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LEADER 00000ngm a2200385 i 4500
003 CaSfKAN
005 20140402113757.0
006 m o c
007 vz uzazuu
007 cr una---unuuu
008 150429p20152007cau056 o vleng d
028 52 1139773|bKanopy
035 (OCoLC)911511339
040 CaSfKAN|beng|erda|cCaSfKAN
043 e-fr---
099 Streaming Video Kanopy
245 00 This Is Nollywood.|h[Kanopy electronic resource]
264 1 [San Francisco, California, USA] :|bKanopy Streaming,
|c2015.
300 1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 57 min.) :
|bdigital, .flv file, sound
336 two-dimensional moving image|btdi|2rdacontent
337 computer|bc|2rdamedia
338 online resource|bcr|2rdacarrier
344 digital
347 video file|bMPEG-4|bFlash
500 Title from title frames.
518 Originally produced by California Newsreel in 2007.
520 The story of Nigeria's home grown film industry, which is
gaining recognition as a cultural and cinematic
phenomenon. First came Hollywood, then Bollywood and now
Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry, which released
2000 feature features in 2006 alone. Where else can you
shoot a full-length dramatic film for {dollar}10,000 in 7
days? Until recently little known outside its own country,
THIS IS NOLLYWOOD explains why Nigerian video production
is becoming recognized as a phenomenon with broad
implications for the cultural and economic development of
Africa. The center of the Nigerian film industry is Lagos,
a chaotic, sprawling metropolis of 15,000,000 people with
a life expectancy of 51 years and average daily income
under {dollar}1. Nollywood is a {dollar}250,000,000 year
industry; each videodisk costs about {dollar}2 and sells
an average of 50,000 copies (although a hit can reach
hundreds of thousands of sales) with returns to the
producers often seven to ten times the production costs.
The industry is wholly self-sustaining, receiving no
foreign or government assistance. Directors of these films
are proud to admit that their intended audience is the
average Nigerian not international film festivals. There
are an amazing 55,000,000 video players in Nigeria
reaching 90% of the population. California Newsreel
considered a number of recent films on Nigerian cinema
before choosing THIS IS NOLLYWOOD because it offered the
most intimate and accurate portrait of the technical,
economic and social infrastructure of the industry. At the
beginning, a crew member boasts that they will show us
step by step how Africans can make movies without any
outside help faster than anyone else in the world. The
film follows a typical shoot from first day to last, while
the director, producer, actors, crew members and notables
from the industry, tell us how it all works, why they do
it and why they believe locally produced media is
essential for Africa. Acclaimed director, Bond Emerwua,
has a nine day schedule and {dollar}20,000 to film an
action adventure, Check Point. Set in a village outside
Lagos, it tells the story of two innocent men robbed and
shot by rogue cops who are eventually brought to justice.
The film was made against the backdrop of a campaign to
clean up the notoriously corrupt Nigerian police force.
Emerwua says he makes ‘edutainment’ because it entertains
to get an audience and recoup its costs, but at the same
time conveys a relevant social message. Nigerian films
regularly involve such controversial issues as AIDS,
women’s rights, the occult and ethnic differences. Emerwua
believes Nollywood films are the most effective way of
reaching Nigeria’s vast population of 140,000,000,
Africa’s largest. Shooting conditions, we soon discover,
are much more improvised and unpredictable than in the
U.S., Hong Kong or Mumbai. Emerwua does not work in a
studio but in the streets and countryside, while everyday
life flows around him. Sometimes directors simply draft
extras out of passing crowds. One day on location, a
neighborhood mosque broadcasts non-stop prayers most of
the day, bringing the production to a halt. A tropical
downpour ruined another day’s shooting. Frequent power
outages require that every crew take along a generator.
