Hooray for Nollywood?

By David Parkinson

Who would have thought that Nigeria would become a world cinema superpower? From humble beginnings in 1992, the Nollywood video industry now out-produces Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany by around eight films to one. It averages four times as many movies a year as France and doubles the output of China and Japan. Even before the recession, the United States trailed in its wake and now only Bollywood can match its phenomenal prolificity.

It's estimated that some 11,000 full-length features were produced for VHS and V-CD release in Nigeria between 1992 and 2009. According to some sources, the country's largely self-taught directors are currently churning out upwards of 20 pictures per week. But nobody knows the exact figure, as the distribution network is so chaotic. Nevertheless, Nollywood has come to dominate the African movie market, as the stories it tells strike a much more resonant chord with local audiences than anything imported from Hollywood or Bollywood.

Discs of Osuofia in London, Dangerous Twins, Violated, Ikuku, Games Women Play and Madam Dearest have sold in their tens of thousands across the continent. Yet these uncouth comedies and tabloid melodramas will mean as little to most moviegoers as the names of front-rank directors like Tade Ogidan, Tunde Kelani, Kingsley Ogoro and the brothers Zeb and Chico Ejiro or such A list stars as Geneviève Nnaji, Ramsey Nouah, Mercy Johnson, Nkem Owoh and Kate Henshaw-Nuttal.

So how did the Nollywood phenomenon come about and where is it heading?

Unlike France, Britain did little to foster a film culture in its African colonies. Thus, while Adamu Halilu produced documentaries like It Pays to Care (1955) and Hausa Village (1958), Nigeria's first dramatic film, Segun Olusola's My Father's Burden, didn't appear until 1961. The first feature, Edward James Horatio's Two Men and a Goat was released five years later.

But it took American actor Ossie Davis's 1970 adaptation of Wole Soyinka's contentious play, Kongi's Harvest, to drive the nascent industry forward. Among its leading pioneers were Francis Oladele (Bullfrog in the Sun, 1972), Jab Adu (Bisi, Daughter of the River, 1977), Moses Olaiya (Aare Agbaye, 1983 & Mosebolatan, 1985) and Ade Afolayan (Ajani Ogun, 1976). However, the most accomplished director was Ola Balogun, who followed his feature debut, Alpha (1972), with hard-hitting dramas like Cry Freedom (1981) and Money Power (1982), which attracted international attention.

Balogun also adapted the landmark Yoruba stage play Aiye (1980), which had been written by Chief Hubert Ogunde, a political activist who had frequently been jailed for his anti-colonial campaigns and writings. The founder of Nigeria's first professional stage troupe, Ogunde directed such features as Jaiyesimi (1981) and Destiny (1986), as well as appearing alongside Pierce Brosnan in Bruce Beresford's Mister Johnson (1990).

Eddie Ugbomah also started out as an actor, taking a bit part in the first James Bond movie, Dr No (1962). Fifteen years later, he made his directorial bow with the heist thriller The Rise and Fall of Dr Oyenusi and reinforced his reputation with The Boy Is Good (1978), The Mask (1979) and Death of a Black President (1983). Indeed, such is Ugbomah's cachet that he is the only major filmmaker from the first wave of Nigerian cinema to remain popular in the Nollywood era, thanks to such provocative pictures as Great Attempt (1990) and Ha, Yoruba (1995).

Despite tackling a range of everyday issues, Nigerian cinema struggled to find a domestic audience. The majority of the country's picturehouses were run by Lebanese exiles and they preferred to screen more profitable offerings from Hollywood, Bollywood and Hong Kong to worthy homemade dramas of variable quality. Thus, few filmmakers recouped the cost of their expensive 35mm efforts, even after the military regimes of Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida respectively attempted to indigenise exhibition by confiscating foreign-owned cinemas in the mid-1970s and banning imported films under the 1986 Structural Adjustment Programme.

