Nollywood Films Research Articles

From “Makers of Images” to Cineastes? Looking Critically at Festivals and Critics’ Reception of Nollywood

At its inception in the early 1990s, the Nollywood film movement did not attract a positive appraisal from most “learned” critics. Its non-conformist approach to filmmaking made most critics to associate it with the act of just “making images” as well as a lack of respect for cinema. Even major film festivals seemed “not friendly” to Nollywood films. Today, the quality of Nollywood films has remarkably improved even though much is still to be done. However, it remains important to examine if such improvement in quality has affected international film critics’ reception of Nollywood films. Using secondary sources and critical observations this author examines how Nollywood film criticism has evolved over these last years. The author focuses specifically on how the FESPACO and Cannes Festival have received Nollywood productions.

Fictional Reality Environments in Child’s Learning: Evaluating Screen Institution in <i>Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone and My Kids and I</i>

The Nigerian youth’s restiveness and licentious acts have come under the purview of the public interest in recent times. Consequently, the rise of ritual killings and other social vices amongst the younger generation in the country questions the teaching model and learning environments designed to impart knowledge to Nigerian children. The objective of this study is to evaluate the aptitudes of fantastical and realistic film environments in child’s learning and nurturing. The study, through the adoption of the content analysis approach of qualitative research method, evaluated the impact of the fantasy genre and fictional reality film environments on children and thus analysed. Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone (A British Fantasy Film) and My Kids and I (A Nigerian Fictional Reality Film). The study utilised Skolnick Weisberg's theory of Mise-en-place: Setting the Stage and Nkemakonam Aniukwu’s Screen Institution Postulation, in examining the influence of fantastical and fictional reality film environments in child’s learning. The study discovered that some films produced in the Nollywood film industry have the capacity of thwarting the child’s mind and this could lead to misconceptions of certain principles and standards of the society and subsequently change his behaviour towards other members of the public. Parents should also play a vital role in monitoring and curtailing what the children are watching on their screen interface.

A Critical Scrutiny of Cinematic Lighting Technique in Cultural works of Selected Yoruba Nollywood Films

It could be reiterated that, of all the components of mise-en-cadre, cinematographic lighting is one of the most important features but this component had received little attentions from most Nigerian film critics or scholars. In most cases, this element is only used to explain or buttress relevant points in film theory and discourse. However, in this study, attention will be devoted on the deployment of cinematic lights and the various techniques used in selected Nollywood films. In the creative deployment of the 3-point lighting technique in selected cultural works of Yoruba Nollywood films, the researcher employed a library study, descriptive analytical cum studio diagnostic approaches as the basic methods of data gathering. The observation research method is deployed as secondary source of information. While a structuralist hypothetical approach is equally employed as a theoretical framework. In this exploration, the paper reviews the concepts of cinematic lighting before zooming on to discuss the key light, fill light and backlight as components of the 3-point lighting system. Practical analysis and demonstration are thus carried out with concrete sample shots from selected Yoruba films. Finally, it is recommended that a 3-point lighting technique should be creatively utilised as innovative device through which a director and the light-designer could create impressive and wonderful pictures and thus improve on the quality of Yoruba films. Keywords: 3-Point-Lighting, Cultural works, Nollywood, Yoruba films

Perception and Acceptance of Nollywood as Nigeria’s Cultural Ambassador among University Students

Nollywood is considered the site of popular culture and harbinger of cultural renaissance, especially amongst young adults confronted daily with the remote acculturation that foreign films offer. While many stakeholders believe that Nollywood, the second most prolific film industry, dispenses cultural knowledge and memory across borders, Nigerian tertiary students are suspected of preferring Western flicks or vacillating between foreign and local films. Consequently, this study was conceived to ascertain if Nigerian students perceive Nollywood as a cultural industry and Nigeria’s cultural ambassador. A 5-point Likert Scale of a 13-item questionnaire was administered to 283 Lagos State University of Science and Technology mass communication students. The descriptive, t-test, and ANOVA findings revealed that the students in this study consider Nollywood a cultural industry. Still, their perception showed that Nollywood’s performance is weak regarding cultural representations. Therefore, the study recommends that Nollywood films portray endogenous and authentic cultural values. However, the research suggested a further study involving more students across Nigeria, with mixed methods and advanced analyses.

