VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

the United States and then in Ghana, Nigeria and other African and European countries. In this waythey protect one of their best markets from piracy.Emem Isong and Vivian Ejike are today two of the most successful producers and distributorswithin the Nigerian video industry’s environment. Their work receives high consideration in theeconomic transactions that take place in the diaspora. The economy that surrounds their ventures isthus better structured and inevitably produces better results than the economy of many other lesssuccessful Nigerian productions. It is possible to imagine, then, that less affirmed producers mightget a less advantageous treatment when they try to commercialize their products on diasporicmarkets. However, the example provided by Isong’s and Ejike’s ventures underlines the growinginfluence that diasporic markets have in defining the future development of the Nigerian videoeconomy.In the United Kingdom, home to the second largest group of Nigerians in the diaspora after theUnited States, most circulation of Nigerian videos was also routed through pirated networks. Evenif in the early 1990s a number of marketers (Afelele and Sons, Alasco Videos, Bayowa) invested inthe legal distribution of Yoruba videos in London (Ayorinde 1999), in the following years thepopular success of the videos, and the small number of legal copies available, opened the market topiracy. The action undertaken by a number of Nigerians living in London in recent years hasfocused on the idea of taking Nollywood off the shelves and the pirate websites and bringing it tothe cinemas. The introduction of scheduled movie premieres at Odeon cinemas was intended toprogressively create a demand for the theatrical release of Nollywood films, with a view to movingthem into the mainstream cinema distribution network (Babatope 2010). Since it began in 2006, thissystem has had three main goals: (a) encouraging diasporic Nigerian audiences to watch Nollywoodfilms in the cinema; (b) compiling economic data that could reflect the theatrical demand forNollywood films and then convince mainstream cinema distributors to invest in them; (c) inducingNigerian producers to upgrade the technical quality of their films to make them conform to cinemastandards.This theatrical exhibition system has precedents. Various cinema screenings of Nigerian filmshad been organized in the UK, as in the US, since the early years of Nollywood, but they were notformally structured. In most cases films were shown in privately hired screening rooms andconference venues or in neighborhood cinemas. With the introduction of the Odeon premieres (atOdeon Surrey Quay, near London Bridge, in the first three years, and in Odeon Greenwich during79