Welcome to Nollywood - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Welcome to Nollywood is a 2007 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

directed by Jamie Meltzer

Jamie Meltzer

Jamie Meltzer is an American movie and documentary film director with four movies thus far, "Pegasus" , "Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story", "Welcome to Nollywood", and the short film "La Caminata"...

, which premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema. Each spring Full Frame welcomes filmmakers and film lovers from around the world to historic downtown Durham, North Carolina for a four-day, morning to midnight...

, and also played at the Avignon Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival

Melbourne International Film Festival

The Melbourne International Film Festival is an acclaimed annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1951, making it one of the oldest in the World....

in the summer of 2007.

Premise

The Nigerian film industry

Cinema of Nigeria

The cinema of Nigeria grew quickly in the 1990s and 2000s to become the second largest film industry in the world in terms of number of annual film productions, placing it ahead of the United States and behind the Indian film industry...

, known as Nollywood, has exploded in the last ten years. Now the most popular cinema in all of West Africa—more popular even than imports of Hollywood or Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

films—the Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

n film industry has distinguished itself by shooting all films (called video films there) on digital video. This has allowed production schedules to be compressed (films are shot in several days) and immediately brought to market (distribution consists of bringing films to Idumota electronics market in Lagos and selling them for home viewing). The sheer volume of Nigerian video films is staggering: one estimate has a film being produced for each day of the year. Nollywood is now the third-largest film industry in the world, generating US$286 million per year for the Nigerian economy. And yet this vibrant, profitable industry is virtually unknown outside of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

The film looks into this newly emerging film industry, exploring its peculiar inner workings, economic challenges, and diverse array of colorful films. Traveling to the country’s chaotic largest city, Lagos, Meltzer spent ten weeks following three of Nigeria’s hottest directors, each different in personality and style, as they shot their films about love, betrayal, war, and the supernatural. Welcome to Nollywood tells the stories of these three directors and their latest productions, while also using interviews with scholars, actors, and journalists who celebrate (in insightful and often humorous ways) the Nigerian video-film industry as a whole, its unique character and genres, as well as its impact on the culture of West Africa

West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...

and Africans at home and abroad.

Cast List (documentary subjects)

Izu Ojukwu
Izu Ojukwu
Izu Ojukwu is a Nigerian film director and actor. In 2007 he won the African Movie Academy Award for Best Director for the film Sitanda, which received 9 nominations and won 5 awards at the 3rd African Movie Academy Awards, including Best Picture & Best Nigerian Film.-Selected Filmography :*White...

- Director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Chico Ejiro
Chico Ejiro
Chico Ejiro is a Nigerian movie auteur. Little is known about Ejiro other than he originally studied agriculture, and he was drawn into video production because Nigerians would not buy blank videocassettes...

- Producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

/Director
Don Pedro Obaseki - Producer/Director
Charles Novia -Producer/Director
Shan George - Actress
Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima - Producer
Tunde Kelani - Producer/Director
J.T. Tom West - Actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
Richard Mofe Damijo
Richard Mofe Damijo
Richard Mofe Damijo is a Nigerian actor and politician. In 2005 he won the African Movie Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Since January 2009 he is the Commissioner for Culture and Tourism in Delta State, Nigeria.- Early life :Mofe-Damijo was born in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria...

- Actor
Francis Duru - Actor

Reception

Review by Lisa Nesselson at Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

from the Avignon Film Festival

Avignon Film Festival

Avignon Film Festival is also known as the Rencontres Cinématographiques Franco-Américain d'Avignon. The festival used to be called the French/American Film Workshop.The festival took place in Avignon, France every year and was devoted to promoting Film...

: "Jamie Meltzer's Welcome to Nollywood boasts wall-to-wall bravado filtered through African-style entrepreneurship: Hook any of the producer-directors profiled here to a generator and the energy might just offset global reliance on oil. Docu is a must for cinema classrooms and fests and a hoot for curious auds on tube and beyond."

External links

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