The Screen Institution and Child’s Models in Nollywood Fictional Reality Films: An Example of Two Rabbits

Child education in Nigeria and most parts of Africa has become a serious subject matter in recent times due to some nonchalant and maladjusted behaviours witnessed in today’s kids and younger adults alike. However, in Nollywood today, the themes of hatred, deceit, gluttony, stealing, and other social vices are prevalent in some children films. This research is centred on finding out the reasons for such increase in dubious behaviours amongst the children and thus adopts content analysis approach of qualitative research method to evaluate a Nollywood fictional-reality film Two Rabbits selected purposively to see the level of imitation of the filmic events on the part of the children, and how such films influence the young audiences into modelling their behaviours and attitudes around the film characters. The study is hinged on the Screen Institution postulation that highlights the powerful nature of screen interface learning which could be positive or negative. The researcher discovered that children could be easily influenced by the child star actors (Chinedu Ikedieze and Osita Iheme) who have starred in most Nollywood films. And as such modelling their lives, attitudes and behaviours around that of the characters’ they see often in films becomes inevitable. The study concludes and recommends that Nollywood children film characters should be equipped with good characters’ traits and activities that project love, handiwork, courage, and bravery instead of the constant projection of the social vices as perceived in Two Rabbits and other Nollywood children films. And for a character who embodies these social vices, adequate punishment should be served so as to deter the young audiences from imitating such a character.

The Sexual Objectification of Women in the Nigerian Entertainment Industry

The growing prevalence of pornography coupled with the influence of patriarchy on the Nigerian entertainment industry has made the objectification of womanhood a perceptible feature of films and musical videos produced by Nigerians. Using secondary sources and critical observations, this paper, attempts to illustrate the phenomenon of women’s sexual objectification in the Nollywood and Nigerian music industry. The paper defines the concept of women sexual objectification in the context of media production arguing that objectification is revealed by the types of camera angles and positions used in depicting women in filmic and pop video productions. The use of close-ups or medium range shots emphasizing the sexuality and sumptuousness of female characters in films or pop-videos are some of the techniques used by apologists of women’s sexual objectification. Sexual objectification thus entails making women characters in a filmic or musical production the object to be looked at or the spectacle to enjoy. The paper also shows how the sexual objectification of womanhood is manifested in selected Nollywood films and musical videos by Nigerian popular artistes. In the light of the selected pop videos and films, the paper argues that the types of camera movements and angles deployed in most Nigerian pop videos and Nollywood films are in line with the male gaze theory. These camera movements and angles systemically help depict the woman as a spectacle in itself as well as a sexual object. They also project the man as the reader of the meaning while “relegating” the woman to the status of the bearer of the meaning.

“I Gats to Belong”: Decolonial Moments and the Politics of Belonging in Nollywood Campus Films

ABSTRACT This article analyzes representations of the value of university education, as depicted in selected Nollywood films and television serials. I analyze Tunde Kelani’s film The Campus Queen in conversation with Funke Akindele’s television serial Jenifa’s Diary, drawing out in each of them the commentaries on higher education and its uses as well as limitations. In The Campus Queen, such moments of critique are realized through instruction-driven classroom scenes, while in Jenifa’s Diary this happens through Jenifa’s adaptation of the salon as a pedagogical space. The article also shows the lines of continuity between this representation of education and the earlier Yorùbá traveling theater's didactic intentions.

