This is Nollywood
Armed with a few thousand dollars, digital cameras, and some lights, Nigerian directors have created a $250 million industry, thousands of jobs, and a sense of hope on a continent better known for blight and despair…
- This is Nollywood website
While at TED in Arusha, I had an interesting conversation with three film directors from Nigeria about the state of Nollywood and what may done to improve the quality of film making on the continent. Andrew Dosunmu (photographer and filmmaker) and Newton Aduaka (winner of the grand prize at FESPACO 2007 for his film “Ezra”), both based outside of Nigeria and making films of a different caliber than Nollywood and with bigger budgets, and Bond Emeruwa a Nollywood-based filmmaker featured in Franco Sacchi’s documentary “This is Nollywood.”
The question put on the table was whether Nollywood movies can be made with a higher quality of production; Andrew and Newton challenged Bond that they could produce good quality feature films with the same budget, equipment, crew, and actors.
Now, I have watched a number of Nollywood productions some good-some poor and I appreciate the fact that a lot of them have showcased stories of concern to Africans by overcoming several barriers and embracing digital film production. Granted, Nigeria is a 10lb. gorilla in terms of the number of films produced every year and no country on the continent can compare. However, I still believe the production quality can be improved and streamlined even with the budgets some of these films are made on.
In an earlier discussion with Bond, we talked of some sort of capacity building projects for aspiring film makers from around the continent to travel to Nigeria to learn from Nollywood and with the experience of Nollywood and perhaps an improvement in production quality, we might have an extremely powerful pan-African film movement highlighting all of this rich continent’s great stories, kingdoms, cultures, languages, and civilizations.
I can’t recall the last time a feature film was made in Zambia, but it seems we’re on the way to having our very first feature titled “Bad T!ming.” While doing some research online, I came across a project that was started sometime last year to document the production of Bad T!ming on the Film Zambia website and apparently the film is now in post production. One film every two years is certainly a far cry from the 1,000 to 2,000 that Nollywood would have produced during the same time, but I guess it is a start…
15th June 2007 at 6:05 pm
On an indirectly related note, an interesting partial review of the Bollywood-Africa connection was just written up by Salon:
http://www.howardwfrench.com/archives/2007/06/14/bollywood_in_africa_is_it_getting_too_western/
21st June 2007 at 2:00 pm
well, I was back home (nigeria) last year, and I spent some time watching some movies. I hadn’t really watched that many nigerian movies in the last several years that I’d been out of nigeria. I was quite surprised that they had improved much more than I remembered. From the storyline to the production. The storyline especially. We still got some ways to go as far as the quality production goes; camera work, special effects, e.t.c.
Along the same lines, I watched a lot of nigerian artist music videos, the funny thing is that a lot of these music videos actually had decent production, but i couldn’t get over the lack of creativity. A lot of our artists sound more and more western (especially hiphop), and in the same token, their videos look like the generic hiphop video that’s rampant in the west right now. There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by hiphop, but come on now, if as an artist you don’t have something that makes your work unique/different, what’s the point of you being an artist?!
I did like these two musicians that I heard Dbanj and Passuma (or is it Passumeh). You should check ‘em out.
21st June 2007 at 11:02 pm
Supaman Dru!
You’re absolutely right about some music videos and music taking on a Western look, sound and feel. It would be nice to see our directors and artists adopt a more creative approach. It seems there’s a wave of new African musicians trying to emulate what they see in rap videos and to me, it’s quite sad. Western music has its own flavor and so should music coming out of Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, or Tanzania, along with the music videos.
I feel we’re going awry especially in music with more and more artists coming on the scene emulating/imitating the hip hop genre. Where’s the creativity of Salif Keita, Toumani Diabate, Omou Sangare, Rokia Traore, Fela Kuti, Femi Kuti, King Sunny Adey, Lady Smith Black Mambazo, Césaria Evora, Ali Farka Toure, Franco, Vusi Mahlasela, etc. in the new “African” music?
I hope that our up and coming artists take a cue from these African treasures and try to emulate them and come up with new and creative ways of making music that’s beautifully African.
4th July 2008 at 4:11 pm
Nigerian cultural music is not that hard to come by. When I am asked to score a cultural documentary I either go to the source and make a royalty free arrangement, or compose derived sounds.
I have a very powerful sampler/synth which will come about 80% close to that coulture’s sound.
You might be surprised what I and other of my peers can do!