Cinema and the Media Create Movie Stars

A Book Review of Azuh Amatus's Famous Faces: Interactions with Nollywood Stars and Stakeholders

 

Cinema creates movie stars—i.e., individuals who, through the masterly interpretations of their make-belief roles on the screen, enjoy a stellar level of admiration from the audience. Nollywood – the cinema of Nigeria and the second largest film industry in the world – parades such individuals in cosmic proportions. 

    Without doubt, Nigerian cinema had been engaged in the enterprise of creating movie stars before the advent of Nollywood. Actors like Adeyemi “Ade Love” Afolayan, Moses “Baba Sala” Adejumo, and Herbert “Osetura” Ogunde, for instance, gained prominence in the mid 1970s from Ola Rotimi’s Ajani Ogun (1976). 

     However, it is Nollywood’s pioneer movie, Living in Bondage (1992), that revolutionized the star culture of the Nigerian cinema, with its sleek Hollywood-style, full-color jacket. The glossy sleeve had the faces of the film’s key characters emblazoned on it. 

     Although some of the actors (like Francis Agu, Bob-Manuel Udokwu, and Kanayo O. Kanayo) were already popular on television, Living in Bondage launched them, and the myriad others who have come after them, into the stratosphere of stardom. 

In Memoriam: Peace Anyiam-Osigwe

Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, MFR (1969 - 2023)

Filmmaker, entertainment executive, founder of Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA)

"Nollywood in Focus" Premieres in San Francisco

(TheGuardian.ng) - ‘Nollywood In Focus’ To Premiere At San Francisco Black Film Festival

Nollywood in Focus, an exciting documentary film offering a rare glimpse into the burgeoning Nigerian film industry, … premiere[s] at the 22nd San Francisco Black Film Festival on June 19, 2020. 

Nollywood's Vision 2020

iRokotv could become a billion dollar company by 2020
--Jason Njoku, CEO iRokotv

Nollywood Goes to Oscars with Lionheart

Jonathan Haynes: Pioneering Nollywood Studies

2019 LSA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR AWARD: JONATHAN HAYNES (PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND FILM STUDIES, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY, USA)

Nomination Submitted by Paul Ugor, Associate Professor, Illinois State University, USA

It is indeed my pleasure and honor to nominate Professor Jonathan Haynes of Long Island University, New York as the LSA Distinguished Scholar for 2019. I have known Prof Haynes for eighteen years and I know of no other Africanist scholar who is deserving of this prestigious award than him. Not only has Prof Haynes been a consummate scholar of African literatures and cultures for the past twenty years, in those two decades, he has been an incredibly gracious and generous mentor, ally, advocate, and guardian to many Africanist scholars in the humanities.

Prof. Haynes’ research work in African literature and cinema marks him out as a scholar of towering international reputation whose persistence of scholarly inquiry into African modes of self-expression has secured legitimation for a field of study now known globally as Nollywood studies. To get a sense of Haynes’s scholarly achievements, it is important to remember that only a few years ago, Nollywood was a film industry scoffed at by mainstream cinema directors and elite scholars in the humanities. With his longtime friend and research associate, Prof. Onoookome Okome, Prof Haynes worked tirelessly to make sense of the artistic worth of Nigerian video films and to defend the legitimacy of the industry as a remarkable mode of African self-expression worthy of critical attention. Today, Nollywood it is at the centre of scholarly inquiries in prestigious scholarly fields such as Media Studies, Popular Culture, Film Studies, Anthropology, English and Cultural Studies, History, Linguistics, and other disciplines in the humanities.

Lagos: A City Still Becoming

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - Still Becoming: At Home In Lagos With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The novelist has lived in Lagos on and off for a decade. Here, in an essay for Esquire's new Travel & Adventure issue, she reflects on life in Nigeria's biggest city

          Lagos will not court you. It is a city that is what it is. I have lived part-time in Lagos for 10 years and I complain about it each time I return from my home in the US — its allergy to order, its stultifying traffic, its power cuts. I like, though, that nothing about Lagos was crafted for the tourist, nothing done to appeal to the visitor. Tourism has its uses, but it can mangle a city, especially a developing city, and flatten it into a permanent shape of service: the city’s default becomes a simpering bow, and its people turn the greyest parts of themselves into colourful props. In this sense, Lagos has a certain authenticity because it is indifferent to ingratiating itself; it will treat your love with an embrace, and your hate with a shrug. What you see in Lagos is what Lagos truly is. 

