A star actor cum movie director, Fred Amata has put more than two decades in the industry his family helped to build. Having featured in nearly 100 home movies and over 15 soap operas, The President of Directors’ Guild of Nigeria (DGN), is a staunch defender of Nollywood, even though he agrees there is plenty of room for improvement.
In this interview with Judith Audu’s Meet the Actor/ Film maker, Amata, chronicles his early days in Nollywood as well as the changes that can help shape the future of the Nigerian film industry. Eeliv.ng brings you excerpts from the Instagram live interview.
When you graduated from Theatre Arts at UNIJOS, you served at NTA and came on the screen with the series Legacy, how was it?
Legacy was recorded as my first appearance on TV professionally. As a student in UNIJOS, there was a dance programme at Plateau state TV then, it was called Funkie Time in the ‘80s. I used to be a dancer so I got my first gig. I rejected being posted to NTA for my NYSC because I wanted to work in an oil company. But when I got to NTA, I worked with the Executive producer of Legacy.
Getting a role in those days was tough but I was young and I got the role. I remember the first time I appeared on TV in Legacy, it was supposed to be a kissing scene, before; there was no kissing on Nigerian TV. I became a star because of the kissing scene. Legacy didn’t run for long because of some internal challenges so they changed the name.
After Legacy, you came back to direct Ripples in 1998, what happened between those years?
They happened simultaneously during 1986 and 87. I was everywhere trying to see if I could get a role, which was about the same time I was posted to work in the library at NTA as a youth corper. Because I was working in the library, I had a special advantage. In the whole of NTA
there were only few people who had a VCR, apart from the library- the DG of programmes, in the newsroom and editing room. I had one to myself in the library, so if you wanted to play a film, you had to book in the library a week ahead; or you bribe the night guys who worked in the library.
Zeb Ejiro had done the first episode of Ripples and they were looking for how to dub it into a VCR tape and the first place they could do it was the library. As soon as I watched the soap, I fell in love with it. They had wanted to submit the tape to NTA to preview and nobody could take minutes of the meeting.
They brought me in to take minutes and towards the end of the soap there was an argument, some people said they liked the scene, others said they didn’t, so the DG asked for my opinion. I majored in Directing in the university, and when there was a problem with producing Ripples, I stepped in. So while Legacy was on, I was Assistant Director on Ripples.
How did it feel to know that the first soap you directed was accepted by everyone?
I didn’t really know what I was doing. Those years were really crazy, we didn’t repeat episodes. Then it was just once, 8:30 pm, Nigerian time, if you didn’t air your programme by that time, they would not repeat it. It’s not like now where we have transmission schedule.
Your production would have been ready a month or so before going on air. We were working from hand to mouth. Every day we were shooting and partying, we were writing scripts in the beer parlour. We would have written the script a week before then. For five years, we didn’t repeat any episode.
From the time you gave us the first home video in 1993/94, there was no Nollywood, and how did Nollywood come about?
A lot of people we had worked with on Ripples, like Kanyo .O. Kanayo, Bob Manuel so I didn’t know about the first. I was involved in the second production ever in Nollywood, titled The Unforgiving Sin; it was officially the second film that was shot in Nollywood. We got the production but somehow, it didn’t get to the second place. That was the film that discovered
Zack Orji. He was not an actor before but he killed the role.
It was like a four hour film. The marketer said we should cut it into three but the director insisted he wanted it like that. In the midst of this confusion, another film called Taboo started shooting, in the same language. We were already marketing when they started shooting, so we agreed to put it into two parts but Taboo came out before Unforgiving Sin.
How was it like when you finally got to work on your own film, The Fire and the Glory?
It was one of the most difficult films I have had to shoot. Ruke Amata wrote the script and I loved it, and I said ‘let’s do this.’ I was newly married, my wife was very enterprising. The first money I had to shoot Fire and the Glory was N25, 000. We got stuck halfway and we had contacted many big actors in the industry like my elder brother and Alex Osifo, We needed a
new face, it was a Christian movie so we did casting in three churches.
