VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

phenomenon is the result of a specific form of “postcolonial exotic” (Huggan 2001), one in whichthe fascination for non-Western declinations of modernity takes the place of the fascination for thearchaic, the traditional, and the tribal. 95 As I will show in the last section of this chapter, in reactionto this kind of representation a number of directors and producers moved toward new economic andnarrative strategies. By doing this they aim at moving Nollywood away from the marginal positionin which postcolonial-exotic representations have positioned it.The untamable alterity of Nollywood: Recurring themes and images.To describe the defining attributes of the metaculture of Nollywood produced by the existingdocumentary films on the video industry it can be useful to identify a number of recurring themesand images. The list that will emerge from this operation can suggest interesting elements for theanalysis that this chapter intends to achieve. In the first few minutes, most of the documentary filmson the video industry introduce images of the city of Lagos followed by statistical data on the city’spopulation, on the average income of Nigerian workers and in some cases on the average lifeexpectancy. These sequences reveal what can be defined as an ethnographic approach, somethingthat is rarely seen in documentaries on other film industries in the world. The target audience ofthese documentaries is, in most of the cases, the average Western film festival public, and probablyfor this reason most of the documentaries’ directors considered it useful to provide basicinformation about a country that is rarely or badly represented in international media. In theseintroductory sequences the way Lagos is presented varies. However, the predominant image is oneof chaos: views of gigantic traffic jams and overcrowded markets absorbed in dusty atmospheresand distorted sounds. This representation is probably not very distant from the truth of Lagos’everyday life, but what is relevant for this analysis is the fact that it comes first in the narrativeconstruction of most documentaries. At the same time, the modernity of Lagos’ infrastructures isclearly shown. 96 Long shots of the Third Mainland Bridge and of Victoria Island’s impressiveskyline appear often in these introductory sequences, but the camera tends to hesitate on buildingsthat are falling apart, on piles of rubbish burning at street corners, on overcrowded public transport,95 Even if I am aware of the complex and multifaceted reality that the words “West” and “Western” hide, I will usethem throughout this chapter for the sake of synthesis and clarity.96 The documentary Nollywood Abroad is an exception in this discussion. All the scenes shot in Lagos that appears inthis film are in fact recorded in the poorest and most disgraceful neighborhood of the Nigerian economic capital,inevitably providing a very partial representation of it.116