(By Jack Kyono) – At this year’s Toronto
International Film Festival, cinephiles and entertainment reporters are abuzz
with excitement, the latter framing out the headlines of what has quickly
become one of the premier events of the year for film screenings, celebrities,
and industry gossip. Many of the top stories come from the usual stars: Chloë
Grace Moretz shines in her new film, Brain on Fire; the success of the Rob
Reiner-directed biopic, LBJ, affirms the rom-com icon’s successful transition
to more serious material, and designer-turned-director Tom Ford unveils the
first trailer for his stylish, sophomore feature, Nocturnal Animals.
Behind all the usual Hollywood headlines, however, lies
a storyline unknown to the average American, but one that could mean a world of
change for an entire continent. As part of the TIFF’s “City to City” program,
highlighted are the films of Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and the center of
its prolific and controversial film industry, Nollywood.
For Nollywood, an
industry barely twenty-five years old that has become the second largest
producer of feature films in the world (right in front of Hollywood, and behind
India’s colossal Bollywood), recognition from one of the world’s largest film
festivals means hope for the international acceptance of African cinema.
And perhaps, Lagos’s participation at TIFF means a
rebranding of what a Nollywood film is; most Americans, who have most likely
never encountered Nollywood, would probably be shocked by the contrast in
aesthetics from American films. Nearly all of the films produced by Nollywood
are made on stringent budgets of around $12,000 USD each and are typically made
on VHS camcorders or video cassette recorders. Only recently and for the
highest budgeted films do Nollywood directors use modern digital cameras and
production equipment. In a Nollywood film, advertisements for local
goods or other films by the director are often randomly superimposed upon the
image. Breakups of audio-visual cohesion are frequent. The stories are frenzied
and frantic, showing melodramatic family drama or tribal farce reminiscent of
early American slapstick.
“Some Nigerian people love Nollywood, but some Nigerian
people hate it because Nollywood highlights and exaggerates stereotypes” says
Osariemen Ogbemudia, President of Yale Students of Nigeria.
Understanding Nollywood is impossible without first
understanding how different film culture is in Nigeria. In America, people are
led to the theatres after first seeing advertisements on TV or reading reviews
in the papers; in Nigeria, the process is entirely different. The normal
Nollywood experience is this: at a marketplace or street vendor, cassette, VHS
or CD versions of Nollywood films are sold for cheap, around $1 or $2. After
purchasing a few of the best looking titles, families and communities gather
around wherever the best VHS or CD player resides and watch the films together.
Movie theatre culture is virtually non-existent (in a country of over 170
million people, there are only around 130 screens); in many parts of Nigeria
with limited government crackdown on banditry and crime, gathering a large
number of people together in a movie house would be too dangerous.
Film culture in America is accompanied by a complex and
well-organized system of film criticism. The American film industry requires
experts to select movies to be shown in theatres, shown on TV, or even at the
lowest level, to be produced in the first place. In Nollywood, films are so
randomly and frequently produced that there exists no way to filter out good
and bad content.
Dr. Dudley Andrew, Yale’s R. Selden Rose Professor of
Film, explains, “The scary thing is if…three films, four films a day are coming
out of Nigeria, who can watch them and say which ones are worth watching, which
ones are going to remain?”
And yet, while the international film community may be
uncomfortable with Nollywood’s lack of expert criticism, this unregulated
industry is liberating for Nigerian artists. American filmmakers are beholden
to large production companies and critical norms whereas in Nigeria, anyone can
participate.
Kezie Nwachukwu, ES ‘20, notes that, “Nigerians are
overall very entrepreneurially minded and the self-determination that goes into
making Nollywood films is evident, though some might see it as (resulting in) a
lower quality.” The independent spirit of which Nwachukwu speaks fits perfectly
within democratic Nollywood- all an aspiring artist needs is the drive and an
idea warranting a few thousand dollars from the innumerable production groups
in the country.
