TIPTOPSTARS

As the film industry in Cameroon continues to grow from lips and bound, the country also needs to start paying tribute to those who make the engine steam. These are production houses and individuals whose efforts have generally boosted the sector and now attracting widespread attention. One of such companies is Trend International Production with its assiduous CEO, Terence Fomunung. Through them, Cameroon will be a movie richer again. Come April 2012, Trend International Production will release Vanity Chase, movie shot in Yaounde a couple of months ago. “Post-production is complete,” the movie’s producer announced. According to Fomunung who is based in the UK, the movie will be launched throughout Cameroon.
Directed by Terence Fomunung, Vanity Chase seeks to decry the irrational want for material and financial wealth at the expense of moral rectitude. The movie stars renowned English-speaking Cameroonian actors including Fomunung himself, Njoya Grace, Ngeh Gerald and USA-based Mairo Sanda.

The blurb

Vanity Chase depicts the quest for material pleasures. Stacey (Mairo Sanda) learns the lesson the ugly way. By the time she realizes herself, she is heading to jail. Though comfortably married to Fidel (Terence Fomunung) and blessed with a kid, her quest for more wealth lures her into dating Roland (Ndikum Ivo) to whom she hides the fact that she is married. Her uncontrollable love for Roland makes her neglect her family responsibilities. Advice from her bosom friend Kate (Irene Nange) falls on deaf ears and she makes it worst by plotting to kill her husband. Her husband escapes death but his friend Ernest (Ngeh Gerald) who scents danger deploys a game to find out who is behind the plot. Keeping Fidel away, and with the assistance from Fidel’s mother (Njoya Grace), Stacey is convinced that Fidel is dead. Investigations go on while Stacey is ridiculed as she discovers that Roland isn’t after all the messiah she thought he was. But at this point it’s too late to confess her sins as investigations are closed on exposing her. Worst, on her way to jail, she discovers that Fidel didn’t die after all.
The rest of the story is told in the captivating movie piece coming after The Brothers shot in London and released last year. Earlier in 2006, Trend International Production produced Berlin Icon, shot in Germany and premiered at the Yaounde Conference Centre.

With a license in Structural Engineering from the Yaounde National School of Engineering simply known in Cameroon as Polytechque, Tanko Francois aka Ishmalight nurses ambitions of turning his country’s film industry into an enviable place to belong. He is one of the youngest but most competent and experienced technicians in Cameroon and holds strong that a film maker like himself should be sound enough to give the world   even more than what Hollywood’s James Cameron has given. “It is from Cameron that I drew inspiration and I’m ready to work hard and why not do more,” the lighting technician and camera operator told TIPTOPSTARS Editor.
Ishmalight who has performed his job in the film industry for nine (9) years quickly noticed that good sound and adequate lighting were in short supply and this gave Cameroonian movies a bad name. “Whereas, these are the most important elements as far as the technical quality of a film is concerned,” he said. The 1.60m-tall film maker from Ndu in the North West of Cameroon explained further; “I couldn’t sit back and watch our movies go down the drain, so I took up the challenge to enter the industry via lighting.”
With formal training and occasional in-the-job recycling courses, Ismalight puts creativity at the top of his field performance, but would not hesitate to listen and accept positive criticisms. “I also read and do a lot of research,” he revealed.  That’s probably why the 23 films he has done as a lighting technician and 13 as camera operator have been pretty much appreciated by viewers, colleagues and critics.
Good natured, the soft-spoken but humorous Frank, as the film technician is also affectionately called was ‘the man for the job’ in the recent Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon project by Premier Films, shot in Bamenda. It is undoubtedly the biggest film project done in Cameroon in 2011. “How I got signed up for the project still remains a mystery. I was the only one selected, out of fifteen who were examined for the role of camera operator and lighting technician. I later had a tete-a-tete discussion with the CEO of Premier Films and the result was a handsome pay package,” he explained.
Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon, the said serial will be screened on Cameroon’s State-run TV network, CRTV. Editing of the film is currently going on in Yaounde. It was a successful project for Ishmalight, challenging as well. “But not as challenging as Enigma, the series we shot with Billy Bob Ndive in Buea in 2010,” he told us. Ishmalight explained that he did lighting and shooting from the camera under the kind of hazardous weather conditions Buea is reputed for. Said the film maker: “Working with completely new actors for the Enigma project was also a tedious task I had to face.”
The young film maker who benefitted from a brief training by the German Cultural Centre, Geothe-Institut in 2009, hopes to leave a legacy in the seventh art by using it to alleviate poverty and suffering in Cameroon and Africa. “Opening a film institute or a school of arts is my ultimate dream to that effect,” he disclosed.
To Ishmalight, the high cost in shipping film equipment to Cameroon is one of the most serious problems they face. The industry is still young and they haven’t made enough wealth to be able to overcome this. For now however, his wealth can only be found and savoured in the several productions he has worked in including; Black Vampire, Criminal Frat, Forsaken Rose, My Successor, Lost Ego, Crazy Enterprise, Land of Shadows, Great Pain, Ancestral Wrath (series), Students’ Cot, Osmosis, Nexus, Ride My Wrongs, Canal Trap, Ouvre le Carport, Back Page, Dirty Iside, Enigma (series), Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon (serials), Celebrity Corner (TV show).
The dexterous lighting technician who loves putting on white dresses is a remarkable eater of kwacoco and mbanga soup, a traditional delicacy of the Bakweris in Fako Division of the South West region of Cameroon. If he is not travelling, Frank whose father, Tanko Enock Shei (of blessed memory) is his role model is at a pool swimming. “I also love dancing,” he said this about his hobbies.