We had done well but we ran out of funds, we were feeding the cast and crew from my kitchen pot and we were housing them. The inconvenience was huge, we didn’t have money. I went to rent a camera with half
money. I got Solo Nwoko as a camera man and we ran into serious problems, there was no money and he said he wasn’t going to continue with the job.
I went to his elder brother to plead; Solo was shooting the biggest movies in Nollywood at that time. Then one day, Alex Osifo came to my house and said, ‘Fred if you don’t pay me my money today, I will beat you up.’ It was about five thousand naira. I begged him but he said he was going to slap me. That morning, we didn’t have milk in the house, I had quarreled with my wife because of milk but we finally sorted it out.
I got a marketer and a huge contract to sign; we were never paid a dime for the contact. We took it to churches and they loved it. The film was about
‘What shall it profit a man, if he gains the world and loses his soul.’
Most of the old Nollywood films were known to correct something in the society, when did we start losing our stories and why?
Nollywood is a phenomenon with constant evolution. We came from a background of theatre which makes you go through the understanding of arts and social responsibility. That art was not for art sake, the art must have a social influence because of its power,which is also engraved in
the cultural identity of Nigeria.
As young kids growing up, we were taught the philosophies of the fathers of theatre. The art had a purpose. Unfortunately, we became too didactic in the expression of social responsibility which helped some of the viewers, it became easily acceptable. But I do not think we have completely lost social responsibility in our stories. It is now less didactic; you have to work it out when you see the film.
An example is a film like Black Panther. If you’re not observant, you will fail to see that Black Panther is actually saying something to Africa, to the Black race. My father said to me when I was a little boy, ‘Though Africa is shaped like a question mark, Africa has got the answer.’ The answer that Black Panther proposed was the vibranium. If you look at the world today, the things that our fore fathers used to cure ailments that we tagged lies are the things that modern-orthodox science discovery are packaging back to us as answers to Africa’s problem.
For example, we have Okro in a vitamin sachet being sold back to us. Okro that we were plucking, including Ugwu. When you pause again to look at Nigeria, you see the wealth of resources, human and minerals, we seem to have too much, you begin to wonder, with the level of intelligence and resources that Nigerians are blessed with, not just Nigerians but Africans. Why are still looking for the solution outside Nigeria? For instance, this pandemic.
The heart of Nollywood continues to be the core professional film makers who go out of their way to make sure it is done professionally, despite the dotting challenges. I have been on a lot of set and I have seen the transition and I see those who refuse to do it the right way and I hide myself. There is a difference between film making and what is film making? Film making is the total process, collaboration. If you get the collaboration right, you get the film right.
Earlier on in Nollywood, you collaborated a lot in terms of script writing, directing and producing, it was healthy. How did we lose that collaborative spirit?
I think it has to do with the Nigerian spirit, the whole confidence thing. The reason it is like that is the reason we are so successful because everybody wants to shine and they forget that in Nigeria, all out best stories have been our second draft.
We have been entertaining the audience but we have not started shooting our final draft. Why do I say this? There is no film now that you watch carefully that you will not find huge areas that need improvement. Because we didn’t take time to bring out the best. What we are enjoying is our second draft, by the time we start shooting our first draft a lot would have to change, I feel we are heading there.
The Amatas are known to have been entertaining us for a long time, how did your father influence you into being a film maker?
I think by our career you can determine how powerful his influence was. You’ll find out that all of us ended up doing part of this in our career. A lot of the screenings of my father’s films were for free viewing, there were always people coming to watch, so you can imagine how proud I was. I wanted to be like my dad.
At age 13, I had started gathering my father’s costume. He was a lecturer so he used to gather students together for plays, it was in his blood. He had lots of costume like costumes for the birth of Jesus Christ. From a young age, I started gathering people to entertain visitors so I took it to school to study Theatre Arts.
