NOLLYWOOD and home-video are two words that could be used interchangeably-reason being that the later is a direct to home production which, owing to its nippy form, gave birth to the name Nollywood. If any country is laying claims to home video culture, let it be put to vote and it will be clear how much Nigeria has come to enjoy the ‘copyright’. Despite criticisms, the beauty of the Nollywood model is that it has become phenomenal, attracting researchers to Nigeria and putting the country in the forefront of Africa’s emerging cinema culture.
You would recall that the name Nollywood is a coinage of a foreign journalist and researcher who came to Nigeria and was stunned by the act of producing a movie in a week with a single camera and so much improvisation.
With the current stance in Nollywood, it is safe for me to say that the prediction (or was it an agitation) by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola in 1990, about a digital video revolution was for Nigeria. The man had induced a global thirst for a flexible creative license. Coppola had dreamt of a situation whereby cheap camcorders will be put in the hands of the masses, hoping that one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father’s little camera saying that when that happens, the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever.
If there is anything that Nollywood has been criticized of, it is this professionalism that Coppola mentioned above. But I think that professionalism is relative to the extent of the audience that a particular filmmaker is targeting. You may be socked to know that some audiences are unmindful of a bad picture as long as the story is gripping to them. If there is an audience that does not pretend, it is the Nigerian movie buffs-they’d walk out of the cinema hall if they find a film distasteful.
But visit some film festival abroad and watch how at the end of a sleep-inducing story, probably shot on the highest camera format, the audience had clapped hysterically as the end credits roll- you are stunned, as a Nigerian who has grown throw the ranks of the Yoruba moving Theatre, Nollywood and the emerging ‘new Nollywood’. Should you want to know more about who a proud ‘Nollywoodian’ is, walk up to Amaka Igwe and dare raise some of those criticisms. I wish you luck!
The above is just one of the Nollywood exceptions to what is regarded as the rule of the cinema. And talking about the movie marketing or distribution chain, the Direct to Home (DTH) distribution in Nigeria is in total defiance of the rule. The model is usually a gradual passage through the cinemas, a sting at DVD and then a final roost at the home video level through CD sales. But it appears that until the monopoly of the cinemas in Nigeria is broken, the woes of an average filmmaker would continue. With about 20 percent of a cinema exposed film going to government and about 50 percent going to the cinema houses, we must ask the filmmaker if 30 percent that is accrued to him from the few cinema houses in Nigeria is enough justification for the model we so publicize.
With the situation of movie business in Nigeria at the moment, the DTH would have been the best if only the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) is not failing in its duty of intellectual right protection, where pirated films litter out streets and their sellers operating in daylight anarchy. Perhaps the New Distribution and Exhibition Framework (NDEF) of the National Film and Video Censors Board will, in addition to establishing legal distributors at every level of the society, also do part of the job the NCC is being paid for, when the time comes. Perhaps the NCC needs the much touted broadcast industry quartet more than others, with the Nigerian Film Corporation, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the NFVCB playing the triangular cover-up for their weak sister, the NCC.
Yinka Ogundaisi had argued that for the Nigerian film industry to move forward, the shortest and the most viable route is through the cleansing and strengthening the DTH distribution, which of course means getting the NFVCB to complete the implementation of the NDEF. He emphasised that the film industry in Nigeria has perhaps, the last opportunity to get its acts together, using the bulk if not the entire N300 Billion FGN’s grant to focus on the development of DTH distribution infrastructure.
I think if that formula is gotten right, NCC may just be confined to its passion of one Collecting Management Authority (CMO) fight for the music industry, as filmmakers may have found succor in the NDEF which could battle the pirates’ ubiquity with simultaneous national, regional and community levels distribution of movies.
If that happens, cinema may remain at the elitist level that monopolists have subjected it, unless the intervention fund is made to also cater for screens at all levels. Unless again, Nigeria decides to toe the line of the Indian cinematic consciousness, we should know that the current inadequate theatrical infrastructure that puts us at less than 60 screens per 160 million people is a shame whereby India has over 13,000 screens, the equivalent of 12 screens per million people, and is still counting.
