Hollywood, Who Really Needs It?

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A dozen video tapes make a loud thunk when they're brought down on a wooden desk, and Chico Ejiro seems pleased with the sound. "These are just some of my movies," says the Nigerian director. Their jackets are eye-catching. Bare-chested ogres stare wide-eyed. Vixens clutching assault rifles spill from their dresses. Outkast tells the story of Nigerian girls abducted to Europe for prostitution. Black Maria, of a murderous, miniskirted nun. Children of Terror, of kids succumbing to the criminal life. Ejiro, known as Mr. Prolific in the Lagos society pages, has in eight years directed 80 "home videos," locally produced budget movies that are winning ever-larger Nigerian audiences. While the 1990s saw American blockbusters evicting home-grown products from cinemas all over the world, Africa's most populous country was turning to the local stuff, becoming — along with India, the Philippines and Hong Kong — one of the few film markets that prefer their own movies to Hollywood's. Nigeria also exports its videos, with particular success in Ghana.

Genres range from traditional African stories to knock-offs of Hollywood action flicks. That quality is often sacrificed to rapid turnover almost doesn't matter. A typical video is shot in two weeks and offers terrible acting, unimaginative shots and volume jumps between cuts. But whether they feature cultists, armed robbers or just young girls searching for love in Lagos, the scripts always have a local flavor. As Afolabi Adesanya, a film historian trained at the San Francisco Art Institute, learned from his daughter, Nigerians are willing to look past the faults: "She said to me, 'Look, Daddy. Their films might not be technically good, but the truth is they're telling our stories. And we can relate to them.'" Nigerians first began expressing themselves through movies in the oil-booming 1970s, but paradoxically it took an economic collapse for the industry to really take off. By 1990 the country had already been pummeled by years of military dictatorship. Its once-vibrant theater scene was gone. Shooting on celluloid had become unaffordable, and the nascent film industry, Adesanya notes, made its last commercial feature in 1991. Besides, with cities plagued by armed robbers, few wanted to risk a nighttime outing just to see a movie. But Nigeria's appetite for drama was undiminished, and into the gap stepped the home video. Newly affordable video cameras eliminated the costs of film and editing, and production began on a mass scale. In 1995, the National Film and Video Censors Board rated and released 205 movies. In 2000, it released 650. With most marketed to skip Nigeria's few crumbling cinemas in favor of home viewing, local movies have completely taken over the video stores. Hollywood has been relegated to small stacks of pirated copies. If anything, the industry has suffered from its own success. The explosive growth has watered down profits. Just a few years ago, a typical movie would cost perhaps $35,000 and sell at least 200,000 copies at about $2.50 each. Now, says Azubike Udensi, a home-video marketer, the average production costs only $8,000, but convincing Nigerians to buy 100,000 tapes is "a very, very uphill battle."

Last March, the censors board examined 83 videos, a rate that if continued for the whole of 2002 would yield nearly 1,000 movies. In response, many producers closed ranks and called for a moratorium to "sanitize" the market. They stopped shooting videos on March 1 and started again this week after they had strengthened their guilds and found a way to restrict access to the profession. Efforts are also in the works to crack down on rental clubs, from which filmmakers receive no profit. With fewer directors competing, the argument goes, the public will benefit: revenues will jump, and with them quality. Meanwhile, a few are already quietly striving for international standards, aided by new technologies like digital video that allow higher production values at little extra cost. Tunde Kelani, whose popular, allegorical tales of traditional kings mirror Nigeria's political history, spends up to six months and $60,000 on an average movie, none of it on special effects. Though it has taken him nine years to shoot nine movies (in Yoruba rather than the more marketable English), his productions are popular. His latest piece, for example, has sold 150,000 copies and it's still selling fast.

Whatever their style, Nigeria's directors are united by the challenges of facing a saturated market and a desire to break through into a wider world. Ejiro and Kelani have both screened movies at international film festivals and dubbed productions in French for their West African devotees. Meanwhile, Nigeria's vast diaspora is yielding footholds in England and the United States. Who knows? In decades past, California's Chinatowns helped introduce Hong Kong to Hollywood. The next Jackie Chan or John Woo may now be honing his skills on Nigeria's video screens.