Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry ed. by Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome (review)

The genesis for this new volume on Nollywood video film dates back to May 2009, when coeditors Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome organized the “Nollywood and Beyond” conference at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. As the volume took shape, the editors solicited four additional essays from scholars in the field to round out what became an innovative and lively discussion of the pan-African and transnational influence and expansion of this world force in cinema, with its attendant cultural and commercial effects. This volume places the coeditors on the leading edge of Nollywood studies, foremost among scholars who are reevaluating the field’s and industry’s beginnings and then spotlighting the trends in their development.

The volume’s focus is on the diasporic influence of Nollywood: its immense global popularity but also the controversy it creates. The coeditors clearly state in the introduction that they are not concerned with a rehashing of the origins of Nollywood, as there have already been so many publications, films, and conferences devoted to the topic. Instead, they pose a number of questions for reflection: “Why is Nollywood so popular in Nigeria and beyond, and why is it so controversial at the same time? . . . What significance does this have for the study of Nollywood, African cinema, and African culture more generally?”¹ After describing how Nollywood has been habitually positioned against African auteur, art house, or “Fespaco” films to explain their arguably lower-quality production values, Krings and Okome are quick to caution that the boundaries are not as firm as some might think. For example, many auteur filmmakers employ Nollywood marketing or production strategies; more women work in the Nollywood industry than in the African art-house film industry; and ultimately, “the ownership of Nollywood is African,” an important point of principle that auteur filmmakers still struggle to grasp.²

The volume is divided into four parts, each with two to five chapters. Part 1, “Mapping the Terrain,” includes two chapters. In the first, “From Nollywood to Nollyworld: Processes of Transnationalization in the Nigerian Video Film Industry,” Allessandro Jedlowski outlines how Nollywood, after an initial decade of success, began to experience a decline until around 2009–2010, when processes of transnationalism caused a “‘New Wave’ in Nigerian cinema, characterized by higher budgets, improved production values, and transnational collaborations.”³ Filmmakers and scholars Jyoti Mistry and Jordache A. Ellapen offer a less enthusiastic view of Nollywood’s popularity in their contribution on Nollywood’s transportability. Taking the position that the Nollywood model challenges the canon of African cinema, they explore the complexities and “productive contradictions” of an industry positioned as an alternative to established filmmaking practices on the continent. They also draw a comparison between the Nollywood model and emerging South African video-film practices. The main challenge (read: drawback) for these authors is how to reconcile the principles of social commitment and creative expression (read: auteurist African third cinema) with Nollywood’s commercial imperative.⁴

The chapters in part 2, “Transnational Nollywood,” explore Nollywood as “a transactional cultural anchor . . . where migrant subjects meet the homeland in different ways,” to use Krings and Okome’s delightful phrase.⁵ In “The Nollywood Diaspora: A Nigerian Video Genre,” Jonathan Haynes, a leading scholar in Nollywood studies, provides a lively discussion of films set partly or entirely in the diaspora. He compares and contrasts films such as Dubai Runs (MacCollins Chidebe, 2007) which use film-library stock shots to establish diasporic settings, with films such as Missing in America (Sola Osofisan, 2004), which is clearly shot in New York. Haynes deftly teases out his argument by demonstrating that many films in this new genre have moved away from the occult or supernatural focus of much continent-based production.⁶ Sophie Samyn in chapter 4 and Claudia Hoffmann in chapter 5 examine works by...