Environment
“Unleash Your Creativity”, a filmmaking capacity building reality TV show for the youth, is set to be presented as part of programmes for the 2022 edition of the annual Calabar Carnival.
Mr Emmanuel Eyaba, Project Director of 2ET Media Network, organisers of the show, disclosed this at a news conference on Thursday, in Abuja.
Eyaba said that this year’s edition of the reality show, with the theme, “Youth Participation in Governance and Development”, was scheduled to hold from Dec. 1 to Dec. 14.
He said that the annual TV show, which had hitherto been held in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), would now be presented in collaboration with the Cross River Ministry of Culture and Tourism, as part of activities for the Calabar Carnival.
He explained that the decision was to ensure involvement of more tourists, especially youths, as the Calabar carnival was reputed to be a hub of creativity and entertainment.
“In line with our vision, I want to create a platform, where young African filmmakers can interface with already established filmmakers to be trained and mentored into becoming professional filmmakers.
“Unleash your creativity”, also called UUC, is fashioned to capture, nurture, equip and empower industrious and creative African youths, thereby, cutting down drastically the rising unemployment rate in Nigeria and Africa at large.
“The show uniquely incorporates Youth Empowerment, Tourism Development, and Cultural Orientation through Filmmaking.
“For 14 days, starting from Dec. 1, young filmmakers with varied interests in filmmaking will be camped, trained, mentored, and challenged with activities and filmmaking related tasks.
“This will include special sessions and mentorship from Nigerian film industry heavy-weights of the directors and actors guild extractions of Nollywood,” Eyaba said.
He added that participating filmmakers would be grouped into three, with each team having the challenge of making a film project around balloted themes fashioned around pressing social development change and communication.
The project director noted that some of the movies produced from past editions had been selected and screened in several film festivals in Nigeria and abroad.
According to him, the show will be aired on selected terrestrial and satellite TV stations across the country, including raw impact Africa TV on YouTube.
Eyaba, therefore, urged the youth with interest in pursuing careers in the film industry to register for the event, as it was meant to be a springboard for budding talents.
“Participation is through online registration at www.rawimpactafricatv.com and there will be online auditions.
“Selected participants will be contacted for the grand finale to be held at the main bowl of the Cultural Centre, Calabar.
“A major bank, Sterling Bank, has promised to sponsor a movie project by the winning team, and other producers and directors will be engaging winning actors and crew members after their programme,” he said.
Earlier, in her goodwill message, the Ambassador of Cuba to Nigeria, Clara Polido, commended the organisers of Unleash Your Creativity and pledged her support and collaboration for the initiative.
She noted that Cuba had deep roots in African culture, especially in Nigeria, which had contributed immensely to the growth of Cuba culture in Africa.
Mr John Oba, the representative of Nigeria in the African Union – Economic Social and Cultural Council (AU- ECOSSCC), said that culture had been part of the nation’s identity from time immemorial.
“Culture is our identity and we do not want to leave any vacuum for the next generation, so that our culture will not go into extinction.”
“We want to ensure that those script writers inject more of our culture into our movies, thereby promoting our culture and identity,” he said. (NAN)
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Tags: AU- ECOSSCC Clara Polido Emmanuel Eyaba John Oba Sterling Bank Unleash Your Creativity UUC