Such policies failed to prevent the collapse of the Nigerian film industry, however, and many directors drifted into television. With the hugely influential Yoruba travelling theatre tradition also in decline, shows like Matt Dadzie's Behind the Cloud, Lola Fani-Kayode's Mirror in the Sun, Zeb Ejiro's Ripples and Amaka Igwe's Checkmate introduced a new generation of stars, including Norbert Young, Pete Edochie, Liz Benson, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Segun Arinze and Fred Amata. But a dispute over revenue between the Nigerian Television Authority and its sponsors and advertisers saw production grind to a halt in 1992, with the gaps in the schedules being filled by such Mexican buy-ins as The Rich Also Cry, Wild Rose and No One But You.

According to Nollywood legend, Kenneth Nnebue, the Igbo owner of NEK Video Links in the eastern city of Onitsha, decided to start making his own movies because he had a surplus stock of videocassettes. However, he was a much shrewder operator than this and he and director Chris Obi Rapu (akaVic Mordi) persuaded small-screen icons like Bob Manuel-Udokwu, Kenneth Okonkwa, Rita Nzelu and Kanayo O. Kanayo to headline Living in Bondage, a morality tale in which an evil mob resorts to black magic to prevent the son of a polygamous chief from claiming his inheritance.

Nnebue distributed the drama exclusively on video and it reportedly sold 200,000 copies. With rampant street violence confining people to their homes after dark, enterprising producers recognised that there was, in every sense, a captive audience for a new form of home entertainment. It was this seizing of an opportunity to make a quick buck rather than any artistic or philanthropic impulse that sparked the Nollywood boom.

Although the calibre of equipment has improved markedly, with digitization facilitating both the shooting and editing of films, Nollywood production methods have changed little over the last 17 years. Most 90-minute features take between 3-5 days to complete and recording invariably occurs on the streets or in private houses and offices, as Nigeria currently only has one studio, the recently opened Studio Tinapa in the south-eastern city of Calabar.

Knowing that their work will only be seen on TV screens, directors usually stick to medium shots and close-ups and tend to use camera movements for psychological impact rather than aesthetic effect. However, they pack their pictures with cheap special effects, such as superimpositions, transformations and disappearances, as well as lightning bolts and explosions. Considering the sensationalist subject matter, such gimmicks are mostly effective, although Francis Onwochei's run in with a truck in Tade Ogidan's Raging Storm (1997) looks like something from a Georges Méliès féerie, as it's all too obviously a dummy that's crushed beneath the wheels.

Indeed, Nollywood often resembles America in the days before the Motion Picture Patents Company brought a semblance of order in 1908. The need for speed and economy often precludes retakes and performances are frequently exaggerated or stiff. Moreover, mistakes are sometimes left to stand and, as many directors are reliant on cameras with built-in microphones, the sound quality is often poor, with either ambient noise or booming music drowning out the dialogue.

Audiences don't seem to mind, however, and a feature costing 3 million Naira can usually expect to take around 10 million Naira (roughly $75,000) in its first week of release. Until recently, most films were edited on Adobe Premiere and sold on videocassettes at either Idumota Market on Lagos Island or at Iweka Road in Onitsha. However, since the switch to Video Compact Discs in 2006, the country's more significant directors have taken a greater interest in distribution and a supply network has also grown up around neighbourhood stores and websites.

Nollywood movies could never be accused of being overly poetic or spectacular. However, they more than compensate with their soap operatic convolution, pace and intensity. Furthermore, their short lead times mean that they can be much more topical than a modern American feature could ever hope to be. Rapid turnover also means that producers can respond to shifts in public taste with greater alacrity. Thus, even though it reportedly scooped $200 million on a $60 million outlay in 2006, Nollywood has more in common with YouTube than a conglomerated industry like Hollywood.

Despite the odd comedy and Hausa musical, the majority of Nollywood films are bleak reflections of a troubled society. Acclaimed titles like Amaka Igwe's Rattlesnake (1994), Chika Onukwufor's True Confession (1995), Chico Ejiro's Onome (1996), Tade Ogidan's Hostages and Fred Amata's Dust to Dust (both 1997) started the trend of using video to condemn injustice and immorality. Subsequently, a combination of morbidity, violence, greed, superstition, prejudice, envy, betrayal, degradation, forbidden love, backwardness and corruption informs almost every plotline and contributes to an Afro-Pessimism that runs counter to the more positive image that the continent is so keen to present to the outside world. Yet these garish melodramas are lapped up by vast audiences way beyond Nigeria and its diaspora.

