report on nigerian video film conference

 <defanged_param>Trebuchet MS</defanged_param>for those who might be interested here is a feedback report on the recent conference on nigerian video films (nollywood) held in L.A. and organized by sylvester ogbechie, chike maduekwe and jude akudinobi.  

brian



Report on Nollywood Rising Conference
Brian Larkin

(n.b. Nollywood refers to feature films that are shot and distributed on video and vcd.  The word itself was coined by Western journalists but 	has since become a standard term used by Nigerians to refer to English language Nigerian video films (NVF)).

Nollywood Rising was a conference intended to bring together academics, Nigerian filmmakers and potential financiers and distributors from the U.S., especially those involved in African-American media.  This report concentrates more on the academic side of things but there was a strong industry component which is indicative of how Nigerians (and others) are trying to make the NVF phenomena grow in new directions.  It was a very vibrant conference and in many ways most of the interesting things were said by the filmmakers themselves.  From the beginning these filmmakers have had to develop an aesthetic form and an institutional structure for production and distribution without much of a precedent and their comments expressed this and their ideas about how to develop and expand their market.  In many ways academics are trying to catch up with what filmmakers are doing and there was a realization that there is a need to develop new critical and conceptual tools to catch up with what is turning out to be a major transformation of African media.

For those who know nothing about the phenomenon, in the last 15 years Nigeria has developed a feature film industry based around video and vcd distribution which has appeared from nowhere and now produces over 600 films a year making Nigeria (in terms of numbers) one of the largest film producing nations in the world.  English language films (Nollywood) have become a dominant media form all over the African continent certainly in all Anglophone countries (Kenya, Sierra Leone, S. Africa etc.) and are beginning to cross over into Francophone Africa despite language barriers).  The producer Charles Igwe said at the conference that 600,000 vcds are pressed everyday in Lagos (there is no check on the numbers) and that “crates and crates leave on planes everyday for all over Africa”.  This makes Nigeria one of the leading digital media content producers and NVF one of Nigeria’s most important exports. 

The conference raised some basic questions about Nigerian video film, its place in African cinema and where it is going now.  Several speakers (Frank Ukadike, Moradewun Adejunmobi, Onookome Okome, Jude Akudinobi) pointed out that the conceptual frame that constituted African Cinema has to be dramatically rethought.  African Cinema refers to an art based cinematic practice designed to promote African cultural traditions and to develop authentically African films forms that stand in alterity to Hollywoood and that are both aesthetically and politically vanguardist.  As both filmmakers and academics pointed out, these films do well in Western film festivals from Berlin to Paris to New York but are rarely seen in Africa itself outside of the famous festival of FESPACO.  Okome refreed to them as “embassy films” because they are only ever screened at Embassies.

Nigerian video films, while undoubtedly popular, have been severely criticized for being of poor technical quality and for using themes of witchcraft and ritual abuse (in Africa this is often seen as an exoticising, negative stereotype beloved by Westerners).  NVF do not get selected often at Fespaco, they are rarely featured in mainstream Western festivals (with the exception of the Pan-African  film festival in LA and the NY African Film Festival) and are sometimes derided by Francophone African filmmakers – critiques that the filmmakers in the audience were well aware of.

What was interesting in the filmmakers’ response was a confidence and lack of need to apologise for what they were doing. Charles Igwe argued that from the beginning the main goal of the industry was to gain an audience.  Whatever criticisms people can bring, he said, “we possess the Nigerian audience. There is no question about that.”  They were equally bullish about the content and style of their films.  Unlike African cinema which searched for cultural independence from other forms of national cinema (to look for a truly “African” film form), Nigerian filmmakers borrow from any form that suits their purpose.  Zach Orji said that they show witchcraft because that is what many people care about and because it is a real problem for people.  But he also pointed out that there are other genres too and the industry functions by riding waves of genres for a while jumping from witchcraft, to love films to comedies depending on what is successful at any moment.  The irony is, of course, that in the midst of all this borrowing Nigerian video films have built a truly distinctive film practice.

