Nollywood and the Road to Stardom

(Business Eye) - Despite the numerous challenges facing the Nigerian film industry, the practitioners have remained steadfast and focused and the industry is now the toast of local and foreign investors. In this review, Amarachukwu Iwuala, examines Nollywood’s rough road to stardom as it turns 21.

From a modest beginning about 21 years ago after Chris Obi-Rapu directed and released Nigeria’s first scintillating pioneer movie, Living in Bondage on the 8th of September, 1992, the industry has not looked back in its determination to rule the world.

The box office

The box office has helped the turn the fortunes of the industry around. For instance, in 2009, Stephanie Okereke’s Through the Glass grossed N10 million in three weeks at the box office.  The film went on to rake in a total of about N15 million by the time it ended its run in the cinemas. Indeed, recent films like The Figurine and Tango with Me are reported to have grossed about N25 million and N40 million respectively.

Ije, which remains the highest grossing Nigerian film, raked in about N60 million at the box office while the highest grossing Hollywood films in Nigerian cinemas make between N150 million and N200 million.

DVDs

Before the revolution brought about by the box office, Nigerian films relied mainly on the sale of DVDs.  Majority of the films produced in Nollywood today are in DVDs and there is hardly any reliable statistics on DVD sales as some marketers are known to either hike sales figures to unduly promote their own productions or reduce sales figures so as to underpay the independent producers, who own some of the flicks they distribute.  However, movies generally sell between 10,000 and 50,000 copies of DVDs while very few sell up to 100,000 copies.

Film Festivals

Firm festivals have contributed immensely to the growth of Nollywood. Prominent among the festivals are iREP, which is dedicated solely to documentaries, AFRIFF, Abuja International, Eko International, InShort (short film-based), Nigerian Film Corporation’s Zuma Film Festival and Life House’s Lights, Camera, Africa! These film festivals are annual events aimed at promoting Nollywood films except Zuma, which is a biennial festival.  Abuja International, the longest running of the festivals, is currently in its 10th year.  Best of the Best TV (BOBTV), an annual television and film market is also a decade-old.

Apart from the film festivals, some training institutes and centres have been established to ensure the growth and development of practitioners in the industry. In the past decade or less PEFTI, Royal Roots, Royal Arts, Lufodo, the Centre of Excellence in Film and TV (Amaka Igwe Studios) and the International Film and Broadcast Academy (IFBA) have been running hands-on trainings for established as well as up-and-coming practitioners.

The National Film Institute is noted for producing professional cameramen, Directors of Photography and directors in Nollywood, while more than 600 practitioners in the industry had been trained by DelYork International in conjunction with the New York Film Academy between 2010 and 2011. At present, the firm is working on the 2013 edition of the training programme.

In 2011, the US Consulate collaborated with iREP and the Goethe Institut to conduct a workshop for screenwriters.  The Goethe Institut has gone ahead to facilitate another workshop on the making of short films, a programme they hope to run periodically.  Some of the graduates of these centres and institutes have produced short and feature films that have been screened in film festivals across the globe.

Film Fora

GT Bank recently became the sponsor of the Nollywood Centre, a research centre at the School of Media and Communication of the Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.  The flagship programme of the GT Bank Nollywood Centre is a monthly film forum, where practitioners forge the way forward for Nollywood.  This forum joins the monthly film forum that has been holding in Amaka Igwe’s Studios since 2010.

Awards

After The Movie Awards (THEMA) and REEL Awards became defunct, the Africa Movie Academy Awards, AMAA, has been holding annually since 2005; making it the longest running award ceremony in Nollywood, though it is an Africa-wide award.

HOMEVIDA Awards, which drives ‘creative messaging and value change’ through films, has been in existence since 2010.  Apart from awarding mouth-watering prizes to films that meet their criteria, they annually fund the production of, at least, three short films by young film-makers under 30 through endowments from public and private bodies that are their partners.

The first edition of the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards, AMVCA, in 2013 took the industry by storm and it is still being discussed even as the organizers are calling for entries for the second edition of the event.

