouah, Kene Mkparu, Emeka Mba, Chioma Ude, Akin Salami, Mildred Okwo, Biola Alabi, Charles Novia and Shaibu Husseini.

According to Academy rules, the members will consider submissions on seven criteria, which are: story, direction, acting, cinematography, sound, music and universal theme.

Shaibu Husseini, another member of the board agrees. "The Nollywood film industry needs to play globally so people will begin to look towards us."