Many Nollywood films evoke local cultural connections by updating myths and legends. Others play on urban fears, while others still tackle emotive social issues in a manipulative manner reminiscent of the "show sin, then condemn it" style devised by Cecil B. DeMille and Erich von Stroheim in 1920s Hollywood. Even during the years of military dictatorship, there was a surprising latitude in what could be depicted on screen. Nudity and sexual simulation are still frowned upon, as is blood letting. But any amount of murder, robbery, ritual sacrifice, rape, physical abuse, suicide and sorcery crop up in even the most realistic pictures. Restraint is certainly not a word uttered with much frequency on a Nollywood film set.

Chico Ejiro is the most prolific Nollywood director with over 100 titles to his credit, including Hit the Street (2004), which turns on the sexual skullduggery used by three female bank workers to attract new customers. With adultery, AIDS, embezzlement and evangelical Christianity among its themes, this is a typically lurid story that seizes the attention at the outset and ratchets up the violence and vulgarity until the shocking end. Lancelot Imasuen employs similar tactics in The Apple (2002) in order to tell the story of 15 year-old Chioma Onwuka, who defies her parents to romance a man twice her age. However, she comes to regret marrying him when she realises she's too inexperienced in both the kitchen and the bedroom to satisfy his needs. Yet this shocker pales beside Francis Onwocki's Claws of the Lion (2006), in which the debuting Ekwi Onwuemene gives a sterling performances as a girl who is impregnated and infected with HIV by the father she never knew.

Elsewhere, there was prostitution in Zeb Ejiro's Domitilla (1997); incest in Tade Ogidan's Raging Storm; an attempted matricide in Fred Amata's The Addict (2001); drug use and a thwarted rape in Adim Williams's Jealous Lovers; torture in Ladi Ladebo's Heritage; sororicide in Tchidi Chikere's Blood Sister (all 2003) and domestic abuse in Izu Ojukwu's Sitanda (2007). There were also child killings in Chico Ejiro's Festival of Fire (2002) and Tade Ogidan's Dangerous Twins (2004), while a grieving mother is presented with her dead infant's corpse in Hit the Street. Indeed, the mistreatment of women and children is a recurring Nollywood theme, with the custom of honor killing widows being highlighted in Tade Ogidan's Saving Alero (2000) and Jimi Odumosu's The Mourning After (2004), which respectively starred Uche Obi-Osotule and Bimbo Akintola.

Obi-Osotule also took the lead in Amaka Igwe's Thunderbolt (2000), which sees a trainee civil servant consult a faith healer after she learns she has been cursed with a magun that will kill anyone with whom has sex. This is one of the myriad one of Nollywood films concerning juju witchcraft. Among the other cult favourites are Tunde Kelani's Ti Oluwa Nile (1993), Zeb Ejiro's two-parter Sakobi - The Snake Girl (1997) and Chucks Mordi and Kingsley Kerry's rough-and-ready horror romp Bleeding Rose (2007), in which Olu Jacobs's eccentric professor uses his unnatural powers to equally deadly effect, as he sends five students into the forest of Agbabiaka to find the plant that could lead to a major pharmaceutical breakthrough.

It's perhaps understandable that the government of a would-be progressive state has done little to censor movies that challenge primitive beliefs rooted in more irrational times. But, considering the depth of the divisions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, it's more surprising to discover that religious faith is not a taboo topic for Nollywood film-makers. Indeed, Amaka Igwe's Apostle Kasali (2004) even centres on a Muslim convert who becomes a firebrand preacher and miracle worker.

Politics and national security are similarly deemed to be fair game, with Tunde Kelani staging a ministerial assassination in Saworoide (1999) and exposing the corruption and brutality of a provincial governor in The Campus Queen (2004). Zeb Ejiro considered the kidnapping of the head of state in The President Must Not Die, while Teco Benson examined the threat posed by terrorists in State of Emergency (both 2004). Even Nollywood's most expensive picture to date, Izu Ojukwu's Across the Niger (2004), had a political theme, as the Romeo and Juliet romance between Kanayo O. Kanayo and Rekia Atta was set against the backdrop of the 1967-70 civil war.

