VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

The reaction that the international representation of Nollywood provoked in Nigeria has beencomplemented by the concern this same discourse generated amongst Nigerian artists in thediaspora. Many of them, in fact, felt directly implicated by the way the Nigerian video industry hasbeen portrayed. If Nollywood, as a brand representing a positive and successful story, was makingthem proud of being Nigerian, the international way of portraying the industry becameprogressively a reason for discomfort. Wale Ojo, a Nigerian actor and musician based in London,well summarized this feeling:I worked for long time as an actor and everywhere I go, from South Africa to LosAngeles, people tell me “Hey man, Nigerians are really talented, good actors… what thefuck is going on with the movies though?!” And I look around myself and I say: “I haveno idea!”… and everywhere I go they keep on telling me the same thing, so I toldmyself: “You know what? I’m going to do something about it! (Ojo 2010)Like Wale Ojo, many Nigerian film professionals in the diaspora have been exposed to similarreactions and decided to get involved in the video industry to bring back to Nigeria the internationalexperiences acquired throughout their careers. The Hollywood actor Hakeem Kae-Kazim, theFrench-based Nigerian fashion designer Andy Amadi Okoroafor, and the UK-based theatre andtelevision actor Razaaq Adoti all represent examples of this trend (cf. Ajiboye 2011; Ilevbare 2008;Okusami 2010). However the integration of these characters and of their experiences within theNollywood arena has not been as simple as one might think. On the one hand, the video industry isin fact a more structured and rigid environment than what it is often believed and Nigerianmarketers and producers in some cases did not respond enthusiastically to the homecoming ofNigerian expatriates. On the other hand, the international experiences that the returning Nigeriansaccumulated in their careers did not easily match with the everyday reality of the Nigerian videoindustry. I will further discuss this topic in the third section of the thesis. However, Wale Ojo’sexperience can significantly illustrate this issue:in Nigeria I was in a Nollywood film (Six demons)… it was a disaster! It was terrible! Ishowed it to a friend of mine in Denmark and he said it was the worst film he had everseen… I did it because the press in Nigeria, when I went back there, told me: “Youknow, you are from London, you don’t know what is going on in Nigeria, you are veryelitist, and blablabla, and once you leave here you go back to London and you have a135