The name Frank Rajah Arase rings a bell in Ghana as one of the best
film-makers who have made great impact in the African movie industry.
Although many think he is a Ghanaian due to his exploits in Ghollywood,
Frank hails from Edo State in Nigeria and is happily married to a
Nigerian.
In a recent interview with City People, he disclosed how much he
now detests ‘indecency in Ghanaian movies’ and how he turned the likes
of Van Vicker, Yvonne Nelson, Jackie Appiah into celebrities.
“Well Heart of Men was actually my movie and we projected
indecency in a very daring way. Before then, I got lots of mails from
some of my foreign fans who said we love your movies but instead of
creating love scenes where you have to put people under the blanket,
take off those scenes but if you have to show the scenes, make it close
to reality.
That was one flaw people saw in my movies so I was like lets try to
make this happen and maybe the devil was at work that day because
everybody just complied and we started shooting, it wasn’t planned and
it was one of those 5 mins madness so we shot it and after that, it was
like an open door for a lot of indecency in our movies and I felt
terribly bad for pioneering it and I have since cautioned myself.
Till date I will never do movies with deep kisses talk more s*x.I
even had serious problems way back at home with my family over that
movie, it was terrible and one of those hit movies I didn’t want people
to always remember me with. Am doing my very best possible to create an
image that people will see and not frown their faces. ” he said.
He further disclosed how he turned the likes of Van Vicker, Yvonne Nelson, Majid Michel into celebrities.
“…in Nigeria, you have the likes of Genevieve Nnaji, Rita Dominic
and co, these are commercial faces and I want to create the likes of
those in Ghana, I want to differentiate them so we can use them to sell
movies here too. So I was like ok let’s sign a contract which we did for
2 years, and later I made it 4 years. The contract was to groom some
actors in Ghana and make them stars, we agreed and called for audition,
where we picked the likes of Jackie, Nadia Buari,Van Vicker, Kalsum
Sinare, Kofi Adjorolo, Majid Michel was a stand by then.
After the audition, they were the characters I picked, so after
picking them we took them through series of productions from Mummy’s
Daughter to Beyonce and all of that. That was how the journey started
and later on we brought on Majid and then Yvonne Nelson, Juliet Ibrahim,
Frank Arthus, Martha Ankomah and just like that we continued. That was
how we started with all of them and today, they are big.”
