With over 1,200 video films produced each year, Nigeria has become one of the most prolific producers of film fiction in the world. The majority of the films are of poor quality, made on very low budgets and in a very short time, but their production has a big impact on people in Nigeria and the industry’s influence is extending across the continent. This book examines how the experiences and lives of Nigerians are narrated through the storyboards of the video producers, who copy with confidence and energy the recipes and formulas of popular films. As a home-grown industry that emerged spontaneously and without outside support, its vitality is a counter to’Afro-pessimism’ and demonstrates the possibility of reviving the African film industry and developing a cinema-going public to support it.

CONTENTS:
Preface
– I THE NIGERIAN CASE Introduction by Pierre Barrot
– Video as the AIDS of the film industry
– Africa’s Italians
– Video as stress relief
– Selling like hot cake
– the box office & statistics
– Audacity, scandal & censorship
– Informal sector or video industry?
– Jumping on the bandwagon by Tunde Oladunjoye
– Nigerian video as a child of television by Don Pedro Obaseki
– Hausa video films & Sharia law by Frederic Noy
– Spielberg & I
– the digital revolution by Tunde Kelani
– II NOLLYWOOD & ITS CONQUEST OF AFRICA Niger & the Nigerian video
– the toast of lovers by Ibbo Daddy Abdoulaye
– Kinshasa & the Nigerian video
– chasing the Devil by Franck Baku Fuita & Godefroid Bwiti Lumisa
– Kenya & Nigerian video
– the state of dependence by Ogova Ondego
– Can the Nigerian model of home video be exported? by Olivier Barlet
– Snapshots
– Ten film profiles
– Epilogue.

Paperback (pp: 176) 216 x 185mm