After so many years spent calling the shots on film sets and leaving a brilliant legacy of creativity on the silver screen for posterity, it is finally a wrap up for Setheli Ashong-Katai.
The writer, producer and film director, who died on March 27; was buried at the Osu Cemetery on Saturday, May 2, after burial service at the Etherean Mission at Sakaman in Accra.
The late Ashong-Katai was the General Secretary of the Ghana Academy of Film and Television Arts (GAFTA) and he passed away at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital after a short illness. He was 61.
Known to' his friends and colleagues in the film industry by several nicknames including Mahatma, San Juan, Mbra, Obispo and Shevinski, Ashong-Katai was a fellow of the Ghana Association of Writers (GAW), the Executive Director of Regency Multimedia Company Limited and also the Executive Secretary of the Directors Guild of Ghana.
An alumnus of the National Film and Television Institute, (NAFTI), Ashong-Katai directed many feature films, documentaries and adverts. He produced both in Ghana and abroad. His feature films included Baby Thief, Cry For Love, See You Amsterdam, For Better For Worse, Triple Echo and Danny.
His documentaries included Exodus, Behind the Prison Walls and Ghanaian Children In Cuba.
He was working on the script of a feature, Enslaved, which was going to be co-produced internationally. He appeared in several roles, both on stage and in film. His latest appearance was in the German-Ghanaian co-production No Time To Die...
A prolific poet as well, he was published in several anthologies. His collections of poetry included The Essential Settheli and House of Prophesy.
Ashong-Katai headed the Writing and Directing Department of the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) from 1991 to 1996. He was also the Head of Production at the Gama Film Company from 1997 to 2000.
He was a resource person at workshops on Video Feature Production: Finance and Marketing organised by the Berlin Film School in Cameroun and Kenya. He also lectured in Screenplay Writing and Film Directing at NAFTI from 2004 to 2006.
As a film director, Ashong-Katai was a highly imaginative practitioner often not ready to take any excuses from a cameraman for not being able to give him a specific shot he had asked for. He read a lot about cinema and was very familiar with the works of directors he liked such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola.
Editors who worked with him often had to learn to be very patient beings because a new idea could suddenly grip him and he would ask for extensive changes to scenes which had been already finished and he had approved. The fact was, he always brought improvements to those finished bits.
There was always a sort of mischievous childlike smile that played on his face whenever he knew things were working well in the editing room. He believed that no matter the content of a shot and how well it was composed, it would not contribute much to the overall effect of the end product if it was not fitted at the most appropriate place in the film.
One of the legacies he has definitely left behind was his zeal to impact people with his passion for telling stories on the screen. He would be dearly missed.
Written by Nii Laryea Korley
Source: Daily Graphic
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