The Nigeria Film Corporation (NFC) says Nigeria and France are concluding plans for a bilateral arrangement on film archival.

NFC Managing Director Chidia Maduekwe announced this during a visit by the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) — a French National Audiovisual Institute.

Maduekwe said that the “institute is a repository of all French radio and television audiovisual archives”.

He explained the objective of the visit was to undertake a need assessment exercise to enhance operations and capacity in film archiving in Nigeria, among other purposes.

“We thank you for taking out time to travel all the way from France in view of your support, partnership and collaboration with us to help secure our heritage through archiving and preservation.

“At the NFC, we have continued to demonstrate our unwavering commitment towards opening up for domestic and international partnerships.

“Providing avenues and platforms for, capacity building and resource development given the evolution of new technologies characterising the creative industry and the film sector to the growth of the nation’s economy.

“All over the world today, the creative digital space is being given the necessary attention because of its capacity to not only create awareness, but as platforms for development and protection of heritages,” he said.

Maduekwe stated that the Nigeria recognised the taking up of opportunities for collaborations and partnerships in driving the development of the sector as very important.

He appreciated the French ambassador to Nigeria for deploying all his support towards to development of Nigeria’s audio-visual sector.

He stressed that as the corporation would continue to pull enablement and resources together to preserve and protect Nigeria’s audio-visual heritage.

The managing director added that the “commitment to building a National Repository for Nigeria with cutting edge technology and human capacity is second to none”.

According to him, the NFC through the National Film Institute is sustaining and will continue to expand its training and capacity building programmes for young film entrepreneurs across the country.

The Leader of the French delegation, Mr Christophe Picot, said that having shared some similarities in the audio-visual space, the agreement between the two countries would further position Nigeria’s creative industry for more investment inflow.

He said that the INA would do all it could to be able to achieve the goals of the corporation and would work with what was on ground and improve on it.