Believe this. The occult, the triumph of faith over evil, rough gangsters, and the scourge of terrorism, are Nollywood’s pet themes. Nollywood? That’s the name associated with Nigeria’s uber-booming movie industry.
In fact, Indian showbiz — which has been the highest-producing film centre in the world — can no longer claim that distinction. By all accounts both Bollywood and Hollywood have been overtaken by an unlikely source: Nigeria in west Africa, which, since the last two years, has been hammering out a thousand to 1,200 feature films a year.
Unbeknownst to Bollywood biggies, it can no longer boast of a lead in terms of numbers. Its annual output approximates 800 feature films, while Hollywood’s second with a count of 600.
So why hasn’t Nigeria’s surprise sprint ahead made big news? One, because ignorance is bliss. And second, because Nollywood’s movies are made strictly on the digital format. Although celluloid has become a Jurassic medium, and filmmakers the world over (take James Cameron of Avatar) have switched to digital, Mumbai’s top daddies continue to stick to the time-tested.
Every cinematographer I’ve quizzed has stated, “Digital is the future. But till one star-packed film on the new format becomes a blockbuster, it’s status quo out here.” So far, Ram Gopal Varma’s Department has been the only star-lined enterprise. Its failure evoked cynical comments like, “What the hell was he doing shooting Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt on those gizmo cameras?”
By contrast, Nigeria’s film factory, because of its quickie flicks (many released on VCRs essentially), has spawned the unlikeliest of stars. This includes the 30-year-old dwarf Osita Iheme aka Paw Paw, who became an instant rage with comic action capers showing him off as a diminutive police officer combating hulky criminals. And there’s Kunle Afolyan, a fast-talking actor-cum-director whose knock-off film The Figurine became a national craze.
According to a well-researched report in The New York Times, Afolyan and others do not like to be ghettoised as “African filmmakers”, since it suggests that all they’re good for is arthouse cinema. A diehard fan of Mel Gibson, Afolyan shot his first film on a handycam, with a wheelchair serving as a camera trolley. Moreover, Nollywood’s filmmakers are extremely critical of the way they are represented, as nerdish stereotypes, in American movies like Blood Diamond.
Currently, Boko Haram — The Movie, revolving around a terrorist who abandons his mission, is making waves not just in Africa, but in the West as well. Considered much too volatile since it mentions a fundamental group, it was retitled Nation Under Siege. It has drawn interest from international distributors but its American backer quit as it was “too incendiary to handle.”
The birth of Nigeria’s film industry is a story that legends are made of. It seems an electronics trader Kenneth Nnebue, stuck with a load of blank video tapes, had the brainwave of making a quick film on the Faustian theme of selling one’s soul for money. Titled Living in Bondage, it sparked a trend which shows no signs of a let-up. Nnebue, shocked by the success, retired to become a Bible preacher in a village.
The one-billion-strong audience in Africa itself is immense. And the West is warming up to Nigerian cinema, which is on the cusp of a global crossover. Surely Bollywood could put on its thinking cap. Who knows? That could lead to cinema which needn’t bank on the crippling star system, and discover a delightful Paw Paw engaged in baby policegiri.