Ooni of Ife set to host actors at event

The 4-day film screening event to be hosted by Ooni of Ife, HRH Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, will take place at the cradle of the Yoruba race and the citadel of cultural tourism in South Western Nigeria, Ile Ife, Osun State.

Ile Ife is the ancestral home of the progenitor of the Yoruba people, Oduduwa and the source of Yoruba civilization.

The Yoruba Film Festival (YFF), according to the founder and initiator, Segun Omoworare is created to screen films with Yoruba theme.

The festival, according to the organisers would exhibit industry interactions, features films, shorts, documentaries, conversations and awards in order to explore the Yoruba identity, the contemporary Yoruba experience in Nigeria and Africa and the richness of Yoruba culture in a diverse modern world.

The mission of the Yoruba Film Festival (YFF) is to offer a platform to promote outstanding films and videos that communicate positive, appropriate and accurate images of Yoruba people; expose the richness of the Yoruba historical and cultural heritage as preserved in films; celebrate and appreciate the creativity, imagination and hardwork of the Yoruba filmmakers; encourage filmmakers interaction and sharing of knowledge on innovations and developments; to support the growth of young, upwardly mobile and future Yoruba filmmakers; provide a forum for festival audiences to engage filmmakers in open and robust dialogue.

The Yoruba people pioneered the film industry in Nigeria with the itinerant Alarinjo Theatre, made popular by the late theatre doyen, Chief Hubert Ogunde.

The Yoruba indigenous movie thrives in Nollywood, adjudged Africa’s largest movie industry in terms of value and the number of movies produced per year.

It is also Nigeria’s most persuasive cultural agent and significant cultural export.

Significantly, films of Yoruba cultural distinction lead the regional creative sectors and are noteworthy to Nollywood’s output.

"There is no doubt that the Yoruba heritage of dance, drama and storytelling, which formed the superstructure of the enduring itinerant Yoruba Traveling Theater (Alarinjo) was a stimulus to the emergence of Nollywood", said Omoworare.

“We take pride in the contributions of the Yoruba filmmakers to the socio-cultural, technical and economic development of the Nigerian film industry", he concluded.