30th January, 2013
Come 16 March, Mrs. Joyce Banda, President of Malawi, will host hundreds of African filmmakers and celebrities that will storm her country for the nominations party of this year’s edition of Africa Movie Academy Awards.
Tony Anih, AMAA’s Director of Administration, said the government and people of Malawi are very excited about the prospect of having movie icons and other players in the motion picture industry in their country.
“AMAA is a continental brand and reward system for motion picture practitioners. While the award ceremony usually takes place in Nigeria, we always move the nominations event from country to country. “It is our way of promoting the Africaness of the award and also celebrating our culture and diversity. We have had the nominations party previously in Burkina Faso, Gambia, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.
“This year we decided to come to Malawi because of the level of popularity and acceptability of African films, especially Nollywood and Gollywood movies, in Malawi,” Anih said.
He added that the ‘Film-in-A-Box’ project of the academy has been endorsed by President Banda and to this end, the Africa Film Academy will commence a training programme from the first week of March, targeted at young Malawians who are interested in making a career in any aspect of film making.
The AMAA nominations weekend will run from 14-17 March, during which the business community, the political class in Malawi, celebrities from across Africa and their counterparts in the southern Africa country will be hosted to a pre-nominations concert, the nominations event proper and post-nomination party.
The AMAA nominations party is an event where films that make it into the 25 categories of the awards are announced ahead of the main award ceremony billed for April.