VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

event that made the industry. While this was not the first video film ever released in Nigeria, 23 itwas undoubtedly the first one to have a great commercial success, and thus the one that establishedthose that have become the defining features of Nollywood aesthetics, narratives and economicstrategies. I will discuss these defining features throughout the thesis, but it might be useful here toquickly summarize them before further developing this argument. 24 As I discussed in the previoussection, in terms of production and distribution strategies the success of Living in Bondage markedthe migration of informal modes of operation from the periphery of Nigerian media economy to themainstream (cf. Larkin 2004). Cheap budget of production, low-cost recording and editing facilities(VHS camera recorder, non-professional editing instruments, artisanal lighting and sound), andstraight-to-video distribution strategies became thus the defining attributes of the economy of theemerging industry, while melodramatic stories, urban and domestic settings, luxurious cars andclothing became the aesthetic and narrative constant of video production.In terms of Nollywood’s storylines, the plot of Living in Bondage can be seen as the model ofwhat later became the defining aspects of the Nigerian video melodrama. As Onokoome Okomepointed out (2004a), these stories are concentrated around the feeling of anxiety that characterizesNigerian postcolonial cities, an anxiety due to the desire for a better living, a better job, socialfreedom from the ties imposed, even within the city, by family, gender and religious obligations. Inthe Nigerian melodrama the locus of anxiety par excellence becomes the family. It is within thefamily, in fact, that the deepest insecurity is manifested and the conflicts that dominate the urbanjungle are internalized. As Brian Larkin emphasized “in Nigerian films the family is often thesource of the deepest treachery, and family members are represented as corrupt, cheating people ofmoney and betraying them as well as offering love and support” (2008: 171). In Living in Bondage,for instance, at the beginning of the film the protagonist, Andy, is frustrated because of his23 A number of Yoruba video films circulated in Nigeria since the late 1980s. Keneth Nnebue himself invested inYoruba video production before turning to the production of Living in Bondage, which was the first video film everproduced in Igbo (even if with English subtitles to spread its circulation across ethnic and linguistic boundaries). Thesame Kenneth Nnebue two years later, in 1994, produced the first video film in English, Glamour Girls. For furtherdetails see Haynes and Okome (1998) and Haynes (2007d).24 A description of these features is given in many academic articles that have the goal of introducing the Nigerian videoindustry to wider international audiences (see for instance Haynes 2000 and 2007a; McCall 2004 and 2007; Okome2007a and 2007d ). It is important to report and acknowledge here Haynes’ warning against “the dangers of generalizingabout these films. They are myriad-minded, the expression of a huge country of more than 100 million people whospeak some 250 languages, a country with unlimited capacity to astonish and bewilder its most devoted students”(2000: 2).27