In part one of our series on Nollywood, we covered the history of the film industry in Nigeria. This week, we will be looking at the current movers and shakers expanding the seasoned industry into an international phenomenon. "What is sustaining the industry are the millions of people from Africa and the Caribbean, and African Americans who are willing to see movies about Africa." This is what
Jide Thomas, a distributor and investor of Nollywood films, recently told
Black Voices. Thomas owns the Web site
African Movie Place, a online marketplace for African movies. But how does the second largest movie industry in the world continue to grow? What are its best business practices?
Big Business
Credit: Jamati
In Nigeria, a film can sell 50,000 copies. Shot on digital cameras, these films go straight to DVD and VCD format. At about $2 a disk, the films are both affordable for many Nigerians and profitable for producers. However, piracy often poses problems for both producers and distributors of Nollywood films. For distributors, it is a race against time to sell as many copies as possible before bootleggers get a chance to. Thomas is constantly engaged in this race.
"If you don't sell your 10,000 copies in a couple of days, the bootleggers take the market. And you have to release them before they release it in Nigeria. Because, once they release it in Nigeria, you've lost your market gauge."
Thomas, who is based in New York, states that Nollywood films are especially popular among Caribbean woman in the United States, however, some outside of Africa have yet to catch on to the trend. For some, quality, the length of the films (often these films have at least two parts, sometimes more), and the amount of films that come out in a given year are a major turn off.
"The films are made for the African market, and the dynamics involved in making the quantity is based on the African market. And where we don't have 24-hour cable and other form of entertainment, it's only natural for the films to be coming out in bulk like that. While people are complaining about the amount of movies, 50 to 70 percent of the movies that are produced in Africa, we don't even see. The only thing that we see here are the movies made in the English language."
The English-language films tend to do better internationally, however, in Nigeria, the native-language films (such as those shot in Yoruba) are the top sellers. United States and UK distributors often buy the marketing rights to English-language films.
The FutureWilson Ebiye, CEO of
RockCity Entertainment (producer of 'Amazing Grace'), feels that to be a major player in Nollywood you need to produce more films that will go to theaters, rather than straight to video. His current project,
'Black Gold,' pairs him up again with friend and writer-director Jeta Amata. Ebiye produced the film, while Amata wrote and directed it.
Credit: RockCity Entertainment/Jeta Amata Concepts
"'Black Gold' is the first major collaboration between Nollywood and Hollywood," states Ebiye. The film is a powerful story about the fight over oil taking place in Nigeria.
"The indigenous people, the people who produce the oil, they feel that the government hasn't spent money developing the area. They feel that the multinational oil companies are just coming into their region to explore and exploit the land by taking the oil. So, basically the indigenous people rose up and formed a militant group. They took up arms against the government and the oil company."
The film stars
Billy Zane and Nigerian actor
Hakeem Kae-Kazim.
"The film is helmed by a Nigerian. Jeta Amata wrote and directed the film. So, we know that he is going to do a good job about telling the story of our people, about how the people who are actually creating the wealth for Nigeria are being marginalized."
Ebiye plans to widely release 'Black Gold.'
Credit: RockCity Entertainment/Jeta Amata Concepts
"When we release the film in Nigeria, it's going to be the most widely distributed film. We just have to think outside the box in order to make sure that we recoup the money that was invested."
Ebiye feels that his innovative way of distributing the film, which he won't reveal yet, will change the Nollywood game for the better. "It will definitely help the industry. What's going to happen once this film comes out is that the other producers and directors in Nigeria are going to have to step up their game. Other producers who are going to go make quality films in Nigeria will benefit from the new distribution network."
I'm confident that the Nigerian movie industry will continue to grow. I look forward to films that will depict the everyday realities of Nigerians and other continental Africans, as well Africans in the diaspora. I hope that the films will not suffer from Westernization and instead retain their unique essence, which initially drew audiences to these films, which was the imagery of Africa and Africans from the perspective of Africans themselves. Imagine if Nollywood and black Hollywood pooled its resources to invest in each other and command the images of black people all over the world -- using effective and proven economic models. Now that would be some real black star power.
