I don’t copy foreign movies – Shirley Frimpong-Manso

NEWS-ONE is in possession of an audio recording that captures the renowned movie producer, Shirley Frimpong-Manso, descending heavily on critics who tag her movies as ‘too foreign’ than Ghanaian because of the plot and the speech style of her cast.

The cast of Ms. Frimpong-Manso’s movies have often been criticized for speaking in what has been described as forced foreign English accent or Locally Acquired Foreign Accent (LAFA).

“Some say the English they speak in my movies is a bit too foreign. I’m thinking, what are we talking about? We send our children abroad to go and learn from London and other places and then they come back and they speak the way the culture teaches them,” Ms Frimpong-Manso fired back recently.

This view expressed by the award-winning filmmaker on the Entertainment Review programme has only further fuelled the popular perception of her critics.

Ms Frimpong-Manso recently came under serious criticism from Ghanaian movie enthusiasts but she has been quick to deny coaching her cast to speak in LAFA in her movies.

“One thing I don’t condone is the ‘LAFA’, as in you know the person doesn’t necessarily speak like that, then he or she comes on set and starts to speak like they are slanging or something.  When you make a mistake on my set, I tell you not to speak like that. A lot of the people who speak the way they do in my movies, that is how they speak in real life. People should get over it and stop saying the movies look foreign. I mean what are we talking about? I don’t get it,” she said.

The producer of the award-winning ‘Scorned’ movie also denied copying foreign storylines and converting them into hers. Her ‘Perfect Picture’ was purported to have been coined from an American movie titled, ‘Picture Perfect’.

“Which story has not been told before? Every story has been told before. I’m not copying. I’m just telling a story and some elements of the story will be similar to other stories that have been told before. Every movie you see has an element of a story that has been told before or something that has happened before so I don’t really know what they are talking about. If you look at my ‘Perfect Picture’ movie the story is about three girls. What are they going to say; that I copied it from Girl Friends? Don’t we have friendships like that in Ghana?” Shirley quizzed.

It would be recalled that Shirley Frimpong-Manso, at an appreciation event for the MultiChoice Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards (AMVCA), stated that movie producers from Ghana would be making an appearance at the Oscar Academy Awards if they had a pinch of the resources available to Hollywood.