My Beauty Best Teacher

Emily Witt writing in The Nation:

Nollywood is an industry whose defining characteristic is the absence of any centralized infrastructure. Just as many Africans have spurned the electricity grid, the land line and the corporation for the solar panel, the cellphone and the individual entrepreneur, Nollywood has eschewed the studio system and formal distribution networks for a DIY ethos....

On its authentic nature;

Fifty years after the first wave of independence, Nollywood might end up killing off a lingering overestimation of independence's potential to effect lasting social change. Without being nihilistic, Nollywood videos address the experience of globalized, urbanized Africa as it actually exists

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CNN reports:

Artist Talk with Zina Saro-Wiwa, Moderated by Claudia Calirman from Location One on Vimeo.
A group of artists is bringing Nigerian movie making to a new audience with a New York exhibition paying tribute to the "Nollywood" film industry.The exhibition is called "Sharon Stone in Abuja," after a 2003 Nollywood film, and is taking place at Location One gallery in the Soho district of New York.Its creator, Zina Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian-British artist and filmmaker, said: "Sharon Stone in Abuja pays homage to Nollywood. It looks at Nollywood narrative conventions and explores African emotional landscape."

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Spiegal Online on Nollywood:

At least 900 films will be produced in Nigeria this year, twice as many as in Hollywood. Nollywood is a $200-million (€148-million) business in a country where 70 percent of the population still lives on less than $1 a day, where residents can consider themselves lucky if the power is on for two hours a day, and where raw sewage runs through open canals along the streets. It is a country known throughout the world for corruption, Internet fraud, prostitution and oil, but certainly not for its film culture...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of Spiegal

In a Reuters report Katrina Manson contrasts the viability of rough and ready Nollywood fare with the art house but utterly dependent-on-subsidies 'FESPACO movies':

In the time it takes for a lovingly crafted art house movie to emerge as winner of the top prize at Burkina Faso's pan-African FESPACO cinema festival, Nigeria's prolific producers will already have churned out another 50 films.
They might be tales of cannibalism, sorcery and jealous girlfriends who shrink their errant boyfriends into bottles, but Nigeria's $450 million home video industry is the third biggest in the world, after America's Hollywood and India's Bollywood.
By contrast, FESPACO's filmmakers -- considered the best on the continent -- rely on dwindling donations, and scrabble for private financing and poor distribution deals amid a spate of cinema closures...[continue reading]

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Shadow and Act reviews Andy Okoroafor's Relentless:

Relentless Teaser
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Taking a very European and somewhat retrospective approach, tropes that are familiar to many Nollywood productions – prostitution, corruption, ritual slaughter… get the nouvelle vague treatment. The narrative is far from being dialogue heavy and, with regard to performances, it must be said that Gideon Okeke as the quiet, introspective loner, Obi, gives a perfectly sublimely restrained and understated performance. And for her first film performance, Nigerian songstress, Nneka (Nneka Egbuna) doesn’t do a bad turn as the prostitute, Honey, although her performance isn’t quite as nuanced as it could be. But while, the acting is somewhat uneven, the melodrama prevalent in your average Nollywood film is practically non-existent. In fact, existentialism and introspection are key themes that run throughout the film, and long, quiet takes are interspersed with rapid, short cuts symbolic of the underlying chaos of both Lagos city and the lead character’s inner turmoil. And in a country where continuous electricity supply isn’t a given, that the filmmaker committed to using natural light is no mean feat. No doubt, his use of 35mm film and an adept cinematographer is what gives the film in visual depth and texture...[continue reading]

 In an interview he gives his reasons for making the movie:

I wanted to make something that is aesthetic, a true reflection of Africa today and how we go about our normal everyday lives without any exaggeration or apology. A lot of what is out there doesn’t project the real Africa in my opinion. I also wanted to showcase how the history and politics of the place affect normal citizens going about their every day lives.

Read the entire Catch a Vibe Interview here

Alternate Vision highlights Pieter Hugo's work about Nollywood:

Nollywood produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation in Africa. The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted-Michael Stevenson Gallery

photo courtesy of Pieter Hugo

David Kaiza writing in the East African discusses the wider cultural impact of Nollywood:

The future impact of this is beyond what Pan Africanists a generation ago would have dared dream: Almost at one stroke, these films have ring-fenced the African world. Once, not too long ago, scholars looked at the African world as a fractured existential context in which Africans craved for Western objects by which to present themselves.

Elaborating on the burgeoning cultural capital of West Africa in comparison to East and Southern Africa he asks:

Were they more gifted? No. They had the advantage that the pre-colonial cultures their peoples developed remain, to this day, intact and wholesome. Along the length and breadth of Nigeria, annual cultural festivals provide a rich heritage of types, symbols, language, narratives and drama that creative Nigerians dip into time and again.

