"Nollywood, the Nigerian video film industry, has become the most visible form of cultural machineon the African continent. It emerged before our very eyes, in our time. Beginning life is an uncharacteristic manner in Nigeria about twenty years ago, Nollywood has become a truly pan-African affairs...
"Shot on video, edited on personal computers, and copied onto cassettes and discs, Nigerian video films travel the length and breadth of the continent connection Africa, particularly Nigeria, to its diverse and far-flung diasporas elsewhere. Satellite television, the Internet, and piracy--at once Nollywood's boon and bane--facilitate the spread of its films across linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.
"At the level of the individual spectator, Nollywood stirs the imagination, provoking its viewers to compare their own daily lives with what is presented on-screen as they explore the similarities and differences between the pro-filmic and the filmic world. The continent-wide influence of Nollywood, however, does not stop at this level.
"In Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, for example, Nollywood has served as a model of film production and inspired the growth of local film industries, which in the case of Tanzania have already begun capturing a regional market. In these countries and elsewhere, Nigerian video films are appropriated and reworked into local forms of filmmaking and other cultural models of narrativization with local inflections that borrow and copy heavily from Nollywood."
Matthias Krings & Onookome Okome, Global Nollywood:
The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry
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