My goal has always been to share the things I’m passionate about with the world. If I can’t inspire people, then my work should at least entertain them.
I talked about my filmmaking ambitions. And this week, after almost a month in Cape Town I’m getting more and more excited to share about The Movie Guy. This journey started because I decided to be a journalist, and put my poetry work aside.
I started my journey as The Movie Guy almost exactly 8 years ago. I just started out as a reporter for a community newspaper called the Windhoek Express and it was in my second year in the media industry. In March 2016 I decided to do a review for this small independent film called, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. My editor at the time was onboard, she published it and so The Movie Guy was born.
Once a week I got to go the Ster-Kinekor in Windhoek, and once-a-week I sat through movies, good or bad and it was magical. I knew right then that I wanted to contribute to filmmaking world as much as I could. It’s hard to believe that 99% of my reviews were Afrikaans back then. I wanted my audience to get excited about film as much as I was.
My audience grew and finally I decided to spin-off The Movie Guy and do English reviews on my blog and to share content on Facebook. The page quickly grew to a few thousands followers, unfortunately I lost access to that page. I started from scratch again, and thankfully some people followed.
It was in 2018 that I decided to cross-post to Instagram and now my Instagram page is probably my primary social media account. In 2019 I decided, “let’s do YouTube” and then I did it. The pandemic came and messed everything up, but it was a temporary set-back.
The last two years have really been great for The Movie Guy. Getting invited to three, and now four back-to-back Comic Con’s is just wild. I never thought that I would be the guy who got to do something I love for as a job. And it’s all thanks to people who gave me a chance.
I still have a long way to go to make this a sustainable job, it’s already a full-time job while I try to find something that can buy the bills. If I had a choice then I would do this for the rest of my life, because it’s one of the few things that still make me happy.
I get to work with amazing people in the industry and hopefully one day soon I’ll even be able to do interviews with some of the filmmakers, producers, writers, actors and artists I look up to… One day really soon.
Like I said, none of this would have been possible without the people who took a chance on me. Those who trusted me and my abilities. People like my editors at the Windhoek Express. People like my parents who still support me to this day. People like the handful of friends who constantly help me in ways I can never repay them. People like my family, who stuck around when I was going through some dark days. And the people who constantly interact with me on social media.
And I hope people will keep supporting me. As you know doing all this work without a steady income isn’t easy. That’s why I started this series, to keep people up to date on what I’m doing and to hopefully got some support. Anything from a like, comment to a share helps. And a subscription to my YouTube channel helps even more.
Contact Me: themovieguy.nam@gmail.com
Follow Me on Social Media
Facebook: @Movieguynam
Instagram: @themovieguy_nam
TikTok: @themovieguy.nam
Twitter: @TheMovieGuy_nam