Piracy and Progress
Even considering the sui generis culture of Nollywood,
the rise of Nollywood’s film output to beyond Hollywood’s in less than three
decades seems unfathomable. As if the story of Nollywood could get more
bizarre, the greatest catalyst for the rise of Nollywood was not any sudden
influx of government support for the entertainment industry (more
frequently today, the entertainment industry’s strength provides a lifeline for
the Nigerian economy), but rather something behind the curtain: piracy. For the
second half of the twentieth century, Nigeria, especially the northern region
surrounding the city of Kano, was the center of the international media piracy
industry. American or European films would arrive in Kano to be copied en
masse and receive Hindi or Arabic titles, then sent off to India or Saudi
Arabia or wherever they might land—the process is quick, efficient and
extremely lucrative. To facilitate an illegal industry of this scale, an
incredible infrastructure of audio-visual production equipment found its way
into Nigeria. It is this same equipment that nurtured the burgeoning Nollywood,
but also what gives its films their atypical aesthetics.
Film scholar Brian Larkin notes that “Piracy imposes
particular conditions on the recording, transmission and retrieval of data.
Constant copying erodes data storage, degrading image and sound, overwhelming
the signal of media content with the noise produced by the means of production.
Pirate videos are marked by blurred images and distorted sound.” Since
Nollywood uses much of the same infrastructure, its film production is bound to
a core principle of its pirate predecessor: quantity over technical quality.
A Break from the West
The development of a film industry in Nigeria was
incredibly late in comparison to its neighboring countries: Burkina Faso,
Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire all had vibrant industries by the early 1960s,
nearly thirty years before Nollywood was formally established. This progression
should seem out of place- Nigeria has always been a much larger state in terms
of population, economy and urban development. But the one factor that makes
Nigeria’s relationship with film different than these other states is something
essential to the history of many African countries: colonialism. Burkina Faso,
Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire are all former French colonies. The French have had a
rich film culture since the earliest days of moving pictures, from the poetic
realist directors of the 1930s to the French New Wave that effectively
modernized international cinema. The French passed on this culture to their
colonies; even post-independence, the French aided in the development of film
industries in their former colonies. Still today, many films coming out of
Francophone West Africa are still co-produced by France, or use French capital
or technology. Nigeria is a former colony of Great Britain, a nation
whose film culture nears irrelevancy when compared with France. After
independence, British support for film in Nigeria was nearly non-existent.
While lack of foreign intervention delayed the
development of Nollywood, the industry, as a result, is wholly unique. In
postcolonial Africa, many states have struggled to reclaim African identity.
Nollywood, perhaps, is the only film industry on the continent able to call
itself a truly African cinema- and probably, a lot of the distaste for
Nollywood in the international film community can be attributed to this independence.
The critics of the West are quick to deem Nollywood an inferior art form, with
too many technical failings to warrant serious attention- yet they fail to
recognize the magnitude of the feat of Nollywood. From a continent stricken for
nearly a century and a half with unwanted foreign influence and control,
Nigeria has managed to build an industry commercially on par with the rest of
the world, and that acts as a source of cultural pride.
Ogbemudia notes, “Sometimes, particularly in Western
media it is easy to feel like only white people can be involved with art…my
relationship with Nollywood is one of affirmation…In Nollywood, actresses are
dark-skinned, look African and are considered beautiful.” Nollywood has
succeeded in telling Nigerian stories from Nigerian perspectives, not from the
view of the white savior figure so often used in Western films set in Africa
(see Blood Diamond or Machine Gun Preacher).
For this industry born of piracy, bolstered by a strong
domestic audience and undeterred by foreign negativity, the future looks
bright- beyond the success of their turn at the TIFF, Nollywood has begun to
attract international stars to their sets: Danny Glover, who is of Nigerian
descent, stars in one of Lagos’s films at the festival, an Ebola docudrama
titled 93 Days. British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo, known for his star
making turn in 2015’s Selma, told reporters at TIFF that he would be
making Nollywood films in the very immediate future. In the meantime, with a
hopeful glint in the eyes of her people, Nigeria watches, and waits.
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