Nollywood will survive present challenges

Canada-based poet and film critic, Prof. Onookome Okome, speaks with CHUX OHAI about emerging developments in the Nigerian film industry

In 2010, the Vice Chancellor of the Kwara State University, Prof. Abdulrasheed Na’Allah, asked poet and critic, Prof. Onookome Okome, who teaches English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada to help organise the first edition of the university’s Conference on African Cinema in Ilorin.

The maiden conference, held for about four days, turned out to be very successful. As expected, it was attended by specialists in film studies, scholars and culture enthusiasts from different parts of the world. The success of the event was due partly to what Okome describes, in an interview with our correspondent, as the KSU’s extraordinary vision, which also manifested in the introduction of another project – the Nollywood Film Village.

The second edition of the conference is scheduled to take place between November 26 and 29, 2014. This time, the focus will be on the African cinema and the supernatural. Already, Prof. Afe Adogame of the University of Edinburgh and Prof. Ken Harrow of Michigan State University have been designated keynote speakers.

Okome notes that the idea of hosting the conference derives from a need to call attention to the place of religion and the supernatural in Nollywood productions.

“Also it is meant to make us understand how popular culture can propagate superstition and the ways that we can actually read them productively in order for us to understand what to take out of the films and what to drop if we have to do that,” he adds.

Not willing to exonerate the new crop of films produced in Nollywood from the common ‘crime’ of over-dependence on themes of the supernatural, the film critic says, “New films produced in Nollywood have been focusing on the supernatural. In fact, The Figurine, which is one of the most outstanding films in what we now call the New Nollywood, has a lot to do with the supernatural. But what is really interesting about the film is the way it privileges the supernatural from a critical perspective. It questions the idea of believing in a pre-conceived idea of what culture is and what the gods are in the local pantheon, as well as what they do. It criticises these ideas, but also highlights the fact that people believe in them. This is the whole question about what culture evolves. In Nollywood, the supernatural has always dominated other themes.

“I wrote the afterword to Adeshina Afolayan’s new book titled Auteuring Nollywood, which was launched recently in Lagos. Reading the essays in the book, what I found out was simply that everybody acknowledges the fact that there was a preponderance of the supernatural in Nollywood films. In fact, the most successful Nollywood film dwells on the supernatural. It is something that is unexplainable. You want to make money by killing people; it does not work. There is no logic or rational thinking to it.”

In his assessment of current developments in the Nigerian film industry, Okome singles out Jeta Amata’s film, Amazing Grace and Kunle Afolayan’s The Figurine as the fore-runners of the New Nollywood.

Describing both films as reflecting a wave of change that is currently sweeping the film industry, he says, “These films are made on big budgets. They are targeted at new audiences and festivals outside the country. Secondly, they tend to be more sophisticated in terms of narrative technique than most other films. For me, The Figurine is the best so far. What is fascinating about that film is not only the cinematography – which is brilliant – but the content.

“The content is not given to you as an absolute fact; it is presented in the form of a critical question that makes the audience begin to feel that our cinema is coming to terms with international standards. It shows that we are remaking life in the films, not just interpreting it.”

Also, Okome points out that the essential difference between the Old and New Nollywood lies in the methods and ambition of the practitioners.

“Old Nollywood is very local and its practitioners never pretended to go beyond the local. But those behind the rise of New Nollywood are very conscious of moving beyond the local. They want to go outside the country to increase the technology of the narrative, to increase the sophistication of the story telling, to increase the system of making the film itself and the language even more sophisticated. So it is no longer a stage play, as we used to have in the early stages of Nollywood; it is now a film with a local film language that is recognizable internationally,” he says.

In spite of its obvious lack of ambition, the critic, who divides his attention between writing, teaching and film, does not think that the Old Nollywood will be displaced too soon by the New Nollywood.

“Old Nollywood – meaning shooting directly on video and selling on the streets with a wheel barrow distribution system – will continue to cater to an active audience. In fact, New Nollywood is for the affluent who go to the cinemas. How many Nigerians can afford to visit the cinemas, nowadays? I see both of them existing side by side for a long time. I think Nollywood will survive, despite its present challenges,” he says.