AMAA 2016 Holds June 11 Jury announces nominees

Mary Ekah
Mr. Shaibu Husseini, President of the Jury of the African Movie Academy Awards, the annual pan-African reward system for motion picture practitioners, recently announced nominees in 28 categories.

Husseini who also doubles as the Chairman of the College of Screeners said during a media event in Lagos, that AMAA is a jury-based award and not a voting awards where nominees embark on voting campaigns to win any of the categories.

According to Husseini, the Jury announced nominees into 26 categories while the Board of Jurors is yet to conclude on the remaining two categories. “The remaining categories are special Jury awards and before the awards ceremony we would have decided on the nominees and eventual winners and by that time we would have the full Jury members on ground.”

The Board of Jurors of AMAA which has members which include academics, film makers, critics and film festival curators from Nigeria, Germany, United States, Zimbabwe, Jamaica and Burkina Faso will decide on which film and individual talents that will emerge eventual winners at a glamorous awards night which will take place on Saturday June 11, 2016, at the Garden City, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
The Jury President also revealed that the quality of movies that came into the competition have improved greatly adding that more young people across the continent are coming into the industry as film makers with over 150 short film entries.

“Our film makers only need to pay attention to details especially in the technical areas. We have the stories already especially filmmakers producing films in African languages. Truth is we can only compete at the Oscars with our indigenous language films and to do this we must improve on our photography, sound, editing and other technical areas. Our people need to improve on sub-titling of our films. What we do as sub-titling are jokes and there is no way our films can travel within the international film festival circuits when the people can’t make sense of our films.”

Films from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Burkina Faso are in hot chase for the AMAA glory in the acting departments and Best Director’s Category with such films as Fifty, Dry, The Cursed One, Eye of the Storm, Ayanda, La Pagne, Tell me Sweet Something and Behind Closed Doors. “We are very happy about the quality of works that came into the competition this year and it gladdens our heart that every year the objectives of the awards are being achieved with film makers in Africa and beyond upping their game”, Husseini noted.