This is Nollywood

We went to the Abuja International Film Festival yesterday evening. Despite the complete lack of formal publicity, the place was full of Nollywood directors and general industry types. Evidently there is no need of an up to date website or any other communications when the grapevine is so well fed and watered.

I met Franco Sacchi (lovely guy of course) and saw the film – a straight-up piece following the hassles of an 11 day shoot (the film is called Checkpoint) in Badagry. After the viewing, a South African woman asked what the film-makers are thinking of giving back, or whether they just wanted to ‘take the story and show it elsewhere.’ The question was loaded – as if any recipient with a white face should automatically feel guilty for their actions. It is well she didn’t ask me such a question- I would have responded thus:

Does any writer or filmmaker have a moral obligation to ‘give back’ when he or she finds a story and uses it? Does a journalist? Why assume that someone with a white face finding stories in a land of black faces has to automatically give back in some way? Might their output alone be a form of giving back?

Vache stupide.

Meanwhile, apart from following the shoot, the film itself interviewed several industry talking heads defending Nollywood and the palpable lack of quality in its output. We heard the usual lame excuses, ‘Rome was not built in a day’, ‘many people earn a dollar a day – this is what they want.’ It irks me that some of the mouthpieces in Nollywood attack Francophone cinema as elitist, staking out their claim that Nollywood is somehow more real or authentic or giving the people what they want.

The reality is, apart from some notable exceptions (Tunde Kelani and the Mainframe crew etc) Nollywood cinema is grossly patronising to its audience; mute and incurious about the subtle aspects of Nigerian experience; has godawful goggle-eyed loudmouthed silent-movie-style acting (based on OTT theatre-arts techniques); involves formulaic and clichéd storylines; is driven by profit and a trading mentality not message or art; is badly organised and - perhaps most egregious of all - betrays a completely alienated take on local cultures.

Traditional spiritual practices are always portrayed as exotic (people being struck dead by lightning flashes etc) and inevitably as negative and malign. Ask yourself this: when do you ever see a positive portrayal of local religion in Nollywood films? In contrast to their Francophone equivalents, which tend to be full of subtlety and capture the rhythms of local experience and beliefs, Nollywood film is soaked in colonial mentality, ranging its full proselytising evangelical forces against local cultural values and practices. This is Nollywood is instructive in this regard: we see the producer-as-pastor praying before each day's shoot. No wonder that indigenous beliefs are caricatured so vehemently..

Despite the fact that working conditions are hazardous, there is much that Nollywood could do to improve its act much more quickly if it could be bothered – but it seems it cannot. To give three quick examples: lighting, use of microphones and script-writing. Is it so difficult to buy a reflector, or to buy better quality microphones? Is it so hard to create a script that does not repeat a thousand other scripts and has such poor dialogue and characterisation? It is sheer laziness that all three are so poorly used in Nollywood.

Another talking head in the film spouted on about how African-Americans still think Africans live in trees, and that Nollywood gives them and their children a different, more positive image of Nigeria. Pah! What is there to be proud about in Nollywood? It shows Nigerians to be irrational, overly superstitious, caught up in melodrama. It shows Nigerian men to be weak, cheating and pathetic most of the time.

Until it receives a massive kick up the arse and some honest critique, Nollywood’s output cannot be taken seriously on the world stage in the way that South American and Chinese films (to take two non-Western examples at random) can be. Nollywood's popularity (which mainly boils down to a combination of a) people seeing themselves mirrored on film and b) feeding people’s insecurities and ambivalence about local cultural and spiritual practices) does not equate to quality or worth, still less to giving the people what they want or deserve.

Instead of feeding into the brittle pride so many in the industry have by tip-toeing round the issue, its much better to provide open and honest criticism so that the industry gets its act together. In 2007, with all the cheap hi-def technology and techniques available, there is no excuse for the utter pap that constitutes 99% of Nollywood’s output.