It is natural that we are into film making, by the time I was in final year, I had written one script. There were three of us. Chinua Achebe’s son, I.K Achebe and Chukwuemeka Ike’s son, Osita Ike approached me; we were in Jos together. They told me they had a story. This was about the time when Nigeria discovered a new village, Koma village.
So we put Koma people together, we had that script for years; we tried but we didn’t understand what it was. A lady suggested we shoot and put it in a CD but I just laughed at her. About 2 or 3 years later, Living in Bondage was released. My Dad did not just make a film but he projected the film, we had a projector at home.
With a big name as yours, what are you doing to preserve your family name? Are we going to see something from the Amatas?
It has been an idea that has been borne for years now and we are working on how best to put it together. My father reached a lot of people and he had a lot of connection that we could build on but there is a John & Joy foundation, which is run by my elder brother and his wife.
They believe clearly that we are going to make use of those films. If we think about it now, it is even bigger; we have a new generation coming up. My daughter is turning out to be a fantastic writer, actor, model, director; she is a chip of the old block.
We all work together. There is no stress, no competition, we are one family, sometimes we don’t see each other for years, when we do, it’s like we were together yesterday. It is something I cherish about the family. My elder brother, Zack came up with a film production, so a lot is happening in that direction. If not for COVID- 19… I’m still looking at the end of the year.
How have you been able to combine acting and directing?
I never saw myself as a star because I grew up in an environment where I was noticed. I used to play football and I used to be the highest goal scorer. Even in parties, I used to dance the most, so I continued in secondary school. At the time, I was a footballer and actor.
In 2016, you became the President of DGN, how has it been so far?
DGN is a unique gathering of intellectuals. I use unique because every single member of DGN is a head, a leader; so DGN is basically a gathering of leaders in the industry. A director is a leader by nature. I studied directing and was a filmmaker and director right from time. I did a lot to attain that. As a young boy, acting came naturally but I was very interested in directing.
2016 was not my first attempt to become President of DGN. In fact the first president of DGN was my assistant before Nollywood started. The DGN has a unique story; we had what we called the six angry men. It is a story of practitioners who were angry with the way directors were being
treated in the industry and they decided that they were going to form Directors’ Guild. They started talking to all the directors and DGN was born.
I have been a director since the 80’s and this happened in the 90’s, some of them were coming into the industry in 1995/97, I had been there. So, looking at my career; I got to a point where I realised that a lot was missing in industry. The directorial approach that the entire country was observing was coming from one or two directors. One of the most important was Zeb Amaechi, another important person was Tunde Kelani. All the upcoming directors looked up to Tunde Kelani, Tade Ogidan and Amaechi for all the directorial approaches that they learned, even up to the kind of shots they were taking.
We started modifying things later. By the time I was coming in, there were things in the early days that people have forgotten. I realized at a point in my career that as an actor I could only influence the script to a certain
level, I knew that I was well equipped. I had gone to study the art, worked at NTA, with professionals and I saw how they were making film. So I had practical experience, like three years of shooting, writing and editing, A lot was going wrong and I felt being a director, I could influence the script and do a bit more. So I rejected a lot of acting scripts at that early stage, I
concentrated on directing.
As at the time we were growing, there could hardly be a production that we all did not take part in. All the big producers then include, Chico Ejiro, Opa Williams, Zeb Ejiro. You could not produce a film without sending your script round for people to give you a new perspective. We worked like that until the industry started evolving.
Things changed, as at that time, I felt I could give more. I had worked as an assistant to Chico Ejiro. While I was directing Ripples, Chick Ejiro was my PA. By the time Nollywood started Chico Ejiro had been working on Fortunes as a director, from there he got jobs and he invited me to be his assistant and I took the job but the influence on those films, Chico can never forget, films like Silent Night.
What makes a good director?
A director has to be total, he has to be complete, somebody who is able to assimilate a lot of things around him and store them for expression. A director is someone who knows how to put together a creative theme to achieve a particular vision. He must be knowledgeable in the technique, and be able to communicate with the professionals in that technique.