Southern Nigeria's video dramas started to be made in the early 1990s, gained phenomenal popularity, yielded profits to the businessmen who invested in them, and provided a hard-earned living for a few thousand others in the informal industry that produced the movies. They also brought forth an unsuspected thematic repertoire of narrative and visual components available for commentary and investigation. Dubbed ‘Nollywood’ in 2002 by the New York Times, the industry survived the transition from VHS to digital media, adopting the VCDs that had been pioneered in Asian markets instead of the more expensive DVDs. Nollywood's rise to triumph and decline took about fifteen years. In 2007, overproduction, receding consumer interest, and unrestrained market competition, which did not rule out pirating, had produced a total crisis. When in 2010 the effects of satellite television and unlicensed internet streaming sites had also become clear, professionals in the sector started to think that the end might not be far away. That is, by the time academics and journalists in the United States had discovered Nollywood and were celebrating it as the ‘third largest movie industry of the world’, Nigerian video drama had fallen into difficult straits. Nollywood operators persevered to find a solution. New talent was called in, professionalization accelerated, production values rose, and a new search was made to variegate and improve storylines. New Nollywood was born. The success of Nollywood dramas in the Nigerian diaspora suggested the possibility of export earnings, even though the prevailing informal structures meant that copyright restrictions could not be enforced consistently.
This collection turns its attention to the Nigerian diaspora, and explores Nollywood dramas as popular culture outside Nigeria, as models for local production in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, and as inspiration for an Afro-centrism from below in far-flung parts of the world. In a chapter overflowing with new findings, Alessandro Jedlowski chronicles the troubles of Old Nollywood and outlines the strategies producers put in place in the hope of breaking into export markets, which provides a good introduction to New Nollywood. J. Mistry and J. Ellapen show how South African Indian film production was influenced by Nigerian dramas. Heike Becker explores the reasons for the popularity of Nigerian videos among young professionals in Cape Town and Windhoek and finds that they resonate with Black Southern African notions of African identity. In an engaging essay, Jane Bryce comments on the lure of video movies in Barbados and notes that they make possible a revisioning of Africa, not as separate and past but as a participant in the global project of modernity.
Two chapters contribute to the understanding of video dramas and migration. Giovanna Santanera writes about migrants in Turin, Italy, and their responses to the movies from home. Katrien Pype focuses on the Pentecostal pastors in Kinshasa who make frequent trips to Lagos and use Nigerian videos for education. Reflecting circular religious migration between the two cities, this is a channel of influence that exists separately from the different reception of Nigerian videos by Congolese youth. Paul Ugor also mentions the Pentecostal connection with respect to the moralizing ending of Glamour Girls 2, which conjures the diaspora setting of college-educated Nigerian women who migrate to Italy for sex work.
A cluster of Nigerian videos made around the theme of diaspora and set in global locations is the topic of a comprehensive essay by Jonathan Haynes. He notes that these videos lack occult elements, which were much discussed in relation to earlier Nigerian creations. The production of Nigerian videos in diaspora locations – both by Nollywood hands who take advantage of the financial and logistical support of Nigerian businessmen in those places and by producers or directors who live in those locations as migrants – is the topic of a chapter by Sophie Samyn. She presents five migrant filmmakers from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and notes the heavy didactic intent of their productions. Claudia Hoffmann takes the case of three Nollywood films shot in the US and set in migrant circles in New York. Onookome Okome offers a reading of the comedy Osuofia in London as native criticism of the postcolonial state, rather than as a deluded example of it, and continues his enthusiastic endorsement of the collective message of the videos.
Babson Ajibade reports on the interesting experience of showing Nigerian videos to Swiss audiences and experimenting with re-editing them to see if their reception can be improved, only to conclude that the differences in audience expectation are too profound and that the export potential of Nollywood dramas to non-African Euro-American audiences may not be as great as optimistically assumed by some producers. Abdalla Uba Adamu offers a commentary on the remake of a southern Nigerian video in Kano to reflect on the independent identity of the southern and northern Nigerian production centres, but also on the relationships and mutual influences between them. Claudia Böhme traces the influence of Nollywood imagery in the newly forged Tanzanian genre of horror video movies. Finally, Matthias Krings describes and reflects on the new profession of video narrator in Tanzania, who mediates the viewing and reception of southern Nigerian videos.
This is a wonderful collection, bringing together a bounty of new information, descriptions and ideas. If there is one regret, it is that some of the chapters are very short and leave the reader wanting more. But most other chapters make up for this, offering well-rounded ethnographies and thought-provoking analyses. Overall, the book brings together a set of highly original contributions that advance knowledge of Nigerian video production.
