Let's Not lose Our Identity—Ace Actor David Dontoh

Celebrated Ace Ghanaian Actor, David Dontoh is urging management of the newly opened Snap Cinema to focus on showing local movies that instil rich cultural values in the upcoming young ones.

He said Ghanaians are people of a unique identity which must be protected and promoted with our movies.

According to him, although foreign movies will be showed at the Snap Cinema, the focus is on the local contents.

“You are someone with a particular personality and identity that belongs to a certain entity and you should not lose that identity. Everything about you culturally must always reflect that identity. We are not an island, all the movies in the world, we will show them but the focus must be on Ghanaian films. It will raise the level for even producers to realize that if they don’t meet the right requirements, their movies will not be shown at the Accra City Hall,” he stated.

The Ace Actor added that management of the Snap Cinema can generate high patronage only if rich local contents and interesting events are organised.

“This industry depends on human traffic and about 5 million people live in Accra. How do we attract them? You must put up facilities, project or events or activities that create this human traffic and tap into them and get their monies but our theatre is now a white elephant. One pays GHc14000 to use the facility, who has the money in this economy? How can I even get my money back? The Accra City Mall must take note,” he emphasised.

Ace Actor David Dontoh noted since arts is an important part of the Ghanaian culture, certain things can’t be done in isolation of certain values.

“The arts are the spearheads of the culture. Certain things can’t be done at its natural state that is why the arts are there. The Asantehene can’t come and sit here for people to stare at him but I can put him on stage as theatre and that is how it should be so our culture will rub shoulder around the world,” the ace actor stressed.

He admonishes management to make good use of iconic entertainment facilities such as cinema theatre, galleries and museums to generate more revenue.