October 1: Metaphorizing Nigeria’s Collective Trauma of Colonization

Analogies have been drawn between therapeutic recovery and decolonization. This will mean that one can interrogate psychological effects of trauma on cultures or nations that undergo or have undergone colonization. If decolonization is perceived a form of therapy, colonialism is adjudged potential trauma. This paper is interested in understanding how colonialism could potentially traumatize a nation or given culture. It equally explores decolonization as a form of therapy. It thus analyses the trauma of colonialism in Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 (2014). No scholarly work has been done on the analysis of colonial trauma in Nollywood film texts. This might be as a result of the paucity of film texts that speak to the theme. This paper is therefore interested in understanding how Nollywood ace filmmaker, Kunle Afolayan, uses his October 1 as a metaphor to mirror the traumatic effect of colonialism on Nigeria as a nation. It explores how the film’s major characters’ relations to their traumatic pasts provide insight to Nigeria’s social history. This study attempts to visualize in Afolayan’s characters, a Nigeria traumatized by colonialism. It further envisions the possible paths to Nigeria’s survival of colonial trauma in these characters’ chosen paths to recovery. Using psychoanalysis as framework, this qualitative analysis explores decolonization as therapeutic and contributes to decolonization discourses in African film studies.

Nollywood Celebrities and the Emergence of Pro-Nigeria Fan Cultures in Cameroon: A Conceptual Discourse

Like other world cinemas, Nollywood has since its inception in the 1990s, engendered actor fandom inside and outside Nigeria. Indeed, the trans- nationalisation and explosion of Nollywood have enabled the popularity not only of Nigerian films, but also of Nollywood stars, in countries across the world. As mentioned in passing by a number of commentators, Nollywood celebrities have rapidly become stars in such places as African Diasporas in the West, in Caribbean countries and most especially in Africa. In tandem with this, a number of Nigerian actors have, thanks to their popularity, been recruited to work in giant political and marketing campaigns outside Nigeria. However, although mentioned in a number of cinema studies and blog articles, the issue of the emergence of Nollywood actors’ fans in countries across Africa remains understudied nay downplayed in research works. The studies that evoke this phenomenon tend to do so just in passing. In the bid to fill this gap in knowledge, the present article attempts an examination of pro-Nigeria fan cultures which emerged in Cameroon from early 2000s as a result of the popularity of Nollywood films and Nigerian actors in the country. Based on secondary sources and critical observations, the paper argues that Nollywood stars have been one of Nigeria’s major image makers in Cameroon. These stars contribute immensely to the deconstruction of anti-Nigeria stereotypes, as well as to laundering a Nigerian image which has for decades, appeared seriously battered.

From Make-Believe to Real Esotericism: The Socio-Spiritual Values of the Depiction of Rituals, Shrines and Incantations in Nollywood Films

From Make-Believe to Real Esotericism: The Socio-Spiritual Values of the Depiction of Rituals, Shrines and Incantations in Nollywood Films

Pentecostal Christianity and Traditional Religion in Nigerian Video Films by Edo-Language Filmmakers

ABSTRACT This article examines the representation of Pentecostal Christianity and African traditional religion in Edo-language (also known as Bini or Benin) video films. It discusses this in relation to English-language Nigerian religious video filmmakers’ demonisation of African traditional religion in their films. The article responds to Birgit Meyer’s work in her article “Religious Remediations: Pentecostal Views in Ghanaian Video-Movies”. It adopts an ethnographic approach based on participant observation, and uses interviews with key Edo-language video filmmakers. The current scholarship on Nigerian religious video films mainly focuses on the representation of religions in English-language Nollywood films and creates the impression that the Nigerian video film industry is an area of homogeneous cultural production. In contrast, Edo-language film producers do not privilege Pentecostal Christianity or traditional religion in their films but use the values of the two religions, which they see as similar, to edify Edo citizens and to promote the wellbeing of Benin society. This article therefore challenges the view that all Nigerian films represent traditional religion negatively and calls for greater recognition of the particularity of indigenous-language religious video films.

