Veteran Nollywood actress and producer Joke Silva believes that at this point in Nigeria’s history, filmmakers and screenwriters should strive their hardest to bring the nation together using their creations.
Joke Silva stated this on Friday at the 2024 Emerge Story 3.0 Conference closing event, held at FilmHouse Cinemas in Lekki, Lagos, during his keynote address.
Joke Silva said in her address on “Building a Bridge Connecting the Generations of Female Storytellers” that Nigeria needed patriotic screenwriters to create connections that would promote the nation’s growth and development.
The seasoned practitioner said that storytellers were crucial to the nation-building process and that Nigeria had seen a lot of history. She also added that she had worked in the industry since 1981.
“Unless we are living on the moon, Nigeria is in challenging moments, but what is our role as storytellers?
“Our role is to do our very best in our storytelling to unite the country. We have been staying together for over 60 years. Let us write our stories to unify.
“Music is unifying everywhere, fashion is unifying very well. Films, especially now must unify. Our stories now should be stories that interrogate issues and proffer solutions.
“It is our role to give hope to the nation that is proving difficult to cope with,” she said.
She also stated that storytellers must tell stories that address overpopulation and other challenges.
Silva emphasized on the need of industrial collaboration, stating that:
“We are in a collaborating industry to put ourselves on the map.
“Let’s chronicle to give hope, to let our people laugh and to let our people have a sense of conquerors and to give our people that sense of nationhood.”