          And what do you see? A city in a state of shifting impermanence. A place still becoming. In newer Lagos, houses sprout up on land reclaimed from the sea, and in older Lagos, buildings are knocked down so that ambitious new ones might live. A street last seen six months ago is different today, sometimes imperceptibly so — a tiny store has appeared at a corner — and sometimes baldly so, with a structure gone, or shuttered, or expanded. Shops come and go. Today, a boutique’s slender mannequin in a tightly pinned dress; tomorrow, a home accessories shop with gilt-edged furniture on display.

Academics Research Corruption Using Nollywood

(By Yomi Kazeem) - The Nollywood Movie Experiment to Research Nigerians’ Anti-corruption Behavior

The popularity of Nigeria’s Nollywood movie industry—the world’s second largest by volume—was covertly deployed for a social cause five years ago.

Researchers from Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) collaborated to commission a feature film to test local habits on reporting corruption. The research for the movie, which was funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and an anonymous donor, was approved by the Princeton Institutional Review Board.

Given the popularity of the local movie industry and the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria, the researchers looked to study how Nigerians report corruption using the high-profile actors to model behavior.

            Nigeria’s corruption problems are well-documented with a landmark survey two years capturing the scale of corruption especially among public officers. Despite his well-publicized anti-corruption stance and message in office, Nigeria’s president Buhari has struggled to definitely address the problem with his administration suffering corruption-related scandals of its own.

"Iyalaya Anybody": Street Lingos and Pop Culture

(By Pius Adesanmi) - In its pristine cultural background in the Yoruba world, “iyalaya” is an obscenity hurled at your opponent in a brawl to display contempt for his or her maternal lineage. It is usually accompanied by the insulting palm and five-finger flash we call “waka” in the face of your opponent. The consequence, as you all know, is often a bloody nose and an unscheduled trip to the hospital. However, as cultures evolve across generations, new meanings emerge and old words or expressions and are sent on new errands by the human imagination. ...
          The mere mention of “iyalaya anybody” brings to mind the Nigerian musician, Olamide, and his famous spat with music industry icon, Don Jazzy. No Nigerian needs to be reminded the details of this spat which shook the African entertainment industry to its roots and set Twitter and Facebook on fire for weeks. With the whole world watching, Olamide had shot out at the audience, “iyalaya anybody”, while dissing Don Jazzy.

Face of Okija: Africa and Celebration of Culture

Prof. Lumumba: Celebrating Ndigbo & Nigeria, At The Face of Okija in Anambra, 2019

Nollywood: The Benefits of Quality Productions

(By YomiKazeem) - Nollywood’s focus on movie quality over quantity is starting to reap box office returns

          The global claim to fame for Nigeria’s Nollywood movie industry has typically been its volume of production, ranked behind only India’s Bollywood.

          While that emphasis on low-budget, high-volume production saw Nollywood movies become hugely popular at home and across Africa and the diaspora, it also fostered low standards. But the past decade has seen a new generation filmmakers shift focus from quantity to quality—a move that’s yielding increased international recognition and has seen Nollywood movies increasingly become a big draw for audiences at local cinemas.

          Most emblematic of that trend perhaps is The Wedding Party, a 2017 romantic comedy, which became the first Nollywood movie to gross over 400 million naira ($1 million) at local cinemas. Its sequel, released only a year later, did even better. The trend of high earnings have largely continued as Nigerian movies are on track to record gross cinema earnings of over a billion naira ($2.7 million) once again last year after first doing so in 2016.

Lionheart: Lessons for an Impressed Fan

Genevieve Nnaji and Nkem Owoh

(By Nkechi Bianze) - I watched #LionHeart on Netflix yesterday.