Between e-culture and real culture: a peep through the lenses of Nollywood


 
 
 
 E-culture otherwise referred to as electronic culture has become a robust field of study especially in understanding its trajectories and intersections with politics, economy, propaganda, education, culture, and arts. The term which generally captures everything that can be classified as online or digital culture has become a dominant factor in (re)imaging, projecting, and influencing opinions about individuals, ideologies, policies, culture, and arts. It has also fueled debates about fidelity between what is projected online and the reality of the situation offline especially as seen in Nollywood films. This work pilfers from the canons of Cultivation and Spiral of Silence theories, to investigate the fidelity of Nollywood as e-culture to Igbo culture and the consequent transnational impressions created by the medium about the Igbo character and his cultural allegiances. Through assessment of Igbo cultural motifs in domains of costume, makeup, and Igbo character portrayals in recently selected films, this work fingers Nol- lywood as responsible for the demeaned diasporic perceptions about Nigeria as well as the persistent Igbo cultural erosions. It concludes that while we give credit to Nollywood in areas of thematic render- ing of the Nigerian realities, the Igbo contextual (Igbo periodic and geographic settings) presentation is what this paper classes as pseudo-culture, a culture that betrays its source or what Ernest-Samuel Glo- ria refers to as “imitation of imitation.” It recommends among others, the privileging of a re-engineered mindset of filmmakers and cultural research in Igbo films to redeem the Igbo identity and possibly avert the UNESCO prediction of erosion of salient aspects of Igbo Culture by 2025.
 
 
 

GENDERED NOLLYWOOD: THE CRISIS OF FEMININITY IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN FILMS

Studies on the construction of women in Nollywood films have majorly focused on the subjugation of women by the phallocentric African men and the need for socio-economic liberation. Most of these films perceive women as a socially constituted homogenous group on the basis of shared oppression. However, this study intends to interrogate gender relations in terms of the way cultural and development policies are currently regulating the balance of power between men and women in a rapidly mutating African society. Through a reading of select Nigerian films, the paper examines how Nollywood films construct the heterogeneous roles performed by men and women in Modern Nigeria. The paper submits that the dynamics of modernity is changing the depiction of perception of the female gender in contemporary Nigerian cinema.

The ornamentalization of masculinity in selected Nollywood films

The study evaluates the spatial politics of ornamental masculinity in Nigerian movies and how representation contributes to a culture that harms gender. Highlighting how creative content and language demonstrate power, the study explores the complex realities shaping narrative experiences and how patriarchal prescripts of normative behaviour evolve in a conservative space. Based on findings culled from visual research and dramaturgical analysis, the paper explores how three Nigerian movies, Sobe Umeh’s Backup Wife, Biodun Stephen’s Let Karma, and Paschal Amanfo’s Celebrity Marriage, pioneer social change through stories of privileged male protagonists. The research establishes the link between creative performance, masculinity, and the consequences of a social process that perpetually frames minorities as auxiliaries of a dominant gender. The paper applies Connell’s gender order theory which advocates that masculinities vary across periods and cultures with characteristics presumed to be absolute and fixed in nature. Arguing that such masculinities, like gender and sexuality, are products of human classification and interpretation shaped by cultural contexts, the study finds that sexist behaviour is concealed in movies through a language of discourse that marks the female gender negatively while projecting masculinity as a shield.

Accessibility of Online Nollywood Films: The Place of You-Tube

Accessibility of Online Nollywood Films: The Place of You-Tube

Psychological Trauma and Socio-Economic Burden of Girl-Child Marriage in Nigeria: Stephanie Linus’ ‘Dry’ as a Filmic Advocacy

The need to proffer solutions to the consequences of girl-child forced marriages in Nigeria has continued to draw scholarly attention within the ambits of sociology, history, law and human-right, women and gender studies, health, and psychology studies. However, studies examining the application of Nollywood films as advocacy texts in this regard are scarce. In response to this gap, this study examines interpretively Stephanie Linus’ ‘Dry’ as a filmic advocacy text, portraying the psychological trauma and the socio-economic burden of girl-child marriages in northern Nigeria. Our interpretive analyses utilize theories espousing how denial of childhood can become traumatic to the child-wives and eventually become a socio-economic burden to their family, community, and country. The key observation is that ‘Dry’ typifies a proper and efficacious utilization of film as an advocacy platform to interrogate and communicate matters relating to health and wellbeing revolving around girl-child forced marriages.

