Florida Symposium to Discuss Nollywood Films

Nigerian films are the world's third biggest film industry.

One Day Symposium at the University of Florida, Ritz Union
Nigeria as a Center of Discourse: 
Re-centering a Marginal Nation-State
organized by Kole Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola,
Lecturer, University of Florida
Friday October 1st
Program of event 9:00 to 12:45pm
(1). Arrival of Guests 9:00 to 9:30am
(2). Opening formalities and Welcome Addresses
(2.1) The Chair of LLC
(2.2) The sponsors…Center for Humanities and Center for Cultural studies
(3). Introduction of speakers/ Chairman’s opening remarks
1st Session….Nigeria in text and in context
(4) Organisation of a Modern Nigeria using indigenous wisdom by Adewale Ajadi
(5) “The Many and Changing Faces of Ogun: The Yoruba God of Iron in Florida.” …Prof.Robin Poynor
(6) Knowing Nigeria through music…Professor Bender
(7) Knowing Nigeria through creative writers…STILL OPEN
(8). 50 Years of Nigerian Literature….by Professor Ken Harrow (Kenneth W. Harrow Distinguished Professor of English, Michigan State University)
(9). Performance and presentation by Dr. Rachel Hastings
(10). Questions and responses
(11). Lunch Break 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Afternoon   Nollywood: What it is and what it is not
(12). Introduction of speakers/ Chairman’s opening remarks
(12.1) The Chair of the session
(12.2). Introduction of speakers
(13). "Religious and Surrealistic constructions in Nollywood: NEED A PRESENTER
(14). "Nollywood: A Cinema In Search Of Itself."...NEED A NEW TOPIC AND PRESENTER
3:30pm to 4:30pm (Professor L. White introduces Dr. Ambler) (Speaker sponsored by the Center for African Studies)
(15). “The Movies in Nigeria from Hollywood to Nollywood.”..Dr. Ambler
(16). Screening of 'Green Passport' (30mins)
(17) Reception at Grinter Hall (Sponsored by the Center for African studies)
After the reception…
3rd session Politics and representation (6:30pm to 9pm)
(18). Chairperson’s brief remarks
(19). (Middle Belt: People, politics,[Nigerian Middle-belt Region: The Third Force in Nigerian Politics.]…Professor Tunga Lergo
(20). Brief spoken word Performance by Dr. Rachel Hastings
(21). Screening of Professor Su O’Brien’s Documentary (65mins)
(22). Questions and responses
(23). Closing remarks
Reception

Storytellers: Nigerian Sidewalk Video

Are Nigerian video stories examples of "community media" ? Are these films just low budget attempts to mimic Hollywood and Bollywood? How have their grass roots distribution networks impacted media consumption in West Africa? This exhibition in Berlin is an assessment of some of the more interesting films that this prolific movement has produced.
-DeeDee Halleck

Shown at "the building"
, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a

10249 Berlin DE
, T: 030 28 04 79 73Saturday, March 28th 2009, 2- 6 PM

Storytellers: an afternoon screening of Nollywood films
The Nigerian video-film industry started with a guerrilla attitude and grew over the past 15 years to be the third largest film industry worldwide, releasing more than 30 films per week. Strongly linked to daily West African life and told from a native point of view, Nollywood reaches its audience with stories of common concern, such as love, faith and betrayal.

The introduction of affordable recording techniques promoted the rise of an industry whose medium was to become a mean of expression for future filmmakers. They distribute their movies in VHS and DVD to reach a large audience via sidewalks and local markets.

The technical advancement provides not only a voice to many filmmakers. The democratization of movie making also allows for a much shorter production time that enables them to respond faster to reality's development. Certain political events have turned into films only two weeks after taking place, fictionalizing reality by filling the gaps of missing information with personal or collective narratives.

Apart from the appearance of some Nollywood films at international festivals, this genre remains an African phenomenon - widely accessible and influential in Africa, with its own modi of circulation and distribution, but hardly to be found at international rental stores.

