Ghana's afro-gypsy mulls over a third Pidgin-English musical

By -
Ghanaian-Romanian musician and film producer Emmanuel Owusu-Bonsu aka Wanlov the Kubolor is considering making a third instalment to his Ghanaian Pidgin-English musical 'Coz Ov Moni'.

'Coz Ov Moni I' and 'Coz ov Moni II (FOKN Revenge)' chart the adventures of two friends who run into humorous challenges while highlighting the ordinary struggles of young Ghanaians in modern Ghana.
Wanlov Kubolor wrote 'something sexy' on my
'Coz ov Moni II' DVD © MisBeee Writes
 Co-producers Mensah Ansah and Kubolor star in the films and are real-life friends. They started on their creative path during their school days when they used to run away from class to rap together. The pair wanted to create a concert album where everything takes place in one day in the life of two friends in Accra, Kubolor told MisBeee during a meeting hosted by BloggingGhana. While writing, the songs turned into movie scenes, spawning what Kubolor calls the first Ghanaian English-Pidgin musicals in the world.

Moni talks
A third film is a possibility, although Kubolor has ruled out self-funding the production. "We used our own money to make both films and we are thinking we need to pre-finance the third one – we can’t use out money again,” he said during the BloggingGhana meeting hosted in Osu, Accra. BloggingGhana is a Ghana-based organisation for bloggers and social media enthusiasts.

 Kubolor is all too aware of how challenging it is for Ghanaian filmmakers to source the required investment to make films. 'Coz Ov Moni I and Coz ov Moni II (FOKN Revenge) have been one of only a number of films from Ghana to be showcased at film festivals across the globe, including at the UK's annual Film Africa festival. At this year's event (28 October - 6 November) only three films from over 50 films came from Ghana.


Ghanaian films

These films were 'Nakom', 'Children of the Mountain' and 'A United Kingdom'. Last year only one Ghanaian film featured: 'The Cursed Ones' and since the Film Africa festival started five years ago, the highest number of Ghanaian films was five in 2012. 'Coz ov Moni I' was one of those films.
"To make films that can make it to such festivals you need to have public funding, commercial funding, or it has to be from your own private pocket money,” said Kubolor. “We don’t have the funds for those kinds of experimental acts. So Shirley Frimpong Manso’s films would not be able to make it because it is very commercial, the story lines have been seen before. And the local films are of too poor a quality to make it there.”
No dates have been set for the third film's release. But if a fresh instalment comes off, Kubolor is keen to revisit two popular mythical cultural characters that featured in the second film.

Dracula and Ananse

"We did the first one in Ghana – Accra,” said Kubolor. “In the second, we expanded the story and shot two scenes in Romania, Transylvania because we wanted to put together two mythological characters - Dracula and Kwaku Ananse – West Africa’s folkloric Spiderman. We made these two characters meet in a dream sequence and I think we will bring them back in the third one,” he said.

Kubolor is now toying between shooting the film in Lagos in Nigeria and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil - two cities he describes as 'dangerous'. But which is more dangerous to a 'newcomer' such as the characters in his film, he muses? .....I guess we will just have to wait and see....

Have you watched 'Coz ov Moni? What do you think is holding back more aspiring Ghanaian filmmakers from reaching an international audience?

For more blogs like this, visit:

All comments are welcome on this page. If you are having trouble posting on the Google+ page, please share your views via Facebook here or tweet @MisBeee

Please be aware that you may not reproduce, republish, modify or commercially exploit this content without our prior written consent. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's your favourite Adinkra symbol?