In questions, Charles Igwe pointed out that NVF began with no business (or aesthetic) structure.  “Our people took a jump off of a cliff and landed in the middle of the ocean.  Then we started building the boats while we were in the water”.  He said this to emphasise what they had accomplished so far and also that things were continually developing.  Films are technically better now than they were, that they will be even better in the future, he said.  Mahen Boneti, who programs the New York African Film Festival later pointed out that some Nigerian filmmakers she spoke to had never seen an Ousmane Sembene film indicating that these films – in structure, content and form – were being developed wholly outside the film school structures of African cinema and the distribution and exhibition structures that dominate global media.

The producer Peace Fibererima also took on the critique of NVF asserting its growing international presence, one of the main themes of the conference.  She had just returned from South Africa where she argued that satellite television sales were being driven by black South Africans who wanted to get hold of the “African Magic” station screening Nigerian films. Zach Orji, a film star, said that on a recent trip to Sierra Leone the President flew back to meet the filmmakers and that in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, the Congo and South Africa he cannot walk down the street without being mobbed.  Where a few years previously the filmmakers might have been defensive about their shortcomings, here there were no apologies as Charles Igwe said, in a personal comment to me, that “we know the future of African media is with us.  Everyone wants to copy Nigerian films”.

In this he was supported by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, a major Cameroonian director whose earlier film Quartier Mozart won an award at Cannes and who represented the older cadre of African filmmakers.  Bekolo described himself (with tongue in cheek) as “an arrogant French filmmaker” who was taught that each film he made had “to define cinema” and that what they were doing would “change mankind”.  He said that he wanted to keep this cultural ambition but at the same time he and all Francophone filmmakers realized that they were detached from any sense of audience and that what Nigerians were doing was extremely dynamic and effective and not reliant on foreign support. “African cinema is in a big crisis” he concluded and he said that all African filmmakers were looking at ways to try and adapt what Nigerians were doing.

Jonathan Haynes had an interesting twist on this success as he examined the ways that the rise of Nigerian films had almost destroyed the nascent video film industry in Ghana (built along many of the same lines as its Nigerian cousin).  He raised the idea that the success of what has become the Nigerian behemoth might have negative as well as positive consequences for popular filmmaking in other parts of the continent.

The name Nollywood came in for some considerable criticism.  The first known use of it was in the New York Times and it was quickly taken up as soundbite for Western media sources.  Nearly all commentators were unhappy this had become a dominant marketing term but as Jonathan Haynes pointed out, it might have started as a Western term but has quickly been adopted by Nigerian filmmakers themselves because it has a sense of glamour, aids marketing and it “expresses a genuine aspiration of the Nigerian filmmaking community”.

What came over in the conference is that idea that Nigeria in particular but Africa in general might become the next generation of media content producers.  The actor Zach Orji pointed out that increasingly he is working on co-productions in countries from the Cameroon to the Congo as filmmakers there are trying to develop their own media along the lines of Nigeria (and have to use Nigerian actors to generate sales).  “They want to be doing what we are doing and when they start up they are asking Nigerians to come and help”.  This suggest that model Nigerian media has developed has great power in developing new media structures.  The producer Peace Fiberesima was scathing about the recent attempt to build multiplexes in Lagos which to her was built on an outdated media model.  The aim is to screen first run U.S. films aimed at upper middle class viewers.  These multiplexes do not screen Nigerian films (because the technical quality is not high) but the consequence has been to ignore the form that is driving media consumption in Africa and as a consequence the multiplexes are failing.   She suggested that the only way for western media structures to succeed in Nigeria now is to begin to engage with Nigerian media. 





Brian Larkin
Department of Anthropology
Barnard College, Columbia University
3009 Broadway, NY NY 10027
212 854 5402