Just when the Gabby-debate seems to have waned, actress Juliet Ibrahim has re-ignited the discussion.

She has asked leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, to invite movie makers for a discussion.

Gabby, had chided Ghanaian movies for not championing any development agenda.

He said after watching 10 Ghanaian movies he was disappointed by the content.

“I took my time to watch randomly ten Ghanaian movies and never felt so disappointed. It brought home to me one major deficiency in our development. The apparent lack of deliberate consciousness on the part of the creative industry in the development conversation,” he wrote on his Facebook timeline.
But Juliet in an interview with Nana Adwoa Sarkordie of Citi TV stated that it was wrong for Gabby to have judged Ghanaian movies with just 10 movies.

“It is unfortunate that he will generalize something like that because we don’t even know the movies he watched.

You can’t just put everyone into the same box because some of us are trying so hard.

The likes of Yvonne Nelson, Kafui Danku and the likes, we are all trying so hard to do movies that put Ghana on the global map,” she said.

Gabby in his post also urged Ghanaian movie makers to learn from Hollywood so they could produce agenda-driven movies.

“The presence of the creative industry appears at best peripheral in Ghana’s development narrative. Our movies, our songs, our arts, by and large, do not impactfully plug into a greater development agenda.

Hollywood, for the best part of a century, has been deliberately used by America to push successfully American cultural “supremacy” agenda; it has been used as an effective instrument of military or economic indoctrination,” he stated.

However, Juliet in the interview described the Hollywood comparison as distasteful.

“If you come making statement like that it makes us all look stupid, excuse me to say.

You can’t compare us to Hollywood, how can you do that?

No one even compares Nollywood to Hollywood, you want us to be like them when we don’t have the support and equipment,” Juliet said.

She therefore called on Gabby to invite the stakeholders and tell them what specifically is wrong with the movie industry, than lump all movie makers together as not impacting society.

“Invite us if possible and tell us that this is what you watched and this is how we can make it better.

We need more corporate bodies to invest in our industry to enable us get it back to where it was or better,” she told Nana Adwoa.”

Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko came under serious attack from some Ghanaian film makers for his opinion on Ghanaian movies.

While some thought he hit the nail right on the head, others have opined that he should channel his energy into influencing the government to fashion out better policies for the creative industry.

Meanwhile, he has remained resolute is his call for actors in the creative industry to realize the concept of moving Ghana Beyond Aid and elevate consciousness in Ghana.

Source: citifmonline.com