The curtain was drawn on Verdant Zeal’s 10th Innovention Series themed: ‘African Content and New Consciousness’ on Thursday, October 20 with the unveiling of a web platform, Archhub Africa aka AHA!.
However, the launch came with the premiere of the marketing and communications outfit’s first original short film, The Delegates, held at EbonyLfe Place, Victoria Island, Lagos.
A 40-children-cast film, The Delegates was shot in an elementary school with the plot depicting the evils of politics and how the society encourages it and ultimately pays for its ignorance, greed and lack of vision.
According to Vedant Zeal’s Chief Operating Officer, Dipo Adesida, The Delegates is the first of many short and feature films to come out of the stable of AHA. He added that at least five films including Nonetheless, Fawa House, and Eko Palava are in production stages.
Speaking on the acronym, AHA, Adesida said it means Archhub Africa. “AHA is a fulcrum for creating educational content, entertaining content, durable content of Nigerian and African themes. When we say AHA, it’s like an exclamatory expression, Wow. So, what we want to do is create content that wows. We want to be able to bring into conversations things that people know about but in a format that is interesting. We want to be able to bring some social issues to life and bring some certain characters to life.”
He explained further, “As we discussed during the Innovention Series, African content is on the rise. There is this consciousness that Africans are holding their own with their ways of life that is fast becoming acceptable everywhere. Before now, if you are not in a suit you are considered improperly dressed. But the reverse is the case now when you can wear native attires to the office five days of the week.
“Even our music has taken over everywhere. Before it used to be foreign music everywhere but now it is our African local music. Today, you can sustain a party with Nigerian music for a week without repeating a track. Now we are proud of what we create, the niche needs to be more than a movement; it needs to be codified so that it can be replicated, better monetized and given full expression.”
The Delegates parades top cast that include Ayo Adesanya, Okey Ozoeshi, Michael Akpuhijiha, Jomiloju Owojuyigbe, Jedidah Ojo-Kayode Babatope, Daisy Tuyi, and Vanessa Olugbodi.
