Nollywood, Alaba Markerters, and New Nollywood

(By Andrew Rice) - “Most of [Nollywood] movies … are awful, marred by slapdash production, melodramatic acting and ludicrous plots. [Kunle] Afolayan, who is 37, is one of a group of upstart directors trying to transcend those rote formulas and low expectations. His breakthrough film, the 2009 thriller “The Figurine,” was an aesthetic leap: ... it announced the arrival of a swaggering talent keen to upset an immature industry. Unlike most Nollywood fare, “The Figurine” was released in actual theaters, not on cheap discs, playing to packed houses next to Hollywood features. “Many observers,” Jonathan Haynes, a scholar of Nollywood, recently wrote, “have been waiting a long time for this kind of filmmaking, which can take its place in the international arena proudly and on equal terms.” …

The economic realities of African filmmaking conspire against an improvement in quality. The consumer base is huge — there are more than a billion Africans, [200] million of them in Nigeria alone. But access to those buyers is controlled by the clannish merchants who congregate on the outskirts of Lagos at the Alaba International Market, the distribution hub of the African movie business. …

Nollywood’s bawdy humor — or fright or fantasy — appeals to a public seeking escape from depressing living conditions. The industry itself was born out of economic desperation during the early 1990s, a period of military dictatorship, low prices for Nigeria’s oil and Western-mandated “structural adjustment” of its economy. Actors and cameramen were out of work because of budget cuts at the national television station. Movie theaters were closed because no one wanted to venture into the dangerous streets at night.

Pirating Nollywood: AY Petitions Police IG Over '30 Days in Atlanta'

Dear Sir,

It is with the deepest sorrow that I pen these words. I have never understood the true meaning of the saying “only the one wearing the shoes feels the pain”, till recent times. Since the advent of Independent Producers, piracy has become the bane of the industry because as the saying goes ‘monkey de work, baboon de chop’.

The excitement that greeted the movie industry through the Box-Office success of 30 Days In Atlanta has quickly turned to sorrowful awe as I heard the news that the result of my sweat and sleepless nights has been sold by a traitorous miscreant, yet unknown, to a dubious marketer in Alaba.

Welcome to Nollywood's Excitement and Danger

It was when they pulled out the machetes that I started to worry.

I’d seen men with machetes in Africa before, but they were rusty, practical tools used for clearing away brush by the side of the highway. These were long, shiny and housed in decorative sheaths, pulled out ostensibly so the men could sit down more comfortably, but done with a clear, understated flair. They were more like sultan swords than jungle tools.

The kicking in my six-month pregnant belly had gone eerily silent since we entered the vigilante court at Alaba. I reassured myself that I’d been through things like this before. The time I went to visit Brazilian entrepreneur Marco Gomes’ hometown in the crime-ridden slums of central Brazil, comforted only by his reassurance that “No foreigner has ever died in my hometown, because no foreigner has ever been to my hometown.” And the time I was driving along the boarder between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and armed Rwandan guards stopped our car, wordlessly got in the backseat and hitched a ride for several miles.

Nigeria's Entertainment Industry and the Bane of Piracy

Movie lovers hunt for the latest Nigerian films in the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, and Guangzhou's Little Africa; Nigerian songs play in clubs from London to Kuala Lumpur. But the lion's share of the profit goes to pirates who didn't invest a penny in studio time or camera equipment.

"By some estimates, for every legitimate [movie DVD] copy that is sold by the producer, another five to 10 copies are sold by pirates," said a World Bank study last year. Music CDs are also mass-replicated, leading to losses valued at hundreds of millions of dollars for the film and music industries.

Developing countries have increasingly been looking to creative goods as a source of revenue, according to the study. Asian economies accounted for more than three-quarters of total exports of creative goods from the global south. In Latin America and the Caribbean, exports of creative goods more than doubled – from £2.1bn to $5.3bn – between 1996 and 2005. But Africa, which accounts for less than 1% of creative goods exports, has been left behind.

Nollywood, Piracy and Poor Distribution

Nollywood: A Thing or Two About Piracy and Lost Revenues, by Jide Rotilu

Nigeria’s movie industry ‘NOLLYWOOD’ has witnessed a year unlike none other with a $200 million stimulus package from Mr. President and more international producers interested in our heart land stories, it is certain Nollywood’s future is extremely promising.

The triumphant rise of home video production began in the early 90’s with the production of ‘Living in Bondage’. In the early years, there were strong story plots with passionate film makers sweating to ensure the viewers felt their passion. This trend dwindled fast as demand for content increased and marketers were eager to see faster returns on investment, which meant hastened movie production. The demand increased and the production supply had to be rushed which inevitably replaced passionate film making with only a thirst for money. The movie productions got so fast that on average about 2000 movies were made annually. This sales figure led to Nollywood’s recognition as one of the largest Movie Industries in the World in terms of ‘quantity’ while Quality was a concept not understood by many.

Nollywood: A Resource That Needs Control

Resource Control has become an important political and economic lexicon in modern geo political realities. In the emerging economies of the world, most especially in Africa, resource control has accounted for numerous armed conflicts, political instability, and economic stagnation.

Resources in emerging economies like Nigeria are primarily ascribed to natural & physical properties like oil and gas, agricultural products, gold, diamond and like products that are discoverable fro under the bowels of the earth.

The attraction to tangible properties like oil, commonly called the “black gold” in Nigeria has resulted in the neglect of other resources which could compete, if not out-rank oil in terms of wealth generation. Intellectual property rights are resources that Nigerians have neglected or unaware of as a property. It is an intangible property that has generated economic growth and wealth in counties like United States, India, Japan, France and United Kingdom. In the United States, Hollywood has contributed  immensely to the nation’s GDP. In India, Bollywood has contributed greatly to the nations economy. It is the strength of its intellectual property  regime that has propel these entertainment capitals of the world to become economic and cultural model, that most of the world desire to emulate. The copyrights, patent, trademark & publicity rights policies of these countries have been a motivating factor for the economic growth of their entertainment industry.