VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

on the background, the sound of the power generator, the noise of people chatting in the set’svicinities, churches’ bells and mosques’ calls to prayer). Camera movements and shooting angles,when not directly inspired by the classic soap opera style (highly dramatic close ups and quickframe alternation), tend to reproduce the basic technique used in the early years of Nigeriantelevision to film local programs and theatre shows (see Esan 2009: 90). This technique privilegedlong take sequences in order to simplify the editing process and reduce the post-production’s timeand budget, thus involuntarily subscribing to one of the key features of neorealist film language asdefined by Bazin (1971). Furthermore, in early videos the special effects and make up tend to behandcrafted and, when they are not overstated (image V), they participate in creating a sense ofcrude naturalism (image VI).V: End of the Wicked: one of the witches VI: Living in Bondage: the sacrifice of a goatIntuitively we would be pushed to think that, in general terms, the combination of the elementsthat I listed above would make the film look more artificial, because of the absence of the specificcraft (in what concerns special effects, extras’ acting skills, sound and light tuning, cameratechnique) that makes the technicality of filmmaking, its “artificiality”, almost invisible. But,surprisingly, the result is exactly the opposite. The evident artificiality of some scenes, the fact thatthe reality that is behind the camera continuously reemerges and interferes with what is beingfilmed, give the videos a particularly realist flavor, contingent but significantly effective.An instance of this contingent realism is given by two of the best known scenes in Living inBondage (1992). The first represents one of the numerous occult rituals to which Andy, theprotagonist of the film, participates throughout the film. In the particular scene that I have in mind,which happens toward the end of the film, a goat is decapitated right on Andy’s head (image V).The bare naturalism of this scene is related to the fact that there is no technical mediation to it. The162