...Nollywood: How far from Hollywood?

In India, the term used to refer to the movie industry is called Bollywood. In Nigeria, it is Nollywood. These are renditions of the powerhouse movie center of the world, known as Hollywood.

Hollywod is located in Los Angeles, California in Western USA. Anyone hoping to pursue a dream as a career actor hopes to one day move to Hollywood, where more than half the population in some way is connected to the movie industry either through acting or production. There are a few dozen gigantic movie production houses like Paramount Studios, Universal Studios,etc that help make this dream come true.

Half-way around the globe, in Nigeria, the scene is another page of the book. Springing into action in the late 90s, the Nigerian movie industry has grown tremendously to greater heights. I still remember the title of the first movie I watched, Glamour Girls. We had gathered in front of the TV as my mother proudly announced that she had managed to secure one of the few copies available of the first Nigerian movie to hit the stands in Cameroon.

The nostalgia is still fresh as I remember popping open a bottle of juice and savoring a slice of cake as the screen flickered. The feeling was immense as I was proud to note that my own kind were movie leads and actually had put something together.

Fast-forward 10 and some years. I am in the US and every African or International Grocery or Clothing Store you go into has Nigerian movies on sale. The titles are inumerable. It seems movies are produced by the minute and the stands are suffering of this mass production type deal. The themes of the movies all seem to be alike, with most of them very poorly done due to attempts to jumpstart acting and production careers, and beat the competition. It has become so cut-throat that now, the movie need only have a title and a few people to call actors.

Mostly void of plots, and story lines, the Video Compact Discs leave quite little to desire. The truth is, if I were to create a label from Microsoft publisher, I am sure I would do a better job. Apart from the physical appearance, the content itself always almost leaves me regretting the reason for my purchasing the movie to start with. Grammatical errors, inconsistent plots and horendous audiovisual quality are the sign posts by which these movies thread.

Don't get me wrong, I admire the effort but I have to also admit that the road is quite long and mass production of this kind is only diminishing quality, which goes a long way to affect the quality of our most dear possession, the ability to make movies about our own society and lives. It is a great thing to make movies but because the Nigerian movie industry is lack lustre in quality, this has caused a lethargic pace to theme Africa's movie industry. We are a long way away from Hollywood.