Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen
Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen (born 20 June, 1971) is a Nigerian film director and film producer. Popularly known as De' Guvnor of Nollywood. He is an Edo-born filmmaker who has produced over five hundred films and counting. He is well known for his 2014 epic historical film, Invasion 1897.
Quotes
[edit]- My new movie, ATM, is a comedy. As you know, there is wild reaction from the cinema views. It’s a comedy just for the season. Simple language that’s simply put. It tells a story of a young Nigerian who thinks the only way he could survive was to look for a foreign wife, which he eventually got and brought to Nigeria, hoping that his life was going to change, but on the arrival of the lady he met the unbelievable and he couldn’t wake up from the reality of what met him.
- She is a British woman called Claire, popularly known on social media as Oyinbo Princess. Others are Alex Ukubo, Francis Odega, Yvonne Jegede, who are seasoned artistes that I carefully selected to interpret the movie, and it’s been quite good.
- I was on this project for a year. It was first conceived when I ran into the lady on social media and was quite impressed about what I saw. The name ATM was derived from the film and it means Authentic Tentative Marriage. Also, massive promotion of the movie has been on since it opened at the cinema recently after a big premiere.
- As a film maker I will keep making films. I am not willing to stop at all and we are concentrating on what we have going on right now, which is the ATM movie.
- I have done a lot of movies. I made the popular Isakaba, Games Women Play, Games Men Play, Behind Closed Doors, Adesuwa, and the biggest recently is Invasion 1897. It’s quite a number, as I have made well over 100 to 200 Nollywood movies.
- Right now, our movies are in the cinema and showing side by side with foreign movies, though there is this apartheid by Nigerians towards our movies, which is very pathetic. And that’s the essence of this movie I made, ATM. It’s about how we Nigerians don’t believe in our own and, it’s from the mouth of the foreigner that the greatness of Nigeria is revealed. Do you even know that most people cannot recite a line of these foreign movies they go to watch, when the films end. They just want to follow follow. They leave our own where they can get great messages and it’s a terrible attitude by all, as we all prefer foreign movies, but we now found a girl who promotes our own. I believe we have a collective responsibility to do this well. As regards this movie, a great message is passed behind the comedy that cracks people up. We talk about globalisation but we are not contributing anything to the globe. We are always taking and now we find a British-born lady, who learnt how to speak pidgin by watching Nigerian films, coming here to feature in a film and getting an appearance on BBC, because of this work, and all major newspapers in the UK has featured her from what we don’t value and now she has become famous. At the premiere, the British embassy reps came to celebrate her. She has been celebrated at home from our creation. So, that goes to tell a lot of message that the Nigerian government has a lot to do, after chasing corruption. Somehow, the music industry has been able to grow and we hope we will draw respect and appreciation to contents of Nigerians that are good enough; but the ones that have succeeded should be appreciated and encouraged.
