22 February 2011

This Is Nollywood ~ Africa's Booming Industry...

Check out This Is Nollywood, the award-winning documentary about Nigeria's booming movie industry by Producer-Directors Robert Caputo and Franco Sacchi and Associate Producer -- and also our MIT Media Ventures student from Harvard's Ed School -- Aimee Corrigan... The Economist spotlights the industry in Lights, camera, Africa ~ Movies are uniting a disparate continent, and dividing it too...
"It is hard to avoid Nigerian films in Africa. Public buses show them, as do many restaurants and hotels. Nollywood, as the business is known, churns out about 50 full-length features a week, making it the world’s second most prolific film industry after India’s Bollywood. The Nigerian business capital, Lagos, is said by locals to have produced more films than there are stars in the sky. The streets are flooded with camera crews shooting on location. Only the government employs more people. Nigerian films are as popular abroad as they are at home. [...] And yet Africans have mixed feelings about Nollywood. Among Africa’s elites, hostility is almost uniform. [But...] Film also profoundly shapes how Africans see their own continent. Few have access to news channels. They derive many of their opinions on neighbouring countries from the movies. More than once your correspondent has heard Africans say they had not been to such-and-such a place but knew it from a film. That the films they watch are made by other Africans is a source of considerable satisfaction. For decades many Africans have complained that the Western media misrepresent their continent, showing only calamities like war, disease, corruption and famine. They have come to see film as an antidote. “Nollywood is the voice of Africa, the answer to CNN,” says Lancelot Idowu, one of the best-known Nigerian directors. And African films are becoming more adventurous. [On bold and even taboo topics...] Nollywood is tackling it with zest and flair."

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