“Behind Gates” Premier: An Epic Failure in Cameroon

After attending the premiere of the highly hyped Cameroonian movie “Behind Gates” last evening at Canal Olympia Douala, I think Kung Quintus should make an open apology to the veteran Nigeria actor Zack Orji after seizing the mic from the veteran actor to emphasize that the Nigerian filmmakers are not doing Cameroon a favor but rather are mutually collaborating.

The much-talked-about movie premier has come and passed like a monsoon wind with nothing left to talk about a day after its premiere on the big screen.
I would have preferably stayed back home and watched the Big Brother Naija level-up auditions but as a patriotic Cameroonian, I worked on operation 80-20 to my disappointment.
Coming at a time when there is a great call for support for our home content I had expected the atmosphere at Canal Olympia to be intense but behold the reverse was true.

What do you expect of a movie premier where a venerated actor like Ramsey Nouah has to show up, sit and wait for Cameroon ‘stars’ like Zita Minaj or ‘Copees’?

It was a show of unprofessionalism from the organizers to the actors, I wonder about the impression Ramsey Noah takes with him back home. It is almost impossible to find such a blunder in Nollywood because there is a high sense of professionalism/ competition among various stakeholders.

Truth be told Cameroon is decades behind Nigeria be it in arts and entertainment, politics, religion, or technology, and it would be in our interest to bury our pride and solicit their expertise for our own growth.

We saw the recent release of Stanley Enow’s parapariparo video. A song that had been highly criticized even before its release, but after a Nigerian radio host hyped the said song, it got thousands of views and positive comments from Cameroonians.
We are our own problem.

Imagine 24 hours after a movie premiere and you are unable to find a single piece of information about the event on the production company’s social media handles, not even a red carpet moment. That alone speaks volumes, sure even though they had to prepare for Sunday service and forget about the bad night.

The image and sound quality of the movie itself did not live up to the hype compared to what we have become used to witnessing in other recent movie premiers like The Fisherman’s Diary, Broken, Saving Mbango, etc.

The common phenomenon of ‘Blackman time’ is more of culture among Cameroonians and was put to full view yesterday as many individuals only showed up after the film was already being aired. It should be noted that Canal Olympia is a multi-purpose arts complex and has a program schedule of shows daily.

The time allocated for ‘Behind Gates’ elapsed and it was embarrassing to find the audience being pushed out.