Sex Objects and Conquered People? Representations of women in Nigerian Films in the 21st Century

This study examined the subjugation and objectification of women in Nigerian films produced in the 21st Century to determine whether the representations of women have changed at the turn of the Century. The objectives of this study were to find out the extent of subjugation of women in Nollywood films in the 21st Century and determine the extent of objectification of women in Nollywood films in the 21st Century. This study was anchored on the feminist muted group theory. The design adopted was a mixed-method approach that combined content analysis and in-depth interviews. The researchers focused on Nollywood films produced from 2000 to 2021 that have women playing leading or supporting roles. A total of 22 films were coded and eleven film experts and scholars were interviewed. It was found that women were not significantly subjugated in Nigerian films produced in the 21st century. However, women are still highly sexually objectified in Nigerian films produced in the 21st century. They are portrayed in a way that viewers can make judgments about them based on their physical appearance and their sex appeal. It was recommended that the Nigerian Film and Video Censors' Board must play its part in reducing the incidence of female objectification in Nigerian films by putting Objectification (O) as a film classification element, in the same breath as Nudity, Strong Language, and Violence (NSL).

Nollywood Films and Bastardization of African Image

Nollywood Films and Bastardization of African Image

The Westernization of the African zombie in Nollywood Films

The Nigerian film industry (nicknamed Nollywood) has, over the years, embraced foreign influences as a form of newness and singularity. Many films produced in the industry have displayed the capacity to re-contextualize and indigenize specific forms and styles associated with the global mass culture, including Hollywood horror films and the zombie genre. Thus, there have been at least two ways of representing zombies in the Nollywood films. While most films have depicted zombies according to local African or Nigerian myths, a certain number of recently produced films have displayed representations of these undead creatures (zombies) which are visibly inspired by the Western imagination or fantasies. This thesis could well be illustrated through a critical study of two Nollywood films namely A.C. Enonchong‘s Witchdoctor of the Living Dead and Sam Perry‘s Outbreak 2020. Using the two above mentioned films as case studies, this paper specifically seeks answers to three research questions: how are Western myths about zombies different from those prevailing in the Nigerian socio-cultural space? How has the zombie filmic genre evolved in the Nigerian film industry and how are Western myths about zombies informing or reflected in selected Nollywood films?

The Conflict of sexuality in Films: Analysis of Nollywood depiction of Homosexuality

This study addresses a sensitive subject in the context of the socio-cultural, political, legal and religious opposition to homosexual groups in Nigeria. It addresses the social depictions, honest portrayal, and conflicts between heterosexual and homosexual characters based on sexuality in Nollywood films. The study adopted a quantitative content analysis of twenty (20) Nollywood films. The study revealed that homosexual characters are depicted as physiologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually misfits. However, the film producers made an educational effort in exposing practices seen as offensive to societal norms and values. Further findings reveal that homosexual characters are portrayed as morally negative. This demonstrates the truism of the normative hypothesis that media take colouration of society in which they are situated. Finally, the study revealed a high level of perceptual conflict of non-acceptance, stigmatisation, rejection and prohibited reaction by heteronormative characters towards homosexuals based on their sexuality. In this sense, the Nollywood films examined by this study illustrate unwelcome, stereotypic, anti-social and homophobic narratives of homosexual characters that align with Nigerian society's social, civil, cultural, and religious belief systems. It is recommended that well-researched based content on sexual minorities beyond the depiction of the social position on their sexuality to more issues relating to the causal factors and ways of addressing such sexuality should be more focused on since in it has been marked as a crime in Nigeria.