Renowned Nollywood actor, Kanayo O Kanayo has revealed that he was senior to prominent professional actor, Pete Edochie, in the domestic movie industry, Nollywood.
Kanayo made the assertion in a recent interview where he discussed the history of the business.
The 61-year-old actor acknowledged that Edochie produced the first motion picture, “Things Fall Apart,” but pointed out that he had been working in Nollywood for four years prior to Edochie’s debut.
He Said;
“I cannot be written off the history or the story when it is told of Nollywood. You can’t take it away that Kenneth Nnebue made the first professionally made home video in 1992.
You can’t take it away from those who took part in ‘Living in Bondage’, just like you can’t take it away from the fact that ‘Things Fall Apart’ which Pete Edochie took part in was not a home video. It was a cinema.
So if you write a story now and say Pete Edochie is older than me in Nollywood, I will contest it because he came four years after. So in Nollywood I’m his senior. It is not a matter of biological age.
So, when it comes to cinema, of course, then you start going to Baba Hubert Ogunde in 1940s or 1950s. This is history. History has no romanticism.”
Obi Hart Okeke