Project Ghana’s values in local movies – ‘Inspector Bediako’ to scriptwriters

Film or movie making remains one of means of portraying  the daily life of a people;  how they work, what they do for fun, the dressing pattern, how families are formed, among others.

With this in mind, Veteran actor, Oscar Provencial, popularly known as Inspector Bediako believes the Ghanaian movie industry and scriptwriters in particular need to improve on their story lines to properly represent the Ghanaian people and their culture.

According to him, a lot of scriptwriters have fed into the ‘wicked black man’ narrative championed by the western media for so long, portraying Ghanaians in movies as witches, murderers and adulterers.

“It is about time the real Ghanaian culture is portrayed in our films” he said.

The Actor who took a long break from the screen said, he is hoping to get back onto the screen but this time in a more challenging and quality storyline.

“Where I am in this space and time of my life, it’s not everything that goes so we will be selective about what we do” he stressed.

In an interview with The Ghana Report, Mr. Provencial said, the creative arts sector has a huge role to play in national development and therefore  messages channeled through Ghanaian  movies must represent the real picture on the ground.

“It is through the movie industry that we can be able to project our values, our culture and be able to affect the attitude, the mindset of our people and that is what other countries have done effectively,

“The Nigerian perception that they are 419 came through their movies and so if we do not change the narrative of ourselves let alone what the Western World has put out about Africans, if we don’t use this format to change it then we are doomed” he noted.

The Actor said the move to change the narrative must be a conscious effort by Scriptwriters, Producers, Directors, Actors and all other stakeholders in the movie industry.

“We must uplift our people, let them be proud of themselves, their skin color, know that the white man is not some kind of God or magician or whatever, we must begin to believe in ourselves and film is one of the medium to do so” he said.

Oscar Provencial won the best Actor in Comedy (Bigman Wahala) at the just ended Golden Movie Awards Africa.