THE LOST FILES: BETWEEN AMVCA 2015 & THE MEETING

Last year, when the AMVCA 2014 nominations list was released on December 5, 2013, several eyebrows were raised at the conspicuous absence of The Meeting. Considering how well the TASC produced romantic comedy did in cinemas, fans and industry watchers took it for granted that The Meeting would clean out at the second version of the AMVCAs. So you can imagine the collective shock when The Meeting received no nominations at the AMVCA 2014. Questions were asked, but neither the organizers (Africa Magic) nor the producers of The Meeting (Rita Dominic & Mildred Okwo) were available to go on record publicly.

And so in the absence of any official comments, speculation abound. A school of thought held that perhaps producers of The Meeting had decided not to submit their movie to the AMVCAs for personal or professional reasons. Another version went that maybe something had gone horribly wrong during the submission process, hence the absence. It appeared that no one was willing to accept a scenario where The Meeting was submitted and deemed unworthy by the powers that be at Africa Magic. It was after all well received by critics.

Fast forward one year and The Meeting bags not one, but six nominations at the AMVCA 2015 announcement. Old wounds were reopened and familiar questions were once again asked. While news of The Meeting’s six AMVCA 2015 were well received, the curious still wanted to know exactly what happened at the AMVCA 2014. For instance was The Meeting snubbed last year? If not, then what is the real story? It appeared that we were in for another year of speculation, until a tweet from Jennifer Alegieuno (The Meeting’s Special Effects Make Up Artist) solicited a response from Mildred Okwo (C0-Producer of The Meeting).

Ms Okwo’s reply isn’t as extensive as we hoped, but it turns out that The Meeting was indeed submitted to the Lagos office of the AMVCAs in 2014, but never made it to the South African office. As a result of this, The Meeting was not in play at the AMVCAs 2014 edition. Ms Okwo further tweeted that last year’s submission snafu is why entries to the AMVCA 2015 were first done online. Now we don’t mean to be greedy, but now that we’ve heard from The Meeting, it would be nice to get an official statement from the AMVCA organizers; Africa Magic. But going by the established precedent in this matter we might have to wait a long time.

See Jennifer’s Tweet and Mildred’s replies below.