VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

specific genre's openness that gives them a particular “addressivity”, an attribute that makes themable to appeal to audiences situated both within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. AsKarin Barber underlined, when looking at specific cultural texts or media we need to ask ourselves“why, at a certain time and place, we find these textual forms and not others; and how specifictextual forms participate in constituting specific historical forms of consciousness” (2007: 41). As Iwill underline in this chapter, the early Nigerian videos that I analyze in this chapter, and whichinspired much of the following production, are the result of a specific historical environment duringwhich post-independence modernization projects showed their limits and their potential failure.Nigerian videos thus express a certain relationship to modernity which informs their aesthetics andnarratives and which makes them “speak” the reality of their time.Vincent's concern about the collaboration with Simone opened up the space for another set ofquestions. If in fact the collaboration between Simone and Vincent was moving their videos awayfrom the mainstream Nollywood's film language, at the same time it was producing something new.Observing Simone's and Vincent's work and watching their videos, I realized that the transpositionof Nollywood's film language and production strategies in the diaspora had generated importanttransformations in the Nollywood narrative formula Vincent was referring to in our discussions. Ibecame aware that Vincent's and Rose's production company in Turin was not an isolate case.Numerous Nigerian video production companies, directly inspired by the Nollywood model, hademerged all over Europe since the end of the 1990s. I thus decided to analyze them comparativelyto understand how the Nigerian video industry's main characteristics can transform whenproduction takes place in the diaspora. I realized that something like a “Nollywood abroad”phenomenon had emerged and I became curious to understand what was its specificity vis-à-vis the“Nigerian” Nollywood.The production ventures that emerged in the diaspora all share a particular condition of inbetwenness.They refer to Nollywood as a model, but they are situated at the margin of it. Thus theyhave to constantly experiment with new strategies that can place them in a better position in relationto either the Nigerian or the European film market. Each production company that I have analyzedadopted a different solution. In some cases the mainstream Nollywood formula has been acceptedand reproduced in order to compete on the video market in Nigeria. In other cases the film languagehas been transformed in order to access different shares of the audience, both locally andtransnationally. As I have mentioned in the third chapter, some of the films that were produced inthe diaspora managed to access theatrical distribution, both in Nigeria and in Western countries.The film language transformations that they have introduced parallel those that have appeared139