It's not all controversy and introspection, however, as the most commercially successful Nollywood movie is a comedy. Directed by Kingsley Ogoro, Osuofia in London (2003) stars Nkem Owoh as a country bumpkin whose shortcomings are exposed when he goes to London to discuss his late brother's will and becomes convinced that white sister-in-law Mara Derwent is part of his inheritance. Some protested at Ogoro's unpatriotic mockery of Nigerian attitudes. But sales reached an unprecedented $8.9 million and a sequel followed to chronicle Derwent's culture clash misadventures in Owoh's village.

This fascination with foreign influences also informed Andy Chukwu's `am in Love (2006), a parody of the perennial Nollywood themes of romance and revenge that follows the efforts of popular midget double act Chinedu Ikediese and Osita Ilheme to prevent the former's statuesque girlfriend from marrying a hunk newly arrived from America. But nowhere is the overseas influence more keenly felt than in the musicals produced in the Hausa language, which slavishly follow the Bollywood masala formula.

Based in the northern town of Kano, the Hausa industry acquired the inevitable nickname of Kannywood as its annual output grew to around 150 features. Many titles drew on the brand of romantic fiction known as Soyayya. But while this was mostly written by women, Umma Ali (Kadora Turga Pata) stands out as one of Hausa's few female directors alongside such male counterparts as Abdulkarim Mohammed (Waiwaye Adon Tafiye), Ado Ahmed (In Da So Da K'auna), Ibrahim Mandawari (Turmin Danya & Gimbiya Fatima), Joe Ajiboe (Shamsiye), Auwalu M. Sabo (Gagare), Bala Arias (Tsuntsu Mai Wayo) and Ali Nuhu (Khusufi).

Kannywood has its own roster of stars, including actors Kemi Yesufu, Ibrahim Maishunku, Sharrif Anuni Alhan, Bashir Bala, Ahmad Nuhu, Sanni Danja and Abba El-Mustapha, and actresses Zainab Idris, Kubura Dacko, Hajara Musa and Safiya Musa. However, the most infamous celebrity is Maryam Usman. Her stock was high following the Ali Nuhu dramas Kambun So, Aska and Hiyana. But she became a pariah in 2007 after boyfriend Usman Bobo released a sex tape under the title The Lost Honour of Maryam Usman.

The region's Islamic authorities had already invoked Sharia Law to bring Kannywood to a standstill in 2000. However, the illegal import of Yaruba and Bollywood films had prompted a strictly regulated renaissance. Indeed, Hausa cinema even had its Grace Kelly moment when Maijidda Ibrahim became the second wife of the Emir of Kano and the traditionalists were forced to accept that not all actresses were prostitutes. But the Maryam scandal provoked a backlash that saw the imposition of a rigid censorship code and the banning or suspension of such supposedly indecent stars as Zahiyya Sulaiman, Farida Jalal, Zainab Umer and Fati Mohammed.

Kannywood continues to have its problems with the Sharia establishment. But the Igbo and Yaruba stars of Nollywood are widely regarded as role models, whose films set fashion trends, coin slang terms and bring about social change. Among the superstars are actresses Geneviève Nnaji, Mercy Johnson, Kate Henshaw-Nuttal, Rita Dominic, Funke Akindele, Bimbo Akintola and Joke Silva, while the male pin-ups include Ramsey Nouah, Nkem Owoh, Jim Iyke, Desmond Elliot, Sam Dede, Demi Brainard and Olu Jacobs.

However, such is Nollywood's prodigious rate of production that new stars emerge all the time, with the current crop of newcomers including actresses Uche Jombo, Ini Edo, Ebube Nwagbo, Regina Askia, Fathia Balogun, Mercy Aigbe, Tonto Dike, Rukki Sanda and Ireti Osayemi, and actors Mike Ezuruonye, Nonso Diobi and the Ghanaian Van Vicker. Yet while their faces adorn magazine covers and they are constantly sought for their views on everything from politics to fast food, few Nollywood performers have made an international impact. That said, actress Stephanie Okereke did go to the States to make her directorial debut with Through the Glass in 2008.

