Hooked on Nollywood

My introduction to African movies came while waiting (and waiting) for my stylist to finish washing, coloring, locking, twisting, braiding, weaving the hair of the three people who had walked in her shop ahead of me.  She turned on the 12”(well it was small) TV set which sat on top of a DVD player on a table between two display cases across from the row of three salon chairs.  After a few attempts at adjusting the antenna didn’t produce a picture on the set, she asked if we wanted to watch an African movie.  One of the women enthusiastically said, “Yeah, do you have that one with Beyonce in it, the African Beyonce?  She did, and I must have seen that movie plus a few others at least 5 times each.

So now that I’m in Naijaland, the supply of Nollywood movies and soaps is endless! Little did I know that Nigeria is either second or third in the world in annual movie production behind Bollywood   and Hollywood.  Nigerians love soaps whether they are produced at home, the Middle East, Japan or Mexico!

 I commented to a friend that the faces of many of the actors in a program we were watching were familiar to me, that I had seen them in other programs.  His response was that since there are relatively few Nigerian actors, they appear over and over in different roles.  There are lots of movies, mostly sold directly on DVD.  I read about one movie mogul who boasted that he could write and film a movie in 3 days! The storylines are familiar ones—love, lust, greed, generosity, infidelity, virtue, incest and so on. Some stories have a strong religious message; others are just plain fun featuring some rapscallion whose mischief often has hilarious consequences.  There are plots that address the struggle between traditional and modern values and scores of topics in between. 

I just watched a two-parter with some salacious twists and turns: the wife was having an affair with her daughters boyfriend because she felt neglected by her businessman husband who was having an affair with an ex-girlfriend who he dumped while she was on holiday in the US some 20 years earlier and whose father is a chief of great wealth and influence holding the deed to land needed for the husbands business expansion.

I didn’t pay any attention to the soap/reality series back home, but they serve as a source of entertainment here in my place which only subscribes to basic cable—two channels with traditional music in Arabic, a sports channel (football, of course), CNN International, Aljazeera in English, AIT (African Int.TV) and of course, African Magic where I get my daily dose of Nollywood dramas.  The sound quality of the programs is seriously inconsistent.  It’s hard to believe that when the credits roll there is actually someone responsible for continuity (I think they sleep during filming and post production). But, I love them—great insight, great fun and they can be found everywhere!! No, Blockbusters, but street vendors can be found in every major intersections.

Ok. Legends of Nollywood is coming on.  Let me go and find out who’s who in the industry!

Sai an juma (later)!