The movie is a breath of fresh air. Away from the usual stale boring storyline.

1. The uncle came to actually contribute his bit to saving the company. He didn't come to kill the brother and take over the company and money.

2. Pete Edochie didn't die suddenly by a heart attack or something. He fell ill and got back on his feet.

3. Pete Edochie and his wife recognized the strengths of their children. The son wasn't victimized for choosing not to manage the family business. He was allowed to follow his own dream of a music career. He wasn't taunted like a lost soul or prodigal son as a result of his choice.
Genevieve, even as a woman was given the freedom to manage the family business and source of wealth. There was no sexism in this case like most other Nollywood movies would have shoved down our throats.

4. There was no family feud. Sister inlaw and brother inlaw weren't fighting their brother's wife. Son wasn't trying to claim he is the man and in charge of the family wealth, either by crook or real.

5. The storyline is simple yet engaging. It was all about saving a drowning family business. The struggles were realistic, and the journey to finally being able to save Lionheart was quite realistic too.
A Billion Naira didn't suddenly appear from nowhere for them to clear their debt. They fought, tried and tried, and they triumphed.

Lionheart: Of Family, Culture, and Industry

The Obiagus

(By Obianuju Okafor) - Enugu takes centre stage in Genevieve Nnaji’s directorial debut with lighting and colouring made to reflect the mood and feel of the town. It is one of the things that Lionheart gets right from its beginning and the first sign that the audience is about to get a film that mixes the technical improvements that have attended more recent Nollywood releases with a more old school, locally flavoured, story, and (this bears stating right of the bat) superb, superb acting.

Adaeze is an adept and excellent right hand for her father in the bus transport empire that he has built. When his health is severely threatened, Adaeze’s assumption that she will be appointed as the acting leader is disappointed by the arrival of her uncle who is then appointed in her place, and whose presence initially irks her. Still, the two band together to solve a problem left by her father and compounded by the owner of a rival transport company, who hopes to make a gain from their troubles. Ada slowly has her perspective changed as she interacts more with her uncle and comes to the end of her own rope.

Lionheart is a slowburn, walking leisurely through every occurrence even when a clock is introduced to heighten the stakes. Genevieve Nnaji is a great lead as Adaeze giving a great and completely unforced performance and leaving room enough for the roster of other veterans to shine.

King of Boys: A Compelling Lagos Story

(By Obianuju Okafor) - King of Boys had a lot to live up to from day one of its announcement. Kemi Adetiba’s previous feature film project was the successful Wedding Party film. That particular project had been a collaborative win with EbonyLife Films tag teaming other major production houses – FilmOne Distribution, Inkblot Productions and Koga studios – and all of them together trusting the project to the hands of the director who had, for the most part, cut her teeth directing music videos. She delivered then, and it’s easy to say that with King of Boys she has performed an even greater feat.

An effective trailer built anticipation for King of Boys, and the gangster royalty themed premiere managed to also heighten conversations about what was to be expected. All this background is necessary to point out the tall expectations that followed King of Boys, and why it is amazing that it did not disappoint. There is a common Nigerian parlance used in discussing films that have been well marketed and therefore well talked about prior to a bulk of people actually seeing it. It is this concept of over-hyping, where people who watch a movie after an explosion of compliments for it condition their enjoyment by claiming that it is merely ‘okay’ and unable to live up to the particular tall order or hype that had so far followed it.

#Lionheart and the Metaphor of the Possible

Adanna and her uncle, Godswill

(By Pius Adesanmi) - NIGERIA is notorious for her belief in the indestructibility of a project that everybody purports to hate, dislike, disavow or disown. Somewhere in the core of the Nigerian psyche lies the belief that we are the only people on earth whose country will always survive our unquenchable hate, bitterness, and hostility expressed along our three most intractable fault lines: ethnicity, faith, and political affiliation, worsened by the democracy of social media and the conquest of that space by millennials – Nigeria’s most populous demographic – who no dey look Uche face.

