Introduction
Every day, an estimated three video films are released into the Nigerian market. These films are commonly shot in an average of less than ten days with, in most cases, a budget of less than twenty thousand US dollars. The industry releases an average of 1200 titles a year with an average cost of production put at 20,000 US dollars. According to the record of the National Film and Video Censor Board, a total of about 1055 movies were released into the market in 2011. It is thought that an average of 50,000 copies are sold per title at a retail price of $2.5 per copy.1 On this basis, the Nigerian film industry generates more than three billion US dollars a year.2 This makes it the third largest growing film industry in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. This, of course, excludes the possible residual rights of the titles and further income and expenditure from ancillary costs such as making posters and jacket printing, importation of blank tapes and CDs, dubbing, publicity and marketing distribution costs.
However, with the new wave in the Nigerian film industry beginning, from 2000 to date, the industry has witnessed a tremendous improvement in its production and distribution techniques. High-quality films are now being produced with considerably bigger budgets averaging between ā¦40 million (US$250,000) and ā¦120 million ($750,000). Thus, by the end of 2013, the film industry reportedly hit a record-breaking revenue of ā¦1.72 trillion (US$11 billion). As of 2014, the industry was worth ā¦853.9 billion (US$5.1 billion), making it the third most valuable film industry in the world. It accounted for about 1.4% of Nigeriaās economy. This was attributed to the increase in the number of quality films produced and more formal distribution methods.3
Some credit Matt Steinglass with popularizing or legitimizing Nollywood, at least the industry, through his article, āWhen There is Too Much of a Not-Very-Good-Thing.ā4 Others credit BBC journalist Nick Moranās, investigation of the production/marketing of Nigerian films and their popularity within Africa and the wider African community, as helping popularize Nollywood, the term, though not coined by him. The term mirrors the names of Hollywood in America, and Bollywood in India. Moran produced a documentary entitled āA Game of Life,ā which looked at the phenomenon in detail. He was exposed to various elements of filmmaking that were unusual. For example, he was forced to shoot the documentary within ten days, as is the usual practice with the feature films produced in Nigeria.
A seemingly innocuous term, Nollywood actually brought to the fore the debate associated with the third space of visual articulation and third cinema. The term placed the practice of popular video film in Nigeria in the context of peripheral visual cultures, and in a way that distinguished its outside-ness and otherness from the dominant cinema. It rekindled the abandoned notion of the āThird cinema,ā which the Glasgow Screen Conference of 1983 positioned as practical guide to filmmaking in the Third World.5
The notion of Nollywood impelled the recognition of another regime of visual culture and practice outside what we already knew. It re-established/reinvigorated the need for what Wole Soyinka calls āinter-mutual interactionā between theatre and cinema.6 The Nigerian video film industry revalorizes what, to Soyinka, is a unique quality of the Yoruba cinema, the quality of being able to conquer the lure of the āaesthetic precepts that are moulded by Western cinema, which are expensive to produce in an African film.ā7 Therefore, Nigerian video films fit the description Soyinka had given about the earlier Yoruba cinema that, they are ānot only relevant to the social conditions of Nigeria,ā because they āreflect stories and spectacles based on everyday life and on the collective myths, but also because they provide aesthetic and economic alternatives to the Western super productions.ā8
Landmarks and Key Influences in Nollywoodās Evolution
This article reviews the history of the Nigerian film industry and how it developed into what is known today as the Nigerian video film industry or Nollywood. It traces the development from its beginning with the establishment of a Colonial Film Unit by the British for producing propaganda newsreels, which set the pace for the development of filmmaking in Nigeria, to the emergence of indigenous filmmakers who produced indigenous films to satisfy Nigerian peopleās yearnings for local films that reflected their cultural realities. It accounts for the factors that led to the shift from celluloid production to video production.
Although this chapter deals mainly with the historical landmarks in the development of the mediumās technology, it provides a context to understand the influence each historical stage in the evolution of the industry has had on the filmsā content and how each stage in the evolution could have possibly shaped audience reception.
The Colonial Era
The foundation of what we could call the Nigerian film industry today was laid by the British colonialists. They introduced film to Nigerians as a form of entertainment, but they actually had the intention of using it to justify their imperialism and to transmit Britishās values and norms. A European merchant, Stanley Jones, who screened the first newsreel material to an audience at Glover Memorial Hall in 1903, strengthened their interest in the use of films for their propaganda objectives because it confirmed to them that a large number of people were thrilled and attracted by the medium of communication. Although, Stanleyās aim was to relieve the monotony of elite social life in the burgeoning Lagos metropolis with the newsreel material, the great popularity of the novelty among the people in Lagos demonstrated its potential as a means of reaching and manipulating the people whose resistance to colonial rule was growing steadily.9 For propaganda purposes, the colonial government, set up a Colonial Film Unit in early 1906. The films unit produced newsreels and documentary films, which the Information Department of the Colonial Office screened to the colonial subjects, using mobile cinema technology. Projection units were built into Landrovers that travelled from one town square to another to screen the propaganda films, which depicted Britainās pomp and power. Thus, the major role of film at this time was to āfurther the overall aim of colonialism; to portray the development and civilizing mission of the British, with the hope that this would neutralize the rising wave of nationalist agitation for independence, and to convince the colonies that they had a common enemy in Germany.ā10
Until the First World War, the British colonial government, in partnership with the missionaries, monopolized the production, distribution and exhibition of films in Nigeria. But after the First World War, the Colonial government realized how greatly film had fascinated the majority of urban dwellers as a medium of entertainment and thus, allowed other expatriate settlers, like Lebanese, Greek and Syrian nationals, to set up and operate film distribution and exhibition companies. This then led to exhibition of feature films in theatres for more commercial objectives. The pioneer distribution and exhibition company, West African Pictures, was established in 1930 by Arif Barakat and Raakh Khali, both of whom were Lebanese.11 A few years after the inception of this distribution and exhibition company, many others, such as the Nigerian Motion Pictures Company, Plateau Cinema Limited, and the Algadama Company Limited sprang up all over the country. The business became so competitive that by 1970, Nigeria boasted approximately 250 cinema houses, most of which were equipped with 35 mm projectors.12 The cinema houses predominantly exhibited foreign films, such as American Hollywood movies, British spy films, Indian films and, much later, martial art/Kung Fu films from Hong Kong, China and Japan. Some researchers have noted that cinema audiences were particularly large in South Western Nigeria (in places like Lagos and Ibadan, which are predominantly occupied by the Yoruba), and the Northern parts of the country (like Kano and Kaduna that are majority Hausa).13
The Missionary Influence
Christian missionaries, who were interlocked with the colonial enterprise, also realized the potential of films in influencing and indoctrinating the colonized people. As a result, they produced films that were evangelical and meant to facilitate the conversion of the native peoples. These films were mainly screened in churches. It is on record that as early as 1907, the Catholic fathers who were stationed in Lagos screened religious films as part of their concerted efforts to proselytize in the colony. The Lagos Standard, which was then the most influential newspaper, criticized one of the films screened, as being biased, because āthe filmās portrayal of Judas as a Blackman and Simon Peter as a light-skinned person quietly insinuated a racist undertone.ā14
The film format used by the missionaries has exerted a powerful influence on the home video phenomenon in Nigeria, particularly those that were produced in the English Language, given their religious/moral content and context. Most of them had evangelical themes, while a handful of them were fundamentally didactic. In fact, some formed a specific genre, which Obododinma termed Christian videos.15 These Christian videos continue till to...