Nollywood: Outline of a Trans-ethnic Practice

This essay focuses on the aesthetics of cross-cultural identity in Nigerian video films, that is, the presence of common artistic idioms in certain of the Nollywood genres, in spite of the conventional emphasis on generic difference along ethnic lines. Stressing the uniqueness of the linguistic and organizational differences in Nollywood films is understandably a reflection of political realities of Nigeria, and of the relatively better developed tradition of Yoruba expressive cultures, in music, cinema, and theater. While acknowledging these differences, I aim to show that the emergence of the short-lived/in crisis Igbo films, Edo films, and other less-definable categories, has to be understood in terms of an urban culture of commerce, image circulation, trans-ethnic and voluntary association, and other factors in which so-called “Yoruba Nollywood” largely constitutes a consequence of historical and geopolitical accidents. My focus is not so much on any of these categories as an entity to deny or celebrate in isolation. Instead, by looking at a number of films (Ukwa Achinaka I & II [2002], Okan Soso / The Only Child I & II, and Eko Wenjele) I explore the importance of television, the city, and the figure of the actor in the constitution of emergent trans-ethnic practices which, in turn, point toward a potential Nigerian identity.