Foremost Nigerian filmmaker, writer, television producer, and entrepreneur, Amaka Igwe, died suddenly on Monday, April 28, 2014. She was reportedly working on location in Enugu, eastern Nigeria, when she took ill. One of the leading figures in the Nigerian film industry at the decisive moment in the early 1990s when the new cinematic form broke out, Igwe already had a track record in television as the writer and producer of the award-winning serial, Checkmate.

Q: Let’s start with your current silence as a filmmaker, the fact that you are not making films at the moment. Why is that?

A: There is no distribution in Nigeria. That is why. That is just a simple answer to that question. There is no distribution and we have to get that in place.