Selassie Ibrahim is a veteran filmmaker
Piracy remains a concern for the Ghanaian movie industry, and veteran filmmaker Selassie Ibrahim has disclosed that she is dealing with five Ghanaian television stations who allegedly pirated her movie, saying she intends to use them as scapegoats.
In an interview on Joy Prime TV, Selassie Ibrahim said that while she mostly criticises TV channels for “killing” the movie industry, filmmakers themselves must also keep up with the times, noting that YouTube cannot be the only platform for distributing films.
According to her, when a movie is officially released, Ghanaians rarely make the effort to support it. Instead, once it is uploaded to YouTube, some TV stations pirate it within minutes.
Selassie Ibrahim blames TV channels for Ghana movie industry’s struggles
She said she is dealing with five TV stations in Ghana that immediately copy her content after she uploads it, adding that she intends to make examples out of them.
“Ghanaians will not watch what you produce, yet they will take your content you put on YouTube within two minutes. I have five of them I’m dealing with. Five channels in Ghana here. In Ghana. They’ve taken your content. The moment I load, within five minutes, they grab it. I say I will set a… you watch. They’ve been calling left and right,” she said.
Selassie Ibrahim added that these individuals later go around claiming the movie industry is dead, even though they are the ones “literally killing” it.
She explained that many TV stations prefer buying years-old movies from other countries and dubbing them in Twi, as though Ghanaian producers are incapable of creating quality content themselves.
“But you don’t do that. And then at the end of the day, you go around saying Ghana film is dead. Are you not the ones killing it? And you will not watch Ghana content. You, these TV stations, you go and pack old movies from all sorts of places and then dub it in Twi, whatever. Can we not produce that here? We can equally do that,” she noted.
When asked whether TV stations approach Ghanaian producers for content, she said they usually do not because they have become accustomed to buying cheap foreign movies, mostly from Spain and Nigeria, content that has long made its money already.
“They will not approach you because they are used to buying cheap content from Spain, from Nigeria, content that have made their monies already. Five years, 10 years content,” she said.
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