First Feature Project, a N1 billion investment project for training unknown and emerging directors, has witnessed the release of its second feature film ‘Love and Life’ directed by one of their emerging talents Reuben Reng.
First Feature Project hosted Nollywood practitioners, filmmakers, film enthusiasts and members of the press to a private viewing of “Love and Life” at EbonyLife Cinemas, VI, Lagos on 13th December 2023. The movie follows three friends Ivy (Michelle Dede), Abike (Rita Dominic), and Osas (Nse Ikpe-Etim) who journeys through the uncertainties of romance, loss, and marital troubles. Unfazed by the number of veterans in the cast including Chidi Mokeme, and a host of others, Reng managed to pull a romantic drama classic leaving the audience in rounds of applause after the viewing.
The project, led by filmmakers Steve Gukas and Dotun Olakunri, is dedicated to nurturing and supporting a new generation of film directors in Nigeria. It offers training and funding for the debut feature films by these emerging talents in the Nigerian film industry. Olakunri expressed his delight for Reng being one of the students under the First Feature project and seeing his work come to life in cinemas after the short release of the ‘Cake’ a film by another director released last year.
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Steve Gukas told BusinessDay that the project so far has seen an investment of nearly N1 billion from investors and trusting partners who they have pulled together to make the project a reality. He said “we’ve made five out of 12 films from the project. The initial investment, the first feature scheme, was aimed at discovering, nurturing and promoting feature film directors. It was conceived for about three years and in that time the initial seed funding for developing the whole process, bringing in the talents, facilitators, faculty and all of that was born between Michelangelo and Native works.”
In recent years, the Nollywood industry has cultivated a culture of nurturing young talent for acting, scriptwriting and directing all to enhance the creative sector, aiming to attract funding from both local and international investors for the purpose of fostering a more robust infrastructure.
“I expect that this model will be followed by others who would see it as something worth doing from an economic point of view.” Gukas said.
Gukas called on cinemas and exhibitors to do a lot more in terms of support and audience development in order to win back the confidence of filmmakers in the era of streaming services who are in the Nigerian market and meeting local filmmakers to make original contents and licensing films to be viewed exclusively on their platforms.
“Just like many things with Nigeria, they’re doing rent collecting, they’re waiting for people to walk in through the door. They have to come up with schemes to pull people into the doors so that films have a better chance of success. That’s the only thing that will bring people back to the cinema, if not more seriously filmmakers will be making their films and because they’re looking at the numbers and seeing the struggle going to the cinemas, they will be much more comfortable just going straight to streamers,” Gukas said.
However Gukas sees the exhibitors and the distributors making a gradual change in the business sector which will bring a hybrid situation where people will have both revenue windows of releasing their films in the cinemas and making good revenue before going to the streamers.