However, I do not believe that Nigeria could have survived another week of hatredvaganza and the attendant cursefest that has happened upon us because of the presidential election season had art and the artist not intervened this week to do what they have done for humanity and society since the beginning of time: provide instrumental catharsis and place in front of  a society on the brink of implosion through self-inflicted injuries a mirror showing pathways of the possible.

That is the symbolic role that Nigeria’s cultural icon, Genevieve Nnaji, played this week with the release of her new movie, #Lionheart, on Netflix. I do not intend to explore the plot of the movie here. Go and watch it like millions of Nigerians have already done. When you are done watching it, join the commentariat on social media who have been busy dissecting scenes, characters, and other elements of the movie in a moment of national cultural jouissance that has united home and diaspora. My intervention is necessitated by a pattern of misses I have noticed so far in the social media commentary.

Genevieve Nnaji: Twenty Years In Nollywood

"As 2018 comes to an end, I mark 20 years in the art of film making. I’m grateful for my life, journey, and growth thus far. I’m happy I could celebrate with you through a product that embodied all of me, mentally and spiritually; for all of your pleasure. May 2019 be our best year yet. 🎉Happy New Year! ❤️"

Genevieve Nnaji

Nollywood is Too Big to Ever Die

"Nollywood is too big to ever die: it is the third [now second] largest film industry in the world, as we
like to keep repeating, and it will eventually be seen as one of the world's major film cultures. The story of its beginnings ought to be told with an appropriate level of depth, detail, and accuracy. One hopes that Nollywood will evolve into dazzling glory impossible to imagine at present, but the remarkable extent to which it holds on to and repeats themes, stories, and aesthetics suggests that a lot that will remain fundamental was laid down at or near the very beginning, that some of the early works will remain as classics, and that whatever the future of film in Nigeria turns out to be, it will be recognizable as an extension of what has already been created. To an extraordinary degree, [Kenneth] Nnebue's Living in Bondage (1992), the film that started the Nigerian video boom, contains the seeds of almost everything that followed."

Jonathan Haynes, 2010, 15

"What Is to Be Done?: Film Studies and Nigerian and Ghanaian Videos,"

in Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century: Art Films and the 

Nollywood Video Revolution, ed. Mahir Saul and Ralph A. Austen

The Death of an Industry

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - The Death of an Industry 

In July 2011, as part of our series A due diligence, Tiger Global had McKinsey & Co conduct a study of Nollywood. The remit was:

1. Nollywood content popularity across Africa

2. Nollywood Industry Structure and Dynamics

- market size, growth, concentration and key trends

- content creator economics

3. Internet, broadband, payments and advertising trends across Africa.

They spoke with over a thousand people in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

Over the weekend, I re-read elements of the study, just to refresh my memory on all that had happened over the last 4.5 years. Let me go ahead and share some of those slides with you.

When IROKOtv Celebrated 6 Years

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - Man. This is a little strange. Very little drama in 2017. We’re IROKO. There is always a little drama lurking somewhere. Alas none this year. To be honest, I ended up spending 5 months of 2017 in London so that pretty much took the wind out of any dramatic things outside of introducing Nnenna, my daughter, into the world. Being a parent is special. When I wasn’t one I used to move around the world fucking fearless. Now, everyday, I’m just scared. Scared that they may fall ill (kids at nursery are always ill), scared that I may let them down (apparently no one told me there is no rule book to raising kids, you just hack it as you go along) and scared that you can’t pay school fees (Holy ghost fire this will never happen in Jesus’ name).

To be honest the most dramatic thing that happened to IROKOtv over the last 12 months has actually been the launch of ROK channels on DStv and SKY. On Tuesday, I was in Johannesburg, and two young Nigerian men blocked me at the fuel station (I drive myself). One of them recognised me and was trying to explain to the other who I was. You know.

You know. The husband of the woman, you know, Nollywood actress, Mrs Mary, who runs ROKTV.

See my life. Post wedding. It was a concerted multi-year campaign to migrate people calling her Mary Remmy, to simply Mrs Njoku. Now I am the husband of the woman who runs ROK. I guess I am just resigned to being the queen in this relationship. In her shadow forever. It’s okay.

(New) Nollywood and Quest for Growth