Looped program on several screens:

"What I want" (Consorts International Ltd.)
"Our days on earth" (JBM Merchandise)
"Congo Marriage" (Samlex Electronics Co. Ltd.)
"Congo Marriage 2" (Samlex Electronics Co. Ltd.)
"Miss Nigeria" (Ossy Affason Video)
"Miss Nigeria 2" (Ossy Affason Video)
"Wounded Land 2" (Ayo Industries Nig. Ltd.)
"Jealous Mind" (Okayson Electronics Ltd.)
"Love, Sex & Marriage" (Ulzee Nig. Ltd.)
"Not my man" (P. Collins and Associates Ltd.)
"2 Hell with u" (Morning Star Production)


Selected by Clara Meister with special thanks to Uli Seifert

*******************
POEM BY NIGERIAN POET, KOLE ADE-ODUTOLA
Nollywound: Unwritten plot

The screen comes alive
No action
Just takes,
all fakes in a thousand re-takes
New Slate, same place
Our eyes are bruised by Nollywood.
We carry a plaster over a Nollywound
of pain and senseless fragments
of unending stories.
The sequels just like a nation’s transitions in slow painful motions.

The screen claims a life
and a strident voice
in the wilderness promises laurels
for this unwritten plot
hindered by troubling writer’s block.
Stories like nations with power blocs
hoping to gain attention.

The screen sells a lie
and a nation once again
pregnant from the
remnant seeds of
recalcitrant political mothers
willing at all times to throw
thighs apart for
itinerant political fathers
who aborted pregnancies of yester-years.

The screen buys our gaze
as the belly of a nation
is swollen
but the birth-chord
is stolen even before birth.
Mid-wives are still in morality training school taking lessons before their test.
The political maternity ward
is under construction
and supervision of cash and carry consultants.

The screen fades to black
and viewers are back for posers
How shall we deliver a test-tube baby:
Who already speaks from mother’s womb
talking of wounds past,
passing codes from Swiss accounts
to sweet accounts buried beyond
talons of transparency accountants.

The screen brings them back
and the lost fish for posers:
How shall we deliver a test-tube baby:
Who already counts the days
when voters with buttered breads
will cast their curses and cause
the usual heart wound that issues
like Nollywood windy movies.

© Kole Ade Odutola

Nollywood: Nigerian filmmaking

From Ethan Zuckerman's blog June 6, 2007 Turning the camera on Nollywood
Franco Sacchi, an Italian filmmaker living in Boston, has just produced a remarkable film about Nollywood. http://www.thisisnollywood.com Nollywood is the third larget film industry in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood. The Nigerian film industry makes 2000 films a year, as of 2006, which means that every week, 40 to 50 films are being made on the streets of Lagos and in cities throughout West Africa. The industry has created thousands of jobs… and it’s happened against all odds in a country where it can be very difficult to live and work.

Sacchi is drawn to this story because he was born in Zambia, and because his father lived much of his life in that country. “I left when I was three, but that’s where I learned to walk. That’s where my family bought their first home.” He tells us he wanted to tell a story about Africa’s complexity, a story that’s more than the despair and sadness we get in most pictures of the continent. He found a newspaper story about Nollywood and started researching the subkect. As he learned more about the subject, he contacted a friend, a veteran of years with National Geographic, who told him “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a story about a place that’s got more hope and is more fun.”Saachi’s film - This is Nollywood - follows a Nigerian filmmaker, Bond Emeruwa, who’s making a film about police corruption, titled “Checkpoint”. He’s got nine days to make the film. Saachi follows his process as well as framing the larger phenomenon of the industry. We see a six minute clip of the film, where people talk about the filming process as well as what Nollywood films mean to them:

- “You can make a movie in seven days for $10,000″
- “These are films for the masses, not for the elites”
- “This is subsistence filmmaking”
- “We’re making films for people who make a dollar a day”

Sacchi notes that Werner Herzog once said, “I need to make films like I need to breathe oxygen.” He believes that this is true of many of these Nigerian auteurs. (Saacchi wonders whether Nigerian filmmakers are doing what independent filmmakers in the US and Europe are trying to do - just go out and make a movie.) It’s possible for Nigerians to do this because non-linear editing has become so cheap through computers, and because you can now buy “an amazing camera for $5,000″. The films don’t screen in theatres - they’re recorded on VCDs, at a fairly low quality, but are sold for a few dollars or rent for pennies.

“Imagine a world with food and shelter, but no stories,” Sacchi asks. “It would be meaningless.” Bond Emeruwa tells us, “I don’t see us exhausting these stories in our lifetime, in ten lifetimes.”

tedglobal2007