Nollywood Babylon Director’s Statement
Director’s Statement
By Ben Addelman & Samir Mallal
“Nollywood is the voice of Africa. The answer to CNN.” That was one of the first things Lancelot said to us when we arrived in Lagos for our first research trip to Nigeria. We were barely off the plane when he ushered us into his living room, told us where to put our camera and told us to roll tape. In Lagos he was known as “the Guv’nor.” It didn’t take us long to figure out why.
Initially we planned to just follow Lancelot making a film, but it quickly became obvious that the larger account of Nollywood’s evolution was just as compelling. We were sick of the same type of story about Africa, and Nollywood provided a chance to do something different. It is a classic rags to riches tale: despite the harshest odds, brash businessmen and artists like Lancelot were able to carve out a livelihood by telling stories that reflected their audience’s own. Out of nowhere, Nollywood had become one of the largest film industries in the world, and we wanted our film to be the definitive account of its rise.
It would be impossible to tell the Nollywood story without talking about Lagos. The city has a few nicknames – “the meeting place” being one of the most common (“God’s own city where Satan prowls” is another). Lagos is where the old and the new collide. Where traditional values and ways of doing things have to negotiate with the hardships of a dysfunctional megalopolis. In Lagos, the past and the present co-exist, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. From the outset, we knew we had to begin with Lagos and move out from there.
Nollywood personifies the spirit of the city. It fuses traditional oral storytelling techniques with digital cinema and uses the markets to sell its product. Nollywood became so popular because its stories are a reflection of the shared experience of its local audience in Lagos. In this respect, it was important for us to tell the story from a local point of view. We avoid using narration, opting instead to construct the story from interviews with filmmakers, producers, actors, academics and Nigerians we met on the street. They all have different opinions about Nollywood, but share Lancelot’s point of view that Nollywood is the first cinematic reflection of Africa that they can really relate to. With our film, we are attempting to figure out why.
