LOCAL movie producer and director Anesu Maibeki is working on an online series titled Deaf Prince inspired by the Nickelodeon TV channel, an American pay television channel for children.
He was also inspired by the need to uplift young talent, while fighting discrimination against people living with disabilities as well.
Maibeki, who runs an arts association called Aim Media Arts and has more than four years filmmaking experience, believes to solve many of society’s problems that include discrimination, people have to “catch them young” and instil morals and values in children before it is too late.
“It is better to build children than repair men. What I mean is to mould these kids to start tolerance from a tender age. A lot of talent is being lost when kids are not being included in the arts industry, this is the reason I believe in shifting the narrative to make children the main actors,” he told NewsDay Life & Style.
“My main priority in the film industry is to give children a chance, make them (children) stars when they are young. I believe art is talent and the more it is nurtured, the best one can be, so it is high time our local film industry gave children leading roles in different productions.”
He said most of local films were focusing on adult storylines.
“We would want to be the pioneers of Nickelodeon like programmes that promote young talent. So far, we have approached several schools which we are working with to train these students for the series,” he said.
“Children complement the storyline, but we want to make the kids the focal point, that is, if you watched Little Rascals, the film was all about kids, that is what we want to achieve.”
The Deaf Prince is a series that seeks to fight discrimination against deaf people and to help achieve his mission, he has engaged different schools to discover more young talent to work with on the series.
“Looking at the people with disability, discrimination starts from the playground and we want to solve it from there, basically that is the motive of Deaf Prince,” he added.
Maibeki has produced films such as Chances and Choices (2018), a comedy, Meet My Family (2019) and The Neighbours (2021).
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