VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

on the periphery of the video phenomenon their condition has always been defined by a high degreeof economic vulnerability. For this reason they experimented with different production strategiesand narrative solutions in order to differentiate their market. However, when the Nigerian videoindustry entered the production crisis these production companies found themselves in the positionof an avant-garde in what concerns the transnational expansion of the video industry. They had infact already experimented with economic and aesthetic solutions that could open Nigerianproductions to global audiences. In this sense, they became potentially the bridge that could connectthe Nigerian video industry to transnational, non-African audiences.As discussed throughout this dissertation, while processes of transnationalization have shapedNollywood since its beginnings, they are today assuming a particularly influential role in the videoindustry. The three sections that I summarized above all evidenced this dynamic and tried toanalyze the causes behind it. However they inevitably leave a number of questions open. During myresearch I observed a process in the act of happening. The transformations that I described andanalyzed are still on their way, and their consequences are still not completely manifest.What will the processes of transnationalization that I underlined throughout this dissertationmean in terms of the social impact of the video industry on local audiences? And what is going tochange in terms of the popularity and accessibility of Nigerian videos? As evidenced several timesin these pages, the success of the Nigerian video phenomenon has in fact been based on its capacityto interpret the dreams, the fears, and the expectations of its local popular audience. The informalityof Nollywood’s specific modes of production and distribution have had a fundamental role inmaking videos accessible for the lowest classes of the Nigerian social pyramid. Even if theformalization processes that I have described (the construction of new theatre halls, theformalization of the distribution) are still underway, they will inevitably affect the popularaccessibility of Nigerian films, transforming the very nature of the video phenomenon and its socialimpact.Moreover, what is going to happen to the aesthetics and narratives of Nigerian videos ifproducers start considering the Nigerian and worldwide African diasporas as their main audiences?What if the video era must die for cinema culture to be born again? The new wave of high budgetfilms that has emerged in the past few years has in fact shifted its focus from a local-popular to atransnational-elitist audience, an audience whose economic support might prove to be vital for thesurvival of the industry itself, but whose tastes, interests, social and cultural values probably differprofoundly from those of the popular audience that patronized the videos since the early days of the197