Critical Review Of Ghana Movie Awards 2013

The 4th edition of the Ghana Movie Awards (GMA) finally took place on 30th of December 2013 at the Accra International Conference Centre. A host of Ghanaian movie actors and actresses graced the occasion, from both the local language and the 'abrofosem' movie circles.

Nominations for the various categories were made available about a month ago. The nomination list this time did not separate movies made in local from the English ones. In the previous GMAs , that was the trend, this time around, they were all put together in the same soup.

Odd Thoughts

Apart from Kwadwo Nkansah (Lil Win), seemed no local movie person won anything. Well, Kumawood has already awarded those in the local movie a few days ago in the Akoben Awards so no sweat.

I don't know if it's the style or rule of the organisers of the GMAs to always nominate and award a movie which has not been seen by the public. A movie to be premiered on 1st January 2014 gets a nomination about a month before it becomes public viewing, and subsequently gets awards for various categories.

This practice at the GMA always baffles me since other movie awards like the Oscar Awards, which most people in the movie industry around the world wouldn't deny they wish to have in their statuette cabinet, have rules that the movie should have been shown in cinema over a period of time. Well, that's Oscar Award rules, they want people to see a movie before it gets nominated and awarded.

Ours is GMA rules, you get nominated and awarded before the movie is even shown to the public to know why they were even applauding when the movie won an award

As usual the audience to the show were not lively and always had to be told to clap for performances. Well, maybe it's because the performance were not that interesting to so it did not trigger the

audience to spontaneously put their hands together for them.

Did anyone see Mafikizolo of Khona fame perform? Or I missed it. Hope it wasn't a ploy to get people to buy tickets

The winners on the night were the same old familiar faces, no surprises. I guess the same people are doing the movies over and over again, get nominated over and over again, and win over and over again.

A comedian, who came on stage, virtually said dry jokes. I always wonder why stand up comedians always tell the audience to clap for themselves. Is it that when they realised their jokes are not funny

and the people are just watching them without laughing, they tell them to clap for themselves to lighten up the auditorium for them to have a mental satisfaction that the clapping is for their performance. That's some nice trick; I guess its stand up comedy lesson 101.

When the nomination list came out, there was a news report of a producer/writer/writer lambasting the list, but was very interesting to watching her receiving more than one award on the night with all

smiles(am sure she wanted to cry). I thought she would not have even attended the event after what she was reported to have said. May be the organisers sang the old school song “Cool it Now” to her

It seemed those called out to read out nomination list were reading from a smart phone from one of the event sponsors. Some had difficulty reading from that small piece of electronic device due to all that lighting around the stage. Next time, they should provide them with at least a 7” tablet pc to make the reading easier . As for the antics of those reading the nominations and award winners on stage, the least said about them, the better.

The large screen played a video of a nomination list for an award for males, only for the announcer to call out a female winner, the audience as usual went “ooooooo”. Event director should up his game

because it was awkward watching the announcer try to defend herself . It made me remember the washing powder TV advert of the little boy saying “it's not my fault”

Least I forget, whose idea was to bring this Asian guy , I think from Korea, who started “performing” when people were heading for the exit? I guess it was to make people laugh on hearing him say some Twi phrases talking about women's back side.

To me, the phrase were somehow derogatory to women, didn't find it funny. Most people at the auditorium might not have heard him because as soon as the MCs for the night thanked people for coming to show, they started walking out only for the MC say they shouldn't go and that there was a last performance. It was too late.

In all, I will give the Ghana Movie Awards 2013 a mark of 55% . This is the 4th event, I hope the 5th Anniversary will see improvement and make it more interesting. I am tempted to say they are still learning and it will be harsh to compare them to other movie awards which have even crossed their 50th event.

God grant us life to see the next one in 2014.