Nollywood, Nigeria’s New Rising Sun

Nollywood movie

Nigeria’s ever evolving and continuous search for self-entertainment can be directly linked to 2 commonly known factors. Outside the West African’s documented love for the theatrics, the difficulty of basic day-to-day life for a huge chunk of her humongous population has always lent itself well to any affordable outlet allowing for a temporary escape from the ever-rotating door of “too little for too many”. Add to that the importance of narration or story telling in the mosaic that is the Nigerian culture (be it one on one to the glowing wick of a lantern, or en masse under the harsh glare of a floodlight) and we see why “Nollywood” as the Nigerian Film Industry is known has almost overnight blossomed into the Worlds 3rd largest and arguably Africa’s most vibrant industry.

Despite the fact that more that 90% of the Films produced are low budget projects using a mish mash of analog and digital video cameras, Black Filmmaker Magazine recently announced that "Nigeria's video industry rivals Bollywood in sheer energy and volume." In any case an in depth look at the industry and its structure from the grass roots level reveals that the market in Nigeria is typically divided into 3 subdivisions. They are, namely the cast members made up obviously by the huge school of actors & actresses; the production folks consisting of producers, directors and writers and finally the all-important 'marketers' or distributors. Like in the 2 other larger “wood” industries Holly and Bolly where the actual distributors wield the real power behind the scenes by determining actual screen numbers for viewing and identifying potential markets, such is the case in Nigeria - only it is more pronounced and often more suffocating.

As Uzoma Obi, the CEO and founder of Youngblood Entertainment correctly observes “To make matters worse a good chunk of the 'market' has been and continues to be eroded by a combination of illegal duplicating known commonly as piracy, and the legal renting (via video rental clubs) of finished copy.” In almost all cases gratuities even by the latter are never paid, and compensation is reduced to the buying of a couple of units which ironically are often turned over directly to the sophisticated bootlegging machinery within hours – clearly adding insult to injury.

Enter the USA and the new industries understandably aggressive approach to seek greener pastures in other viable jurisdictions such as in this case, the American market. Not only does the country boast of a huge nostalgic African population with actual buying power, but it also has in place a very strict enforcement agency that will stop at nothing to better protect the intellectual property rights of both Actor, Producer and Distributor. The Film Makers Association of Nigeria (FAN) as well as the Nigerian Film Censors Board have wasted no time in making both their presence felt across the waters by solidifying ties with the locals as early as in 2004 when former first Lady Stella Obasanjo (RIP) chaired a workshop on piracy and other issues in the US.

We saw a similar approach work for Bollywood, where cities with huge East Asian populations were targeted and the whole process of delivering a quality product from Point A to Point B was streamlined and set into motion. With the help of a host of Indian TV stations like Star-1 and Star-Plus reintroducing us to the past love affairs of stars like Amitabh Bachchan as well as the newer ones like the sultry Aishwarya or the phalanx of Khans the demand for the “home product” was kick started into the billion rupee industry that it is today.

Not only did this subtle but full force marketing strategy either reacquaint or introduce many of us to this other aspect of India and Asia, it has now also spawned a keen interest by others outside of Bollywood to get involved in the actual distribution of Films in and out of that region. For instance the American based Lee Daniels Entertainment that successfully distributed Hallie Berry’s academy award winning Film “Monster’s Ball” has now signed up to do the same world wide for “Provoked” the true life biopic of battered wife Jasmeet Ahluwalia.

While we cant totally forecast with 100% conviction that DAAR Communications recently launched African Independent TV will succeed in doing exactly the same thing for Nigeria because more of the traditional distribution channels need to be tweaked, at least it’s a start and more and more people are being made aware of the emergence of Nollywood in the US. Here on the East Coast especially names like say a Genevieve Nnaji are becoming more common and don’t just jump out at us from Video covers when we go to the local African stores to replenish our garri or and yam supply as had been the case. In fact the buzz for the première of the much-anticipated film “30 days” here at the AFI Theaters in Silver Spring, Maryland has been in quadraphonic stereo as opposed to the normal solitary ripple it would have caused 4 or 5 years ago.

Another galvanizing development in the Washington-Maryland-Virginia corridor has been the launching of the community TV channel called DCTV that technically allows each and every citizen of the District of Columbia free access to TV hosting for little or next to nothing. This has naturally spawned a bunch of TV shows with Africa being their main focus and slowly (even on the Ivorian political program where you would think a linguistic barrier would dampen the interest) the commercials touting assorted Nollywood projects or excerpts from interviews of Nigerian actors other than the G5 or G6 (as the Nigerian Actors A list is called) are starting to creep in with more consistency.

With these new avenues being explored the last pieces to the puzzle in my humble opinion remain an overhauling of the infrastructure in Nigeria to include more screens outside of Lagos and Abuja for local investors to recuperate some of their money via ticket sales. Despite the emergence of the digital era with all her bells and whistles some focus still has to remain on the old fashioned Cinema that will continue to cater to those locked out of digital age for whatever reason and to families seeking communal entertainment outside of the house. In addition to this the release of an ultimate break out Film will serve notice to the now partially interested world that the Nigerian Film industry has arrived. The regurgitated subject matter of lost and found love, deceit, corruption, black magic and more corruption and even more lost and found love is finally starting to wear thin even on the appreciative audience here in the US. While these luke-warm plots may be enough to captivate people in Nigeria the release of such dramatic gems with socio economic messages like the South African “Yesterday” and academy award winning “Tsotsi” have raised the bar for everything coming out of Africa.

So Just like 2Face served notice to the MTV audience world wide last year that Nigerian rap though still in development is a new force ……...we are hoping for something of true substance (hopefully sooner than later), from Nollywood. I for one would love to see a “Roots” like series but from an African perspective blending in African and African- American actors into one fascinating stew of historic relevance. Close you eyes and imagine Danny Glover and Ramsey Nouah on the same screen together, with a sound track featuring the likes of Fela, or Osadaebe enhanced by say an Africentric group like “The Roots” and you will see nothing but future potential and can almost hear the sweet metallic sound of ringing registers all the way from Abuja to Washington.
 

Published with the permission of TheTimesofNigeria.com