“New Nollywood”: Kunle Afolayan

“New Nollywood” is a phrase being used to describe a recent strategy by some Nigerian filmmakers to make films with higher budgets, to screen them in cinemas both in Nigeria and abroad, and to enter them in international film festivals. This is a major structural shift in the Nollywood model of film production and distribution. Kunle Afolayan exemplifies this trend: his restless experimentation as a director and producer reveals the current structure of opportunities, and his situation as a filmmaker informs his films culturally and thematically. There are practical limits to the current possibilities of New Nollywood, and there is less to its apparent convergence with the rest of African (celluloid) cinema than meets the eye, but New Nollywood is likely to prove to be an invaluable preparation for coming transformations in the Nigerian film industry as Internet streaming and the construction of movie theaters in Nigeria displace the sale of films on discs as the central mode of Nollywood distribution.