The following is mostly based on an article in The Economist. Corrections are gladly accepted:
Nollywood (1992- ), short for Nigerian Hollywood, is the Nigerian film industry, based in Lagos. It is the world’s second largest film industry. It passed Hollywood in 2009 but Bollywood in India still turns out more films. Across Africa Nollywood films now do better than Hollywood ones.
- Main language: English
- Format: straight to DVD
- Length: 50 to 75 minutes
- Price: $1 (1.8 p)
Some are complete on YouTube (with ads).
Nollywood puts out about 30 new films a week – about 1500 a year. Because there are few cinemas in Africa and because many people make as little as a dollar a day, they go straight to disc and sell for a dollar. Producers have two weeks to make back their money and turn a profit – after that the pirates will have taken over, selling copies of their own.
The pirates are not all bad: they have helped to spread Nollywood films to Anglophone Africa and beyond, something Nollywood would not have done on its own so quickly.
The films seem to be cheaply made compared to Hollywood ones – because they are! It is unwise to make a film for more than $100,000 (3,000 crowns) because of the pirates. Most films are made for much less than that, being shot on location in Lagos, not in studios or back lots. Nollywood did not take off until digital cameras and computers brought down the cost of shooting and editing a film.
Nollywood is helped by the fact that most African television is state-run and therefore generally terrible and that the Internet there is slow. They are also helped by Hollywood’s high prices and lack of interest in producing entertainment for African families.
Unlike Hollywood, Nollywood films have known African actors, and not just those from Nigeria either (whites, when they appear, play bit parts). They also deal with common African themes, like moving from the country to the city, and feature more witchcraft and open Christian faith.
It also presents Africa in a truer, more everyday light than the apocalyptic American stereotypes of war, famine, disease and bad rulers. As one director, Lancelot Idowu, put it:
Nollywood is the voice of Africa, the answer to CNN.
That is a Nigerian point of view: other Africans fear Nigerianization. Their children, for example, pick up the Nigerian accent and snap their fingers like Nigerians do.
Most films are in English even though most producers are Igbo. That allows them to be sold throughout Nigeria and beyond. Over 125 million people in Africa know English, the most widely known language in Black Africa. In Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone and southern Africa it is not just a language of the well-to-do.
Nollywood as we know it started in 1992 when Kenneth Nnebue in Lagos bought too many blank videotapes from Taiwan. To sell them off he made “Living in Bondage” with the help of a theatre director. It became a hit, selling more than a half million copies.
See also:
Was just reading this article on the train 10 minutes ago.
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i want to joined you guys out there
and i also want be in Nollywood.
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Never seen any Hollywood films, but I think it’s a very, very good thing it exists:
Nollywood is the voice of Africa, the answer to CNN.
This is important. We all need antidote to CNN.
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My boyfriend is from Sierra Leone and he told me Nollywood was the 2nd largest film industry but I didnt believe him. We watched a couple of Nollywood movies together, and while the storyline and plot was good the cinematography was less than thrilling. Certainly hard for an American to watch.
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This is amazing – the 2nd largest film industry in the world? I love it…
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Good post! And fine example of the Africa that usually gets ignored by the western media, because it is not sexy and does not fit in with the stereotypical stuff we are seeing usually on tv and magazines.
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I remember when “Living in Bondage” was released, as children I played clapping pages while singing a song inspired by the movie. Coincidentally, I’m doing some research on Nollywood for an essay I’m working on. The more I learnt about Nollywood, the more I’m surprised like I had no idea “Living in Bondage” was of such importance. My most vivid Nollywood memory was “Violated” with Kate Henshaw.
I never believed Nollywood was popular across Africa because in Nigeria, middle- and upper class parents sometimes outrightly banned their children from watching Nigerian movies. But a few years ago, I had the pleasure of hanging out with a crowd of Africans (from Kenya and Botswana mostly) and they loved Nigerian movies. Which then leads me to something I read earlier that mentioned the “Nigeriasation” of Africa…but I shouldn’t write that essay here!
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Great post.
I agree, Sam. Western (white) media is usually concerned with their view of the world and no one else’s
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That’s good to know. great post.
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Nollywood movies to Africa are like Tyler Perry movies to Afrrican-Americans. They’re cheaply made and simplistic in theme.
The only Nollywood movie I saw that I liked was a movie called Someone goes to England, about a poor African man whose successful brother in England died and left him his fortune, but when he went to England, his brother’s white girlfriend and business partner try to scam him out the brother’s estate.
