VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

ather documentarian orientation, as exemplified by the publication of two essays on the videoindustry in the introductory pages of the catalogue itself (Abani 2009; Saro-Wiwa 2009). 106 Thepresence and the contents of these essays inevitably contradicts Hugo’s claim of producing an antirealisticportrait of Nollywood.IX : Photo no.12 (Hugo 2009) X: Photo n. 32 (Hugo 2009)The result of this articulate dynamic is that, on one side, people that have no other knowledge ofNollywood than the one proposed by the exhibition tend to take Hugo’s images as a likelyrepresentation of the video industry, while those that know the industry and are eventually avidvideos’ consumers, feel outraged by Hugo’s representation. This is testified by some of the reactionHugo’s exhibition provoked. After viewing the exhibition in a South African gallery, NeelikaJayawardane wrote on a blog article:it’s too obvious to say that Hugo’s machete-wielding dwarves, suited men porting theinnards of freshly slaughtered cows, and melon-breasted women offering their servicesto devil-masked men are hardly representative of whatever we might imagine as‘African fantasy’ on film […] But I wonder what views of African popular cinema106 Unfortunately, the essays are themselves problematic and contain misinformation on the industry which do not helpin producing a more precise representation of the video phenomenon. In Abani’s article for instance, Bond Emeruwa isconsidered to be the producer of Living in Bondage (2009: 13), a mistake that all Nollywood viewers wouldimmediately remark (the producer is in fact Kenneth Nnebue).129