Africa Magic
It's three in the morning and I can't sleep. The reason I can't sleep is the sound of saggy drums and shouting leaking through the wall from my neighbour's apartment. He's watching Africa Magic at full volume.
I think the film he's watching is the kind where guys stand around a forest wrapped in sack cloth discussing which one of their wives is a witch and who is going to kill her. I can hear the reedy shrill tones of those wooden whistles the paramount rulers love to hear, yabbering incantations, and of course the staple of Nigerian movies, lots of shouting.
I hope you understand, I talk about these films with some trepidation. Every time my friend and I made sniggering comments about the production values of Nollywood films, his Nigerian girlfriend would get very upset. She'd slap us about a bit and say nasty things about white people.
But right now, with this racket going on as the dawn comes up -that terrible synthesizer music quavering tremulously in my ears!- I say they're fair game.
As far as I can see there are two general types of Nollywood film (I have to admit I've not seen any Hausa films, and so will confine my rant to the Lagos-based productions). There are the ones set in olden times, with spirits, kings with chunky beads and women with dots on their faces, which I will name, for the purpose of this article, "juju shouting films". The second type is the modern day trials and tribulations of Lagos, which I will call "area shouting films".
The general plotlines of these, as far as I can gather, go like this: In a juju shouting film, a good woman has given in to evil and transgressed some boundary of society, her royal husband is shamed, she must redeem herself, or be killed. Or a malevolent witch is wreaking havoc with the bloodline of a royal dynasty, she must be stopped. They do this under giant mango trees, presumably somewhere near Oshogbo (with the producer's Merc just peaking into the shot).
In the "area shouting" films, the plotlines might be something like this: A good looking area bad boy falls in love with a girl, but her father is a High Court justice, and he must return to his village to learn the error of his ways. Or: A high school girl struggles to be popular at school, gets gang-raped, contracts HIV and must return to her village to learn the error of her ways. Or even: There is a guy, he is (supposedly) good looking, he has more women than he can deal with, he must go back to his village and learn the error of his ways.
I spoke to a friend who works as a script developer for the BBC World Service Trust about this, he told me that 99 per cent of the scripts they get sent from young writers end with the protagonist returning to the village to Learn the Error of Their Ways. If only they remembered the juju shouting films: the village is just as malevolent a place!
In these films "actors" have only two pitches: quiet sobbing, and frantic shouting. There is no in between. It can't be just because they're low budget that the production values are rubbish, some of them must actually go out of their way to be this bad. In one film the actress was so bad she needed prompting at every line of a telephone conversation, so a woman sat behind the sofa and read out the other half of the conversation. They might have got away with this, only she was meant to be talking to her errant man. There is no excuse for that other than the people who make these films believe it's ok if they are total crap.
It needn't be like this. I have seen one film that I loved, Tunde Kelani's Saworoide, which was maybe a bit long, but has fantastic story, acting and direction.
Nollywood is quite famous in England. Sunday supplements occasionally have spreads about the 'remarkable rise' of the Nigerian film industry. It's become One Of Those Things people know about Nigeria, like corruption, 419 and the Delta. But if they were actually to see one, I would say most English people would switch a Nollywood film off pretty quickly. If you enjoy them, reader, I salute you. Just don't impose them on me at 4am. If I need to see some people shouting at each other in a pink room, I know where to go.
It's three in the morning and I can't sleep. The reason I can't sleep is the sound of saggy drums and shouting leaking through the wall from my neighbour's apartment. He's watching Africa Magic at full volume.
I think the film he's watching is the kind where guys stand around a forest wrapped in sack cloth discussing which one of their wives is a witch and who is going to kill her. I can hear the reedy shrill tones of those wooden whistles the paramount rulers love to hear, yabbering incantations, and of course the staple of Nigerian movies, lots of shouting.
I hope you understand, I talk about these films with some trepidation. Every time my friend and I made sniggering comments about the production values of Nollywood films, his Nigerian girlfriend would get very upset. She'd slap us about a bit and say nasty things about white people.
But right now, with this racket going on as the dawn comes up -that terrible synthesizer music quavering tremulously in my ears!- I say they're fair game.
As far as I can see there are two general types of Nollywood film (I have to admit I've not seen any Hausa films, and so will confine my rant to the Lagos-based productions). There are the ones set in olden times, with spirits, kings with chunky beads and women with dots on their faces, which I will name, for the purpose of this article, "juju shouting films". The second type is the modern day trials and tribulations of Lagos, which I will call "area shouting films".
The general plotlines of these, as far as I can gather, go like this: In a juju shouting film, a good woman has given in to evil and transgressed some boundary of society, her royal husband is shamed, she must redeem herself, or be killed. Or a malevolent witch is wreaking havoc with the bloodline of a royal dynasty, she must be stopped. They do this under giant mango trees, presumably somewhere near Oshogbo (with the producer's Merc just peaking into the shot).
In the "area shouting" films, the plotlines might be something like this: A good looking area bad boy falls in love with a girl, but her father is a High Court justice, and he must return to his village to learn the error of his ways. Or: A high school girl struggles to be popular at school, gets gang-raped, contracts HIV and must return to her village to learn the error of her ways. Or even: There is a guy, he is (supposedly) good looking, he has more women than he can deal with, he must go back to his village and learn the error of his ways.
I spoke to a friend who works as a script developer for the BBC World Service Trust about this, he told me that 99 per cent of the scripts they get sent from young writers end with the protagonist returning to the village to Learn the Error of Their Ways. If only they remembered the juju shouting films: the village is just as malevolent a place!
In these films "actors" have only two pitches: quiet sobbing, and frantic shouting. There is no in between. It can't be just because they're low budget that the production values are rubbish, some of them must actually go out of their way to be this bad. In one film the actress was so bad she needed prompting at every line of a telephone conversation, so a woman sat behind the sofa and read out the other half of the conversation. They might have got away with this, only she was meant to be talking to her errant man. There is no excuse for that other than the people who make these films believe it's ok if they are total crap.
It needn't be like this. I have seen one film that I loved, Tunde Kelani's Saworoide, which was maybe a bit long, but has fantastic story, acting and direction.
Nollywood is quite famous in England. Sunday supplements occasionally have spreads about the 'remarkable rise' of the Nigerian film industry. It's become One Of Those Things people know about Nigeria, like corruption, 419 and the Delta. But if they were actually to see one, I would say most English people would switch a Nollywood film off pretty quickly. If you enjoy them, reader, I salute you. Just don't impose them on me at 4am. If I need to see some people shouting at each other in a pink room, I know where to go.
Labels: Nollywood
posted by Andrew Walker at 2:24 pm
4 Comments:
I think you need to be sent off to your village to learn the error of your ways for criticising Nollywood. Is it easy to use N1m of your own money to shoot a movie and then the owner of the house where you shoot most of your scenes suddenly says it's a no go if his sister/wife/daughter cant have a starring role...?
Boosh
Does that really happen? That's funny.
I'm having a good laugh. u are in hot waters, few people appreciate foreign criticisms. and u need to realize that we know our problems and are just more tolerant of our own fumbles. here, its basically about telling the story.
i don't watch African magic because they always manage to find the very worst.
You're indeed very funny Oyibo.but i disagree with the 'going back to the village to find the errors of ones way' in most movies.
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