Nollywood is constantly accused of pandering to the public's taste for lowbrow melodrama. But this is a bottom-line business and producers (known as "marketers") prefer bumper disc sales to critical acclaim. Consequently, they rarely afford final cut to even the most successful directors, who are forced to couch their social, political or cultural concerns in the most populist terms in order to keep working. Audiences want stars, special effects, sin and sensationalism and those with artistic aspirations have little option but to tow the line, as there's no point having something to say if there's nobody listening.

However, around the turn of the century, a cabal of leading directors decided to take matters into their own hands. Emulating United Artists, Pedro Obaseki, Tade Ogidan, Tunde Kelani, Fred Amata, Kingsley Ogoro, Mahmood Ali-Balogun, Charles Novia, Teco Benson, Zack Orji and Ralph Nwadike founded the Filmmakers Cooperative of Nigeria. In addition to setting up their own distribution outlet in Surulere, they also established the Quality Control Committee and the Committee for the Control of Film Releases to improve the standard of Nollywood pictures by reducing output and combating plagiarism.

The Motion Pictures Practitioners Association, the Actors Guild and the Nigerian National Film Corporation also came into existence around this time. But the principal body remains the National Film and Video Censors Board, which is responsible for registering new releases and tallying annual turnover. The NFVCB also issues the NTTB certificates that are supposed to prevent under-18s from watching unsuitable material. However, as over 90% of all Nollywood features are rated Not for Television Broadcast, the tag is little more than a sop to conservative pressure groups and singularly fails to prevent families from sitting down together to enjoy the most dubious delights.

The NFVCB performs a more valuable service in attempting to counter piracy. But this is something of a losing battle, as there are 23,000 illegal video clubs in Nigeria and few of them purchase their V-CDs from approved suppliers. This means that marketers often make losses on even their bestselling films and they frequently withhold fees from their powerless casts and crews.

Revenue is also lost to websites offering illegal downloads and the counterfeiters who smuggle discs into neighbouring Ghana, Niger and Benin. But such is the vogue for Nigerian features across Africa - even in Francophone sub-Saharan territories - that satellite services like MultiChoice and Nollywood Movies now do a brisk trade. Moreover, with more titles than ever being selected for film festivals, Nollywood is even beginning to establish an international niche. In 2004, Obi Emelonye's Echoes of War became the first Nollywood feature to secure a UK theatrical release and London regularly plays host to the Afro Hollywood Awards. There is even a Nollywood Foundation in Los Angeles.

However, with 63% of urban households having a VCR or DVD player, Nollywood will always be most reliant on its core domestic market. It's estimated that there are more TV screens in Nigeria than there are taps providing clean water and more V-CDs than there are school textbooks. Given this emphasis on home viewing, it's hard to see how the ambitious current programme of cinema building is going to pay dividends. But Nollywood's movers and shakers have other big plans, with the Abuja Film Village in Lagos State being developed as the country's first studio facility and theme park.

One of Nollywood's greatest strengths over the last two decades has been its lack of formal organisation. The loose structure has allowed new talents to find their voice and generate word-of-mouth followings that would have been denied them in industries more dependent on congested screen space. However, incessant copycatting has stifled creativity and veteran director Don Pedro Obaseki, poet Odia Ofeimon and film historian Onookome Okome are among those worried that Nollywood has plateaued and could rapidly decline in the hands of mercenary marketers, opportunistic hacks and proselytising religious activists.

For 10 years, Bankole Bello's Oselu (1996) was the sole celluloid feature to have been submitted to the NFVCB since Nollywood's inception. However, in 2006, Jeta Amata shot The Amazing Grace on 35mm and persuaded British actor Nick Moran to star as 18th-century slave trader John Newton. A new wave of non-Nollywood hopefuls, many of whom have trained abroad, is hoping to follow Amata's example, among them Saddik Balewa, Newton Aduaka, Odion P. Agboh, Niji Akanni, Amos Oyiwe, Chikeh Ibekwe, Femi Kyode, Tosin James Adega and Tunde Babaloa. But, for the moment, Nollywood retains its supremacy. Just don't expect to see one of its titles being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film any time soon.