Publications and TV Programmes/Reality TV Shows

In the last few years, Nigerian Entertainment Today and Entertainment Express/Sunday Express are among the publications that have been covering goings-on in Nollywood in addition to reporting music, comedy and other related fields.  By the same token, several television programmes like Jara, 53 Extra and Entertainment Weekly are fully or partly dedicated to Nollywood.

Reality TV shows like the Amstel Malta Box Office, AMBO, which was rested after five editions and The Next Movie Star have paved the way for entrants into the industry.  In fact, it is not only the winners that have done well.  Several of the participants in these shows are recognizable faces in Nollywood today.

Endorsements and Appointments

Several of the movie industry’s stars pocket annual endorsements in tens of millions of naira, a situation that was unthinkable 12 years ago.   Actors like Ejike Asiegbu, Nkiru Sylvanus, Bob Manuel Udokwu, Okey Bakassi (actor/comedian) and Richard Mofe-Damijo have either served or are serving their state governments as special advisers. Mofe-Damijo has since transited from an adviser to a commissioner in Delta State.

The Beginning:

The Nigerian Film industry dates back to colonial times. Pa Orlando Martins was the first Nigerian to act in a 1935 film by Zoltan Korda – Sanders of the River – which starred Paul Robeson, Leslie Banks and Nina Mae McKinney. Hubert Ogunde, John Amata, Ade Afolayan, Francis Oladele, Jab Adu, Eddie Ugbomah and Ola Balogun were some of Nigeria’s earliest film-makers, who shot films on celluloid. Following a plummeting economy in the 1980s, this business suffered a setback. In 1992, however, Kenneth Nnebue of NEK Video Links produced the critically acclaimed movie, Living in Bondage.  Since then, and in spite of several hiccups, the Nigerian film industry has continued to grow in leaps and bounds. Reinforcing this, a global survey of 101 countries in May, 2009, by UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics (UIS) revealed that that Bollywood produced 1,091 films, Nollywood made 872 films while the Hollywood produced 485 films with only eight other countries producing more than 100 films within the one year period under review.

Remedies to the challenges facing Nollywood.

Despite the interest shown by the current government in Nollywood through the N3 billion Project ACT (Advancing Creativity and Technology) Nollywood and the $200 million loan, a lot still needs to be done.

Distribution

According to Kene Mkparu, the CEO of Film House Cinemas, there were more than 5,000 cinemas in the country before the advent of VHS in the late 1970s/1980s. Interestingly, many of these cinemas have long become warehouses and religious centres.

But there are more than 1,600 viewing centres in Kano (Kannywood) alone and Mkparu believes that community cinemas will mitigate the problem of distribution in Nollywood.  These viewing centres pay film producers to obtain the exhibition rights of each of their movies.

The Nigerian Export and Import Bank (NEXIM Bank) and the Bank of Industry (BOI), should also consider proposals for the establishment of community viewing centres in addition to the multiplexes that they are currently funding through the $200 million loan.  This will undoubtedly cater for those at the bottom of the pyramid.  If they fund community cinemas, there will be more revenue for the film-makers as well as more tax for the government to use.

Piracy

Piracy has to be tackled with single-minded persistence.  Though it may not be possible to eradicate this malady completely, it can be curbed significantly.  The Director-General (DG) of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) should devise an approach similar to that employed by Dora Akunyili in fighting the drug war, when she was the director general of NAFDAC.

Funding

The N1 billion Project ACT Nollywood grant earmarked for production should be judiciously used to show the way, so that organizations that may have been skeptical about investing in the industry will jettison their misgivings.  If accurate data on how this fund is disbursed and the income it generates in turn are accessible to the public, funding may become a thing of the past in Nollywood, an industry that is presently worth over $3 billion.

Content

The animation genre should be explored so that Nigerian children can have a taste of their own culture rather than watching only foreign animations. Furthermore, children’s films can be adapted from great children’s books that have been written through the years and authors can assist by lowering the amounts required to obtain the adaptation rights.