The lead actor, a current Nollywood star, arrived several
days late and could devote only four days to the project;
apparently, he had accepted roles in three films
simultaneously. The producer and director remain
surprisingly calm during all these costly and unforeseen
delays explaining that in Nigeria ‘filmmaking is an
economic adventure.’ Emerwua reflects that ‘In Nigeria, we
do not count walls, we figure out ways to climb over
them.’ Among all the chaos, he maintains a professional
and cooperative set, managing to shoot a remarkable 13
scenes in one day. Industry veteran Immanuel France
describes how this unique system of producing films grew
in response to a crisis in the Nigerian film industry at
the beginning of the 1990s. Because of civil unrest people
stopped attending public theatres and many closed. Then
Nigerian television started importing cheap Latin American
telenovelas rather than supporting original local
production. Nigerian filmmakers had no choice but to find
a way to produce inexpensive films for a new market. Low
cost video, an innovative technology for feature film
production at the time, provided an answer and a new
outlet: the VCR. Before the rise of Nollywood, Nigerians
saw mostly American Westerns, Hong Kong Kung Fu movies and
Bollywood musicals. In contrast, Nollywood appeals to a
hunger for indigenous stories with characters and
situations audiences can easily relate to. The popularity
of these films has spread across English-speaking Africa
and their stars have become celebrities from Zambia to
Ghana. Nollywood also provides a vital, constantly up-
dated link between the vast Nigerian diaspora and their
home culture. Thousands of Nigerian films are already
available to immigrants to the United States both on DVD
and over the internet. The Nollywood phenomenon is
doubtless an expression of the resourcefulness and vigor
of Nigerian society. But it also raises questions about
the potential social impact of commercial cinema,
especially in the developing world. Does Nollywood in fact
depict daily Nigerian life any more accurately or
incisively than Hollywood portrays American society? Does
it dare expose the kleptocracy which for forty years has
kept its citizens impoverished by pocketing the nation:s
immense oil wealth? As for cultural preservation,
Nollywood narratives seem more influenced by international
genres like the action thriller and the soap opera than
Yoruba drama or Ibo folk tales. Can we reasonably hope
that a cinematic Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka will emerge
out of the frenetic deal-making of Lagos? Superstar Saint
Obi optimistically predicts that “I believe very soon we
are not only going to have better movies, we’ll have that
original Nigerian movie.” For the time being, hard-pressed
Nigerians are at least getting their own version of the
vicarious excitement and undemanding escapism, which have
become the prime commodities of the Information Age. For
us, these films may give clearer insights into the
apprehensions and aspirations of the average Nigerian than
any documentary or political drama. "This documentary film
is a partial but intensely focused image from a dense
picture: the current cinematic phenomenon in Nigeria which
its title proclaims. With an admirable sense of humor, it
captures the gritty and confounding optimism that keeps
Nigeria going, against all rational expectations. In its
innovative approach to narrative and the contingencies of
production characteristic of the industry, This is
Nollywood becomes the drama it seeks to document, without
losing direction." - Akin Adesokan, Indiana University
"Richly comprehensive in scope and insight, the film
vividly captures the austere universe, entrepreneurial
verve, hardy outlook, and production dynamics of
Nollywood’s creative ferment. The resilient voices of key
practitioners blend with deft editorial touches to yield
invaluable depth and dimensions to the complex
relationship between this phenomenon, its generative
society, and the search for viable models of African
cinema." - Jude G. Akudinobi, PhD, UC Santa Barbara.
"Extraordinary in scope and profundity, the film
succinctly renders, in engaging tones, the unique mixture
of infrastructural limitations and originative wealth that
characterize Nollywood’s innovative, revolutionary
approach to film-making." - Fr. Thomas Ebong, Ph. D.,
Independent Film Scholar. The strategy of presenting the
whole enormous Nigerian video phenomenon through one of
its parts-the making of a single film-works brilliantly,
vividly illustrating the extraordinary conditions under
which the filmmakers work and evoking the personality of
this film culture with quiet sympathy." - Jonathan Haynes,
Long Island University. "This is Nollywood captures the
problems and dynamism of making movies in Nigeria while
giving a vibrant introduction to this fast growing movie
industry. Dealing with rainstorms, missing stars, and
power cuts, we see the pressure on Nigerian moviemakers
and the guerilla filmmaking they have invented to cope. As
the director Bond Emeruwa says, ’In Nollywood we don’t
count the walls, we have learned ways to climb them’." -
Brian Larkin, Barnard College; Columbia University.
538 Mode of access: World Wide Web.
650 0 Motion picture industry|xMotion pictures|xProduction and
direction|zAfrica|zNigeria.
650 0 Digital cinematography|zAfrica|zNigeria.
655 7 Documentary films.|2lcgft
700 1 Sacchi, Franco |efilm director.
710 2 Kanopy (Firm)
856 40 |uhttps://naperville.kanopy.com/node/139774|zAvailable on
Kanopy
856 42 |zCover Image|uhttps://www.kanopy.com/node/139774/external
-image