Chairperson of the National Films Authority and Actor, David Dontoh, has urged filmmakers and creative professionals to express their identity and experiences in their work.
According to him, films serve as the best platforms for Ghanaians to showcase to the rest of the world their history, tell current stories and project into its future with magnitude.
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on a special edition of e.tv Ghana’s ‘Fact Sheet’ show under the #MadeInGhanaMonthOnEtv initiative on the topic; “Selling Ghana’s Culture Through Arts and Culture”, David Dontoh described film as “a distillation of our cultural heritage and interpreted in the film medium using filmic language.”
“So every aspect of our lives and history, contemporary life and what happened in before and even what we project into the future to be like are all captured and translated into film. There are so many parameters we use in telling a story. If you capture any material in films, you’re actually sharing your cultural heritage and experience with the outside world. That is exactly what every film project is supposed to be doing,” he added.
David Dontoh further argued that the best part of filming is to give one’s work an identity, give the audience a hindsight of their background and a walk down through one’s personal experiences.
“You’re coming from a background and people must be able to tell which background you’re and identify you against that. So that you have to own an identity and don’t get lost. Anyone who watches it can tell like watching an Indian film. No one will tell you that’s a Hindi movie because the costume, the music language and everything shows,” he said
He also charged film-makers and scriptwriters to evolve with the craft and be more creative and innovative to produce quality works.
“Of course we have abstracts, pure acts and things like that. We also have documentary films that depict naturally what is there and the reality. But, film is fiction. We moved from the known to the unknown. The known is where you come from, your background, history, language and everything about you is what you know and that’s the basis for creating fiction. All these I think that film makers put together to tell the experience of their people.”