MOVIES YESTERDAY WERE BETTER THAN THE JUNKS WE HAVE NOW- KUNLE DA SILVA

Olakunle Da Silva, is his name, a native of Lagos state from Lagos Island, born about 50 years ago. He is an actor and a civil servant with Lagos state government. Kunle Da Silva has spoken with us on his sojourn so far in the movie industry. Excerpts:

MY SOURCE IN LAGOS

Olakunle Da Silva is a native of Lagos state from Lagos Island, born about 50 years ago to a wonderful couple, Late Michael Babajide Da Silva and Mrs. Da Silva.

I had my schooling in Lagos state, right from St. Mary Private School to Holy Cross Cathedral Pry School, to Government College, Victoria Island. I later attended Government Technical College and Lagos state, University.

I started primary school in 1975, and began my secondary school in 1982 at government college, Victoria Island.

I did textile design, clothing construction at the technical college and studied sociology in the university.

I equally worked for Lagos state government as a senior officer.

My Da Silva is the popular Da Silva family in Lagos Island that migrated from Brazil 100 of years ago and settled in Lagos Island where we now called the Brazilian quarters or Popo Aguda because of its predominant catholic faithful.

HOW THE STORY BEGAN

My sojourn in movie started several years ago, precisely when I joined Technical College; where I was discovered with some of my colleagues by a lecturer, Mr. Herrick Adelegan.

He was the one that trained us then; we started with stage drama. We were going from one school to another with stage plays, including national theatre to present shows.

When I got to the university; I joined another drama group. Some years after my university, I was watching a movie and I saw a childhood friend on TV, I tried to contact her and she was the one who introduced me to acting. Her name is Mary Joseph. She was a member of ANTP then, it was through her that I joined the association. Now we have moved to the newly created TAMPAN.

MY MOVIES

To my name I have produced two movies, the first was titled Ofin, produced in 2012, while the second came last year titled ASEJERE. Presently I have two in the pipeline, almost getting to the final stage. It will be released online very soon.

I WORK WITH LAGOS STATE GOVERNMENT

I am not a full time actor, because I am a staff of Lagos state government. If I have not been an actor, I would have remained an administrator with the state government. That is what I have been, and that is what I am. I enjoy turning the lives of students around, training them and making them a better product for tomorrow.

I went into movie industry in my mid-twenties; I believed I was old enough then to make that decision and my mother supported me, though dad was late already.

She got wind of it and gave me all her supports. I never had any problem doing what I had passion for.

DIFFERENCE IN THE MOVIE INDUSTRY

Movie industry yesterday; today and tomorrow; movie industry was hectic yesterday, though full of discipline with much respects then.

Movie production then was a bit difficult due to the kind of equipments we had in our reach compared to sophisticated ones we have around now.

We cannot compare what we had then with what we have now. Today there are many innovations that make movies better. Back then; there was a process, you must be trained before you could call yourself an actor; the experience must be there, you ought to have been under someone’s tutelage for two to three years before you could owned up to having the confidence to face a camera.

These days, things have changed! The least person would just wake up one day and declared himself or herself a movie actor.

The profession has been bastardized with these kinds of people that have stormed the industry. Despite that, we have good ones and better actors around that are professionals to the core. If we are to judge by discipline, the old breeds are more discipline than those we have around.

As regards contents, picture quality of what we have now is far better than, then, but when we talk about contents, what we had then were far better than what we have now.

We had stories that made sense unlike now that people produced junks!

Though some are producing quality jobs but you can’t compare what our old brigade produced then to what they are producing now.