We’re Nollywood

We’re Nollywood

Nollywood represents Nigeria, typically. Not just because we consume with ease, its productions, but because it shows us as we are, bare, sometimes without artistic clothing.

Some of the productions might be cheap and the storylines trite but who cares! There is a growth level, visible by the world media. The likes of CNN have done special features on the growth and contribution of people like Ms Peace Osigwe who abandoned law and other classic ventures to set up platforms to encourage the movie hustle. Ms Emem Isong left the bank and got herself a leather boot and borrowed money to beautify the pictures and the stories we see on screen.

With enviable assistance from Ghana, quasi-pornography comes by easily. Some ladies can’t just keep a piece of clothes on their alluring bodies, especially in the heat of the light on set. They just have to drop it and grab the lips of the nearest actor and kiss the life out of it until the end credit dances away, before our eyes.  

It’s over one hundred days since school girls of the Chibok community were abducted. It took the production team of a certain media outfit no time to come up with a flick entitled “Missing Girls”. Amazingly, it has a first and second part. I have a salient part of me reiterating that a third part would be released in less than a month. It must have been a hit. But miraculously, the girls haven’t been rescued. The stories, I am sure, is that of speculations and the running around of soldiers in the famed Sambisa forest.

Whether the story is that of the missing school girls or of the situation of the country, the fact that the plight of a people is on the big screen, whether shot with a camcorder or with a mobile phone is commendable. It doesn’t matter. It is exciting to watch the stories on screen. The comical characters make life easier. Mr John Okafor is my favourite. I like him so much I had to get his mobile contact. He is on my Whatsapp chat list. I haven’t said a word to him, but I like his display pictures. It makes me glad to see him that closer to me.

Nollywood is a formidable industry. Although without fixed studios, independent filmmakers are fighting against all odds to tell stories that are indigenous and close to us. It is relief from lies of Hollywood and the much political incorrectness and the depiction of concepts that are not western as though they are from lesser people. Nollywood is creating employment, daily. Visit Lagos, Asaba and Enugu. The hotels are fully booked. School girls leave the classroom to become stars. They often make it there, after screaming of some indecent approaches from some directors. But who wouldn’t? There are just so much flesh, available. Ms Linda Ikeji displays studio pictures of some these actors on her blog and they could be so racy one wouldn’t mind being an actor, just to have a closer look at the heap of flesh.

There are several awards platform, annually, rewarding the struggles, home and abroad.  The excellences of these creative people are getting wide attention. And in the forthcoming week I can bet my life on the fact that there would be a movie entitled Ebola Virus. Yes. You read that correctly. It is a communicable disease that is sweeping wildly across West Africa. There are messages everywhere.

Every day, on BBM and Whatsapp, I get a buzzed to be careful or join in the fight against the dreaded killer disease. But my acceptance or rejection of such invitation isn’t my focus. My concern is on the Nigerian-ness of Nollywood and the psyche and way of receiving and distributing information. When the movie would eventually be released, it would be comical, I swear. It would be watched. And if there is a message in it, it would get to a special class; that may not be able to maintain cable TV subscription.

If the state government pays salary, civil servants would head to a local store. They would get bootlegged copies of the films and savour it with delight.

Nollywood represents a time in our history when we make a product, consume it, and without fear of critics, sell it abroad. A friend of mine gets hundreds of copies of Nollywood films each time he visits Nigeria. He returns to Canada with it. His family members like it. It doesn’t matter the flaws, the actors are stars. They are on billboards, on TV selling products. What the government cannot do, Nollywood is doing with pride.

When a stone is thrown at Nollywood, it bounces at us. We are Nollywood. We are what it mirrors. Our conversation is what it puts on the big screen. The way the wives are maltreated, the way the house-help is abused, and beaten and fucked and made pregnant and thrown out of the house into the street where he eventually gets lucky, finds a man who thinks she is cute, marries her and magically sends her entire family abroad, that’s the way it is shown, raw and captivating.

It doesn’t matter. It is keeping the people entertained, informed and hopeful. If Nollywood makes a pathway despite piracy, then there is hope for the country. I have attended the AMAA twice in Yenagoa, and I can say that we have succeeded in making our own stars, our own heaven and our own eyes to view them according to how we want it.  

Bura-Bari Nwilo has a diploma in Screenwriting from the New York Film Academy. He writes from Nsukka, Nigeria.

He tweets at: @BuraBariNwilo