Thoughts on Nollywood

Indeed, the issue of how Nollywood movies affect us Black people has been on my mind for a while.

Last week I got my hair braided at a Senegalese hairdresser's in Brooklyn, who also sells Nigerian home videos. As we were watching some not-so-recent movies (hey time flies when watching two-part dramas while having to sit for a five-, six-, seven- or eight-hour hairdo), another customer commented on how her mom is addicted to these movies.

Now you know I had to probe. Turns our her mom is Haitian and is completely hooked! So, it is not just Nigerians or West Africans that are hooked. I have a friend who used to sell Nigerian home videos in his general merchandise store, and even he admitted that many of his customers were actually not African.

So what is it about these movies that make us tick? Is it the drama? The plots? The sense of understanding African life when watching these films and thus relating to them?

The story lines are never too deep. There is always the annoying "Part 2", but yet we are hooked. Even the New York Times (Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood) way back in 2002 noticed the importance of this industry.

I think it is really that we now have our own own realties, blown up and exaggerated, on the moving screen.

It is appealing to see a mellow drama that is really so wonderfully overly dramatized by people who look like say, the girl next door, or int he next village over.

For those of us abroad, here in the U.S., or the UK or in other countries, it is a taste of home, thats truly entertaining.

Africa: The New Black Self-Image - AT ONE POINT, IT WAS second only to Hollywood in the sheer volumes of films it produced before the Indian industry, Bollywood, pulled ahead. [African Arts]