By -
Image
Screenshot of hand-painted Adinkra symbols from charity Mmofra_Ghana.  I put this question to MisBeee readers after blogging recently about the origins of Adinkra in the post: 'Adinkra - more than just a pretty face'. A dinkra is a series of ideographic symbols from Ghana and the Ivory Coast depicting age-old proverbs that incorporate aspects of Asante culture, flora and fauna. These symbols are strongly linked to religion, language, and geometry but in modern times are used widely in and outside Ghana for their aesthetic appeal. The list includes jewellery, pottery, clothing and architecture.  Below is a snapshot of some of the responses I received, feel free to add your own. All images below come from adinkra.org.  Kwame from Birmingham My favourite symbol is Gye Nyame because everything starts with God, and ends with God. God creates, sustains and destroys and generates again. It is self-germinating. The symbol of Gye Nyame looks like a circle when connected
Read more

Ghanaian sitcom star leaves lasting legacy in Kwahu

By -
Image
The late Gyearbuor Asante, who famously played long-term mature student Matthew in hit British sitcom Desmond’s , was also a royal. Gyearbuor Asante: Image credit Carole Latimer He came from Tafo, Kwahu, in Ghana's Eastern Region but rather than follow tradition and become a chief, the young thespian got himself circumcised instead. The reason, according to details from charity the Friends of Tafo (Kwahu), was to rule himself out of enstoolment. He then left Ghana in the late 1960s to become an actor and the rest, as they say, is history. But life has a funny way of panning out and although Gyearbuor never became a chief, his close friend Humphrey Barclay, who incidentally was the executive producer of Desmond's , did!  "I met Gyearbuor (or Christopher as he was known in UK then) in 1972, when he was doing such shows as Crown Court and so on," he told MisBeee. "I visited Ghana many times as his guest and when he died in 2000 at the age of 58 o
Read more

Vlog: British-Nigerian author's books set for February 2018 revamp

By -
Image
The son of the late British-Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta is leading a project to digitise and re-launch all her works. By February 2018, her most well-known novels: 'In the Ditch’, ‘The Bride Price’ and ‘The Slave' will be re-launched with more titles set to follow, Onwordi told MisBeee at the sidelines of literary festival Africa Writes 2017 earlier this month. The plan to digitise and republish Buchi's entire collection of over 20 books – complete with new book covers - emerged after the Ibusa-born London-based author passed away in January this year. Sylvester Onwordi - son of Buchi Emecheta ©  MisBeee Writes "..one of the consequences was a realisation that lots of people wanted to read her books but unfortunately some of her books have gone out of print,” said Sylvester. “And so the idea came to me, and the other people I have been collaborating with, that we should get together and form a publishing company to re-launch some of those editions.
Read more

Insane in the membrane: Sticking two fingers up to the virginity test

By -
Image
Colonisation from within of the female form © MisBeee Writes There has been a slew of media stories since the start of the year fixated on the supposed potency of the female form and the responsibility women have with making their bodies less desirable to the opposite sex. The idea that a 16-year old girl groomed her married 47-year-old religious education teacher into having an affair, according to UK judge Joanna Greenberg QC , was one that stuck in my mind. It got me recalling the experience of a friend of mine whose mother directed her to wearing a dressing gown over her night dress whenever she ventured out of her room. The extra layer was supposed to act as deterrent against the licentious attacks she suffered most nights at the hands of her stepfather. It didn’t. More recently, fresh efforts by an MP in the Indonesian district of Jember to introduce the controversial 'two-finger' or virginity test to schoolgirls before they can graduate have been denoun
Read more

Testing boundaries: an interview with Gold Coast film co-producer Kwame Boadi

By -
Image
In October, I had the opportunity to speak with Ghanaian TV director Kwame Boadi of inGenius Africa about his move into feature film production. Producers Michael Haslund and Kwame Boadi © Michael Haslund Many of you know may know him for such TV series as Sunshine Avenue, Abiba , and Sun City . Well, he has recently co-produced an arthouse film set in Ghana called Gold Coast that looks at Denmark’s presence in Ghana during the 1830s. The 2015 arthouse film was written and direction by Daniel Dencik and is a depiction of 19th century life three years after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was officially but not totally banned in 1833. Slavery was finally abolished in Danish colonies in 1848, according to details from the BBC. The film arrived in London on 11 October and was screened at local cinemas for a week. Some of you will have read my assessment of the film in my previous blog ‘ Gold Coast: A lucid look at Denmark’s colonial past ’.  I caught up with Kwame to
Read more