It’s a fish out of water story.
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Paraphrasing (three-week-old) articles from The Economist and improperly citing them? This is what the blog has come to? I guess it beats blaming whitey for all your problems.
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@e: well some of us do not read The Economist so isn’t it good that we get that from here?? 😀
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E:
Was there some big news about Nollywood from the last three weeks that I missed?
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Hello one and all (esp blog owner Abagond)
Love your site and have been trawling it for a while blah, blah, blah etc, etc.
Too chicken to comment til now purely because I wont make much sense nor am I educated enough on most of the subjects you cover….
Excuses over……..
Can you do some posts on Ghana or have you got some links to articles on it that you’ve done already please.
I’m very interested to find out about the history behind the coup (take over) around 1978/ 79 by JJ Rawlings the former president and how Ghana has changed, the varied traditions and tribes… anything.
Also off topic, Paul Boateng (the designer). Would like to nominate him for the black men nomination post based on his success rather than looks.
How about a post on African designers who have broken into “main stream” market etc?
Thank you!
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Maryam wrote: “Also off topic, Paul Boateng (the designer).”
Paul Boateng is a British politician; Ozwald Boateng is the designer — and a good-looking one, too
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@ BleuParfum,
Thank you! I was racking my brain for his name lol.
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love nollywood movies because i’m familar with the culture
hollywood bores me,and seem to be making the same scenario over and over again with the same faces and characters. nollywood sometimes have the same faces too but they are my reaity
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*Chic noir cracks abagond across the knuckles with a ruler* Abagond, what you did here was blasmy. genevieve is one of the most beautiful women on the planet. why did you post such a bad photo of her??? Otherwise good post. i love nigerian movies. you can find a little of everything there. i like the romance movies.
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My family is Cameroonian and yeah.. the African film market is a very big deal. I wasn’t aware that so many of the films came from Nigeria, though. They always have interesting plots, a lot of them a lot better than movies you see in America, but as Jessica said, the cinematology isn’t the best (understandably) and neither is the audio. There’s a lot of shouting when some people talk and often the audio makes it sound weird. If you’ve seen one of these movies you’ll get what I mean haha. And then sometimes the drama of them is so ridiculous its funny.
Whatever, I hope the film market grows and becomes even more successful so Africans can enjoy and people around the world can see that Africa isn’t just aids and huts like they show on American television
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Chic Noir said:
“*Chic noir cracks abagond across the knuckles with a ruler* Abagond, what you did here was blasmy. genevieve is one of the most beautiful women on the planet. why did you post such a bad photo of her??? Otherwise good post. i love nigerian movies. you can find a little of everything there. i like the romance movies.”
She is beautiful. I think she is the most beautiful Nollywood actress of all. But I did not want some glamour shot. Instead I wanted a still from a film with a known face in it. Here she plays an evil sister, so she is doing what she does best: act.
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(I have not yet read any of the comments above, but I will. I am accessing this blog post directly from my e-mail tonight.)
I’m not a fan of pirated DVDs and videos (the whole copyright infringement thing). Ironically, it was a pirated DVD that I viewed at someone else’s house that introduced me to “Nollywood.” I viewed two DVDs (cannot recall the titles right now), and I believed I was getting a glimpse at one aspect of authentic Nigerian life. In no way, though, could I discern that the conditions spoke for the whole of one country on the Mother Continent.
I hope to have the opportunity to view more of “Nollywood” at film festivals.
Thanks for posting about “Nollywood” films.
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The Ghanian films are quite interesting as well.
Peace!
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awesome
http://www.izognmovies.com/
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Hope their films are not as crappy as those turned out by Bollywood with it’s staple fare of song, dance, blood, sweat and tears and the mandatory visual display of the Oedipus Complex. Hey you Nollywood wallahs why dont you make Hindi films so as to teach the Bollywood tricksters new dogs …
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They are veritably poisoning our culture. .It is hard to avoid Nigerian films in Africa. The Nigerian business capital Lagos is said by locals to have produced more films than there are stars in the sky. Only the government employs more people..Nigerian films are as popular abroad as they are at home.
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i admit, i’ve never seen a nollywood film. but from what i’ve seen on ohtvbox.com, i’m definitely considering it.
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I love Nigerian Movies a lot, more n more if Omotola, Geneviv n Ini r playing!
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