Nollywood filmmaker and actress, Funke Akindele, says she began dancing to promote her movies out of necessity, revealing that she resorted to shooting dance content in her sitting room because she could not afford a proper marketing budget for one of her films.
Akindele disclosed this in an interview with BellaNaija posted via X.com on Tuesday, where she addressed criticism that trivialises her promotional dance videos, insisting the practice was born out of financial hardship rather than a lack of seriousness about her craft.
She recalled that after wrapping up her film, Battle on Buka Street, she was broke and could not fund publicity for the project, forcing her to improvise with a backdrop in her home and her phone camera.
“I did Battle on Buka Street and I didn’t have the budget for PR and marketing. So I just did a backdrop in my sitting room in my house and I put the camera there,” she said, adding that her cinematographer and brother helped her create the content.
She said the strategy, which involved dancing repeatedly to the film’s soundtrack and posting consistently, resonated with audiences who came to associate her with joy and dancing, a trait she said she inherited from her mother.
