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  • Introduction:Nollywood and the Global South1
  • Adetayo Alabi (bio)

Nollywood, the Nigerian video film industry, emerged within the context of several pre-existing theatre traditions among various ethnic groups of Nigeria. These traditions included the various dramatic presentations in traditional festivals and ritual ceremonies. There were also various travelling theatres that traversed both the rural and urban centers of the country, particularly during the oil boom from the 1970s and later.2 Chief Hubert Ogunde was one of the major icons of the travelling theatre. Some of the most notable south western stars of Nollywood today worked with him. They, for example, staged a very memorable star-performance at the then University of Ife, Ile-Ife in 1985 when Ogunde was awarded an honorary doctoral degree. In an interview, Rev. (Mrs.) Adekoya Ogunde, one of Ogunde’s wives, said that Ogunde anticipated the emergence of a vibrant video industry because of technological developments and the availability of VHS cassettes and compact discs. According to her, “He [Ogunde] said it was unfortunate that his health was failing just when all these new developments (video and compact disc) are making film-making more profitable.”3

Several television dramas, including the Baba Sala series, the Cock Crow at Dawn series, The New Masquerade series, Village Headmaster series, etc., also preceded Nollywood. As well, books by celebrated writers were staged and serialized on television. Notable in this category were Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that was adapted for the stage by the Nigerian Television Authority and D.O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare that was adapted for the stage by Jimoh Aliu and his theatre group for the Ondo State Television Service, Akure. The existing traditions of dramatic presentations in festivals and rituals, the traveling theatre, television drama, etc. later metamorphosed into celluloid movies. Several movies were staged and shown in movie theatres across the urban centers of Nigeria, including films by Ogunde, Baba Sala, Ade Love, etc. The economic crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s made large budgets needed for celluloid films unavailable to many talented actors. A clever way around the economic crisis was the use of VHS cassettes to record films and market them easily and relatively cheaply.4

Film critics and journalists, including Matt Steinglass, Norimitsu Onishi, Jonathan Haynes, Abdalla Uba Adamu, Jyoti Mistry and Jordache A. Ellapen, have commented on the naming of the Nigerian film industry. While Jonathan [End Page 1] Haynes suggests in “’Nollywood’: What’s in a Name?” that the name “first appeared in an article by Matt Steinglass in The New York Times in 2002” (106), Abdalla Uba Adamu decalres that “Norimitsu Onishi coined the term Nollywood for the southern Nigerian film industry in his article in The New York Times on September 16, 2002” (288). Haynes claims that there were objections to the naming because it was coined by a foreigner and he compares it to how America and Nigeria got their names also from foreigners. He supports the naming despite the argument that it is too closely tied to Hollywood and Bollywood. Although Haynes acknowledges the effects of imperialism and media ownership and control, he agrees with the name because “we live in a multipolar world where the old patterns of cultural imperialism have changed and viewers have a much greater choice in the media they consume” (106). Jyoti Mistry and Jordache A. Ellapen’s reaction to comparing Nollywood to Hollywood and Bollywood is that such a comparison is counterproductive because of their differences in terms of production modes, aesthetics, content, distribution, marketing strategies, context, economic structures, and star appeal (62). Despite the differences in the three major movie industries, each one speaks to the specificities of its immediate location from where it derives its national and international reputation. More crucially is the fact that all the three, though independent, operate within a global world where border crossing and transnational encounters are much easier than ever before because of the operations of different socio- economic and political forces of globalization. It is particularly noteworthy that Nollywood’s name links it directly with the processes of globalization. While the name links it with the global north because of Hollywood, its star...

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