VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

CHAPTER VNigerian videos in the global arena: The postcolonial exotic revisitedSince the beginning of the 2000s the Nigerian video industry has been the object of a largenumber of documentary films and festival retrospectives around the world. Their objective was, inmost of the cases, that of introducing the Nigerian video phenomenon to non-African audiences. AsI have evidenced in the previous chapter, Nollywood’s specific modes of operation made theNigerian video industry almost incommensurable to other experiences of filmmaking in the world.As a consequence, during its first decade of existence, the Nigerian video phenomenon remainedpractically “invisible” to non-African audiences. The retrospectives and documentaries thatappeared since the early 2000s had thus the objective of filling this gap and making Nollywoodvisible within the global cinema arena.The first reports about the Nigerian video industry were produced by international televisionstations like CNN and BBC. The list goes from CNN’s Inside Africa, the Best of African Film in2004 and BBC’s Nick Goes to Nollywood, both produced in 2004, to Nollywood, le cinéma africaindans la cours des grands produced in 2008 by France Ô. 92 Since the mid-2000s also a series ofauthor-documentaries emerged: Welcome to Nollywood and This is Nollywood in 2007, Nollywood,le Nigéria fait son cinéma, Nollywood Just Doing It, A Very Very Short Story of Nollywood,Nollywood Abroad, Nollywood Lady aka Peace Mission and Nollywood Babylon in 2008. 93 Thesedocumentaries circulated widely in film festivals and on DVD, and as I mentioned earlier,participated in defining a specific way of looking at the Nigerian video industry. The production ofdocumentaries on the video phenomenon by Nigerian directors has been, on the contrary, almostnonexistent. The only exceptions is a number of promotional videos of the “making-of” genre, thatgoes from The Making of “The Battle of Musanga” shot in 1996 to the recent Once Upon a Time inNollywood, the Making of “Half Empty Half Full” (2008) and The Making of the “Return ofJenifa” (2010). In the next pages I will mention the discursive construction suggested by thesefilms as an alternative to the representation offered by Western-produced documentaries. However,92 These are just a few examples but the list is much longer even if is hard to get precise data about each of the list’sentry.93 A smaller number of documentaries about the Ghanaian video industry have also been produced. The Most importantare The Video Revolution in Ghana (2000), L’industrie audiovisuelle au Ghana (2001) and Ghanaian Video Tales(2006).114