Murmures

This week, you may be expecting my response to recent devastating attacks, including those on media offices in Abuja and Kaduna and on the churches meeting at my long-time host Bayero University, Kano. Forgive me, I am feeling too overwhelmed to post a coherent response at this time. Instead I will share some of the responses to my article, « Fellini, Godard and Training Nollywood. »

Connor Ryan, a U.S.-based Nollywood scholar doing his PhD at Michigan State University, said he liked that I brought « Godard and Fellini into the discussion » but that « I don’t know if I agree with your characterization that they are self-indulgent or inaccessible. I think any given viewer will access something in a film, and if what they get a hold of is not what they ‘should’ have, that isn’t a shortcoming, of the film or the viewer. […] I met a handful of filmmaker in Lagos who wanted, and had the skills, to make a film that breaks all the conventions set by Nollywood so far. But these folks don’t get to make those films. Ultimately, I wonder if the horizon of expectations doesn’t keep these conventions in place. Marketers fund films that fulfill the expectations consumers have for films. As Africa Magic picks up and expands, I wonder how much that will end up setting the horizon of expectations a film must meet, something more like television programming. And I think a big reason we accept a commonsensical separation of the filmmaking of Godard, Fellini, Solanas and Getino, Sembene and that of Nollywood is that we don’t recognize that we already have expectations for their work before we hit play. »