Nigerian film-makers offer something a little different to their global audience.
Nigeria has the world’s third largest film industry — ‘Nollywood’ — after the US and India.
Nigeria has perhaps the most distinguished literary tradition in Africa; Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri and Ken Saro-Wiwa are the best-known writers, but it is clear that Nigeria’s home video industry has no pretensions to high art. What it’s all about is money. Nollywood movies were originally financed by importers of blank video tapes as a way of promoting sales of their product — and commerce remains king.
And according to a recent Guardian Unlimited report, the street markets of London represent one of Nollywood’s most important distribution channels. Evidently Londoners just can’t get enough low-budget VHS schlocky horror and African bling.
But the directors of these amazingly successful genre hits have bigger plans:
“They sell a lot of our films in Peckham and in Dalston market [in London],” says Paul Obazele, the veteran producer on American Dream, who has already turned out four movies this year, and plans a US cinema opening for this latest effort. “But Peckham is becoming too small for us. We have decided to take on the world.”
We reckon they’re in with a chance. All they need is a noughties Tarantino to pick up on their mashup of Hollywood glam and Nigerian pop culture, pump up the violence, and glue on a saleably funktastic afrobeat soundtrack — the proto-house grooves of Fela Kuti’s Expensive Shit, maybe. Today Peckham, tomorrow the world.
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I have a completed manuscript, but not sure whether Nollywood would be interested. I believe it’s about time we bring in much more sophisticated screen dialogue.