Well, this is sad news for the Ghanaian movie indsutry.
It has been reported that Ghana will not be represented at the 2018 Oscars. This is due to the fact that the Ghana Foreign Language Committee could not nominate any of the films submitted. Professor Linus Abraham, the Chairman of the Committee, made this announcement in Accra.
The committee reported that none of the 3 films submitted met the requirements for the Foreign Language Category of the Oscars. That makes them automatically disqualified.
According to Professor Abraham, various anomalies were detected with the submission of all 3 films. He said, “and so the committee had not choice but to disqualify them, to preserve the integrity of the committee and of Ghana’s participation in the Oscars.”
Out of the three films submitted to the Committee’s Secretariat, Professor Abraham noted that one stood out, with the potential of being nominated; but it unfortunately did not meet the Academy’s release requirements. It was stipulated that any film submitted must have first been released in its country of origin, theatrically for seven consecutive days, before it’s VOD release. The film did not meet that requirement.
The submitted films also failed to use the committee’s standards of submission, which required submitting the films via film freeway and also supplying the committee with 20 DVD copies.
The Oscars have a very strict regime for submission of films. The Foreign Language Selection Committee held a workshop in Ghana in June 2017 with resource persons who took filmmakers through the submission process. Unfortunately, there was a dismal representation of active Ghanaian filmmakers at the workshop. This underscored the multiple mistakes made by the filmmakers who submitted their films.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the list of foreign language films selected for next years Oscars. Among them, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Mozambique and South Africa are representing the African continent.
We hope next year will be a better year for Ghanaian filmmakers.