How many
Nigerian films or TV shows have you watched?
Chances
are, if most of what you watch is what's available in cinemas and on Australian
broadcast TV, you haven't seen any — despite the fact Nigeria is the second
largest producer of film in the world after Hollywood.
But that could be about to change as Nollywood — as the Nigerian
film industry is colloquially known — films hit our small screens as streaming
services tune in to the appetite for more diverse stories.
While
films have been made in Nigeria for as long as people have been making films,
the term Nollywood started to be used in the early 2000s as Nigeria began to
really ramp-up its film production.
In the early 2000s, Nollywood made a name for itself with
quickly made films with often low-production values, which were distributed on
burned DVDs to be more affordable and accessible than the country's few movie
theatres.
These
days Nollywood is still pumping out an impressive volume of films with more
than 1,000 titles released each year, and is also producing films with high
production values and strong storylines that have captured Netflix's attention.
