Dr Chidia Maduekwe, Managing Director, Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) has said that the corporation is set to take its ‘Mobile Training Platform’ programme to rural communities to discover and develop budding talents in filmmaking across Nigeria.

He stated this on Friday during an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of a training workshop for youths and upcoming creative artistes on film, video production and photography in Abuja.

The training, tagged, “Special Cinematography Training for Youths and Emerging Talents” is holding from Nov. 14 to 16, with 130 youths drawn from different parts of the country as participants.

According Maduekwe, the Mobile Training Platform is a flagship initiative designed to complement the capacity building programme of the NFC for emerging talents in the motion picture industry across the six geo-political zones.

He explained that as the Nigerian movie industry expands, there was need to equip upcoming industry players with essential professional know-how and the basic entrepreneurial skills to grow as filmmakers, to create jobs.

“The Mobile Training Platform is an initiative (MTP) by the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) to domesticate training all over the 774 Local Government Areas of Nigeria.

“With this, we will want to take capacity building on the requisite knowledge for film production to grassroots because it is not everyone that can come to Jos or Lagos, where we have our training centres.

“Nigeria has budding talents in all the local governments and they are waiting to be discovered, so this Mobile Training Platform is going to be a vehicle that will be going to remote areas of the country.

“It is like a mobile clinic where the doctors go looking for the sick, and not the other way round.

“We are looking for the talents on the streets and communities where they are domiciled by giving them the required exposure.

“Young talents will be discovered, given opportunity to acquire skills, practice what they have learnt in order to have a sense of fulfillment as stakeholders in motion picture production,” he said.

Maduekwe explained that the mobile training initiative, which will be rolled out in the first quarter of 2020, will have upcoming artistes and passionate youths trained in the art of film making.

He added that selected participants will also be given necessary support to produce films that tell stories of their communities to the rest of the world.

He, however, appealed for adequate and timely release of funds to implement the project as planned by the corporation.

“There will be screening sessions and you can imagine the excitement of villagers gathering in an evening to watch films produced by their sons and daughters.

“Nigeria is the next frontier for storytelling, as we have so many stories, because when we talk about strength in diversity, it manifests in our storytelling.”

“Our decision to sustain the training of upcoming filmmakers is to ensure that Nigeria, considered as the world’s largest content film producer, does not suffer from skills gap crisis,” he said.

NAN reports that seasoned industry players, as well as scholars from the academia were present as resource persons and facilitators at the three-day workshop for the upcoming filmmakers. (NAN)