The Filmmaker

The 18 year-old, $250 million Nigerian film industry produces some 2,000 movies a year—a number that puts Lagos in a league with Mumbai and Los Angeles. But in Nollywood, unlike Bollywood or Hollywood, movies can cost as little as $10,000 to make and take barely a week to shoot. The films are straight-to-VCR, VCD or DVD and cost around $1.60 a piece, though they can be rented for a fifth of that price and are also shown on satellite television. While their quality of acting and production may appear lacking when compared to the products of other film industries, Nollywood movies are avidly consumed throughout Nigeria, across Africa and beyond.

It is difficult to articulate the surprise and delight I felt when I first discovered Nollywood. Here was the third-largest movie industry in the world, exploding all over Africa, with Nigeria as the epicenter of the revolution. It had all the qualities of an authentic, grassroots movement. Even today, it feels like a full-blown insurgency—an eruption of energy and creativity. Some have compared the Nigerian video industry to the "informal sector" in African manufacturing, but Nollywood goes far beyond that. The spirit of Nollywood is resilient, fiercely independent and contagious. Nigerian filmmakers are intensely aware that they have created Nollywood against all odds, in the midst of a devastating economic collapse and without the financial support of their government or foreign investors.

As a filmmaker, the story of Nollywood seemed simply irresistible. Nollywood provides a unique opportunity to show what every storyteller has in common with African filmmakers. It became immediately clear that the founding fathers of Nollywood had the same ambitions that every filmmaker has. They want to tell stories that relate to their audiences and breathe life into their characters. However, their immediate objective is to reach an African audience rather than a global one. As Nollywood director Bond Emeruwa told me, "I cannot tell the white man's story, he tells me his own story in his own movies. We have the same themes, but we are telling our own story our own way, the African way. African storytelling is so rich that it will be impossible for us to exhaust all possibilities." For Nollywood filmmakers, movies have become the most natural medium to adapt the storytelling tradition. The result, however, is much more multi-cultural that we ever could have ever imagined. Nollywood does not fit any romantic and pristine idea we may have of African culture. Some directors, like Emeruwa, are extremely conscious of the potential that Nollywood has to educate and promote positive social change, but many other filmmakers make unabashedly commercial film, aimed at financial success and entertainment. In this way, Nollywood is like all film industries everywhere.

But Nollywood, despite its size, is much different than its counterparts in Hollywood or Mumbai. As a film industry, it resembles an immense laboratory, driven by a do-it-yourself ethos that has bypassed the studio system and allowed single entrepreneurs, producers and directors to make, distribute and sell their movies without asking permission. Nollywood is decentralized, chaotic and unstructured. Its end product feels authentic and spontaneous. Without a doubt, these are reasons why, in spite of all their technical shortcomings, Nigerian movies resonate so deeply across Africa, and with millions of Africans in the Diaspora.

The actor prepares, Nollywood style.

© Pieter Hugo, from the series "Nollywood." Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed that poverty and exoticism are "the single story" of Africa. Stereotypes are not necessarily untrue, she says, but they are incomplete. When the West looks at Africa it seems incapable of going beyond stories of war, AIDS and safaris. Relying solely on this reality to describe an entire continent robs people of their dignity. In Nollywood films, the protagonists often have regular office jobs, they go to parties and suffer jealousies and deal with everyday problems. In the midst of all this, Nollywood is able to portray police corruption, domestic violence, the trauma of...