Thursday, 22th of January 09 - 8:30 pm VL/Ludwigstr. 37/Halle
|
|
Short Synopsis of The Asylum
The Asylum is the caricature of real life political realities in modern African states. It is set in Nigeria, the writer and producer's native country to dramatise the abuse of the democracy recently wrestled from the claws and paws of military dictators. This film is made hoping to criticise ill governmental policies, underachievement and abuse of human rights by the use of ridicule powered by humour and satire.
An unemployed man leaves home in search of a job only to be captured and dumped in a psychiatric hospital. This is not just because he suddenly went mad, but a new law has just been passed, unannounced: All the mad people in the streets should be relocated to The Asylum!
Our young man tries his best to convince authorities that he is not a mad man but all to no avail. Soon, the dirt in local politics however gets exposed when he's caged in the same ward with a reggae musician, a professor of English grammar, a pastor, a ritual killer and an auto mechanic who considers himself an award-winning musician!
Listening to each inmate's story is a revelation on how The Asylum is abused to play politics with innocent people's minds manifests!
For victimisation purposes or outright embezzlement tactics, these innocent people may never regain their freedom from the government facility only interested in looting allocated funds while injecting healthy people with shots meant for the real mentally challenged.
Is this Asylum housing the wrong inmates? Or is this a new dividend of democracy? A nation is about to figure the difference between all inpatients and impatience! Doctors and their political godfathers may hijack the governance with hairdressers as lawmakers! How does one start explaining tolls of political assassinations of opponents and endless quests of insane people to remain in power and the sane people remain in The Asylum?
About Nollywood (Nigerian) Films
Nigerian films, such as The Asylum, are produced for a target audience already made up of Africans in and outside Africa. These movies are recorded on digital video format with a minimum distribution structure called direct-to-video. Funding by government, financial and public institutions are nonexistent thereby explaining the low quality, especially in sound and editing facilities.
We therefore encourage new audience who are already used to European and Hollywood movies to bear with the quality and pace of Nollywood productions such as this. With a budget of less than 20,000 ¤, there are always frustrating limits to our production creativity and access to technology. We also wish to apologise in advance for the absence of German subtitles in the movie. This is owing to fund exhaustion while promising that subsequent films will be either dubbed or subtitled in German.