Though the technical quality of films has improved in recent times, there is need to have quality stories and screenplays that go beyond the superficial treatment of ideas.  Movies ought to stop looking and sounding alike because there are many areas of our existence, as a people, that are yet to be explored.  In fact, the onus is on scriptwriters to stop being derivative – telling stories that have thematically been done to death.  Then, directors need to do away with unimaginative casting.  Additionally, films should not be weighed down by too much dialogue at the expense of cinematic action.

Documentaries

It is imperative for film-makers in Nollywood to study the business models of stations like Crime and Investigation, Investigation Discovery, the National Geographic channels, Animal Planet, the Discovery channel and BBC Knowledge; which are stations that run wholly or significantly on documentaries.

A renowned documentary film-maker, Femi Odugbemi, once asked, ‘Who is telling the African story and from what perspective?  Can African film-makers bring a better understanding within and outside the continent with documentaries that give a more rounded definition of the African experience?’ Here, indigenous foundations can endow documentary film funds just like the Ford Foundation and a few other initiatives that have sponsored development films even in these parts.

Training and Retraining

Right now, government’s intervention in the movie industry seems elitist because Kannywood (film producers in Kano), Yoruwood (producers, who make films in the Yoruba language) and the film producers in Enugu/Asaba are hardly part of this awakening.  It is not enough to invite a few representatives of these film-makers to town hall meetings in Lagos or Abuja.  The government should earmark separate funds with which trainings and workshops will be organized for them at their bases and through their own associations.

These people produce a substantial number of films watched by the populace, but many of these movies are pedestrian. Writing in A Time for Greatness, Herbert Agar stated that “The supreme need of the hour is not for one or two outstanding figures of vision and initiative, but for high living and high thinking on the part of the common people.”  Films are ideological and people will always give their own interpretations to works of art.  So, our films have to be more intellectually stimulating, tasking people’s imaginations.

Increasing the number of good screenwriters and directors will culminate in a cluster of films that commence conversations on social change.  This does not mean that the entertainment values of these films will be compromised. Family on Fire and The Meeting readily come to mind in this regard.

The Nigerian academia has to give impetus to the study of film-making in Nigeria.  It is time departments of Film Studies were established in our universities.  It is worrisome that Femi Shaka, Nigeria’s first professor of Film Studies, still operates from the Department of Theatre/Creative Arts at the University of Port Harcourt.

Infighting in the Guilds

Another unseemly situation in Nollywood is the protracted power tussle in the guilds and associations existing in the industry. This has resulted in the formation of parallel guilds in some cases.  This infighting occasioned by controversial elections and undue politicking is an ill wind that can never blow the industry any good.  If the offices in the associations are too enticing, they should be made less so in order to attract individuals with the intention to serve.

NFC’s annual essay competition

The Nigerian Film Corporation has to be commended for sustaining its annual essay competition since 2005, which is an intellectual platform that allows the public to discuss the progress and drawbacks in Nollywood, the corporation needs to review the prize awards to winners of the competition. The prize money should be raised to attract more entries.

Cohesion and Collaborations

Collaborations will also take Nollywood to enviable heights. When events clash, practitioners could either shift one (if they are dissimilar) or combine such programmes if they can hold concurrently.  iREP has shown a good example in collaborations. In the past, they had teamed up with the Nigerian Film Corporation, InShort, Goethe Institut plus the Lagos Book and Art Festival.

In fact, like Sandra Mbanefo Obiago, Executive Director of an erstwhile production outfit, Communicating for Change, rightly remarked at a forum, Nollywood, in order to establish a culture of producing cutting edge content, has to engage the whole spectrum of the creative industry: literary, visual arts, fashion, dance, music, etc.

For sure, professionalism and cohesion in Nollywood will lead to the expansion of the film-making business which could double in less than a decade, the 200,000 direct and a million indirect jobs that the industry currently provides.

Source: Business Eye