James Farrell, Prime Video’s International Head of Local Originals has disclosed that Amazon Studios is open to great partnership with Nigeria creatives to deepen and develop quality movies for international audiences leveraging on the over 200 million people on the Amazon platform across 240 countries.
“Our job is to help people make bigger and better stories than they ever did before; we can do that – I think we’ve been really successful,” Farrell said.
He spoke at the 10th anniversary of Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF), saying that what Amazon Studios is trying to do is to partner with local creatives.
According to him, Amazon Studios have been able to identify some areas of partnership that can help deepen the quality of storytelling and movie production in collaboration with Nigerian film makers, however, the studio is interested in partnership that will help develop the local storytelling/movie ecosystem in Nigeria.
“Right now it’s all about finding good partners here. Working with my team and I; we have a lot of people here talking to people on how we can partner with people. It’s not about how do we set up and do it ourselves – the whole thing is about partnership: beginning to end,” Farrell said.
Ukonwa Kuzi-Orizu Ojo, the chief marketing officer for Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said Amazon is looking at taking Nigeria story/movie to reach a greater spectrum based on its scale of content. According to her, Amazon Studios believes that a lot of people on its platform are going to love Nigerian content.
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She posits that movie lovers are more interested in great stories and do not really care where they come from. “They just want to know it’s a really great story, well written story: a really great performance and acting and it is done in such a compelling way that it elicits emotional reaction from them. Whether it makes them laugh or cry at the edge of their seat and they can’t wait to see what comes next,” Ojo said.
According to her, the Amazon team believes Nigeria has the right creativity, hence, the interest for Prime Video and Amazon Studios is how to take Nigeria’s version of storytelling, world perspective and expose them to people who just love stories all over the world.
“As a Nigerian, I personally love it; we are a really great story telling people. And so, it’s about how do we take what is so great about Nigeria culture to: 1, create it for Nigerians; 2, exposing it to all the people who love film; shows,” said Ojo, stating that, “we want to take Nigeria to the world”.
Chioma Ude, founder, AFRIFF, the 10th anniversary of the show further identifies AFRIFF’s shared values with a global giant such as Prime Video. Accordingly, she states that AFRIFF takes pride in celebrating some of the best films in Africa in the Feature, Documentary and Short category through careful selection by its Creative Director and International Jury.