Ethan Zuckerman reporting on Nollywood:

Nigeria’s film industry is the third largest in the world in financial terms, with revenues in the neighborhood of $200-300m a year, and it’s likely that Nigeria produces as many films per year as Bollywood. Films are made quickly and inexpensively – the budget is usually under $100,000, sometimes under $10,000 and filming rarely takes more than a month. The vast majority of these films go straight to video. Indeed, there’s almost no other market for Nigerian films – cinema operators tell us that the production quality of films isn’t high enough to allow them to be shown in theatres. As much as 70% of Indian film revenue comes from screenings, as does a substantial, though much smaller portion for Hollywood. (This whole paragraph is cribbed entirely from Dayo Ogunyemi’s excellent slide deck on Nigerian Film Financing, prepared for a 2009 WIPO meeting.)
Given that over 90% of revenue comes from home video sales, piracy is a problem in the Nigerian space. The politics of this are complicated – some producers told us off the record that the same distributors they rely on to market and sell their licensed wares are involved with pirating other producer’s movies.

More here

The BBC on Nigeria's influence across Africa,In Ghana:

There is no mistaking the ancient cultural and linguistic ties between the neighbours. However, the post-colonial relationship has been characterised by a kind of sibling rivalry. Nigeria is highly respected for leading effective peacekeeping in the region, and at the same time mocked for failing to ensure peace in Nigeria. While Ghana takes pride in leading the continental way in independence, democratisation, and more recently, in sporting achievements.

For Kenyans:

What changed it all for us in Kenya was Nollywood. Nigeria became real and we were exposed to Nigerians telling their stories and not us being told stories about Nigerians. All of a sudden there were VCDs and DVDs being sold of Nollywood blockbusters. I have an uncle who has a mammoth collection of Nigerian movies and a few other relatives who swear on the integrity of Nigerian pastors.

Continue reading here

Time Magazine presents a slideshow with photographs from Pieter Hugo's book Nigeria's Movie Biz-Nollywood authored by Chris Abani:

click here

Open Access papers a boon for developing world scientists-SciDev
Supporting Nollywood the Directors Guild of Nigeria
Challenges for Craftspeople-BBC
Is Kenya teetering?-NYTimes
Challenges for the book industry-George Ngwane
Questioning the Nigerian Stock Exchange-Basil Enwegbara
The real Water Board-WashAfrica
South-South ties contd. Asian footsteps in the continent.
Power-sharing government is a recipe for “disaster”-FT
Leadership starts with you not him!-Joachim Ezeji
The Ghadafi virus-The Moor Next Door
Public-private investment partnerships in health systems-Output Based Healthcare
Examining Charles Soludo Nigeria's Central Bank Governor-234Next

The Economist reports on the suprising emergent success of Nigeria's Nollywood and the goverment's ham-fisted attempts at 'guidance':

Today, filmmaking employs about a million people in Nigeria, split equally between production and distribution, making it the country's biggest employer after agriculture...The industry has sales of $200m-300m a year...So far, the industry has grown with little or no help from Nigeria's government.

But in typical bungling style the goverment now seeks to 'help' the industry:

the government worries that Nigeria's film industry reflects badly on the country. “When I travel abroad, people complain to me about the voodoo themes and the poor technical quality compared to Western movies,” says Emeka Mba, director-general of the NFVCB.

Tyler Perry's dependency dig at Spike lee "We do not have to wait for someone to green light our projects, we can create our own intersections."(echoes of Nollywood vs FESPACO?) via TechMasai
How Menes Zenawi continues to strangle Ethiopia-Economist
Senegal plans first bond offering-WSJ
Contributions to Science, Invention and Technology-Africa Within via African Executive

Africa-Ready for Business reports on the various attributes of Nigeria's Movie industry and asks whether it is a "Diamond in the Ruff?":

What if....what if there was a product that could be made in Africa, boost local employment, earn foreign exchange, and enhance Africa's image outside of Africa all at the same time? That would be tremendous, am I right? In fact, just performing one of these items in good fashion, in any part of the world, would probably earn the business person or persons behind the effort major recognition. So, it should follow that anyone whom is able to simultaneously do all five of these functions, plus do it in Africa, should attract major international press coverage-right? If you are nodding your head "yes" that's exactly what I did too. However, there is such a product-that is made in Africa. Many of you may not have heard of it before, but I am sure that most of my readers who are from Africa are at least somewhat familiar with it. This brings us to today's topic-Nigerian cinema.