Nollywood Babylon Full Reviews
Nollywood Babylon (Documentary — Canada)
By Robert Koehler
Featured on Variety.com
Published: January 29, 2009
The second docu by outsiders to appear in less than six months about Nigeria’s exploding movie industry, Canadian duo Ben Addelman’s and Samir Mallal’s Nollywood Babylon is more consequential than the German “Peace Mission,” especially in its unvarnished critique of Nollywood films as propaganda tools for Nigerian Christian evangelicals. The industry’s good (as a lively entrepreneurial force) and bad (as a medium for shoddy movies that have neither artistic merit nor a place in the mainstream international market) are given a fair hearing in this modest piece of reportage. Worldwide fest run looks assured, preceding Canuck and Euro tube dates.
Addelman and Mallal trace the shooting of Bent Arrows, the 157th film helmed by lively and bossy Lancelot Imasuen, to observe how a typical Nollywood production unfolds (answer: hectically and as speedily as possible), while inserting a rough overview of Nigeria’s recent history of civil wars, military governments and a distressed economic climate. Leading poet Odia Ofeimon provides the most trenchant critique of Nollywood as being used by activist Christian groups, while bluntly stating that, despite Nollywood’s prolific 20-movie-per-week output, “the great Nigerian film hasn’t been made.”
NOLLYWOOD BABYLON
By Whitney Borup
Featured on FilmThreat.com
Published: February 3, 2009
The enthusiasm of Nollywood Babylon is infectious. Focusing on the widely unknown (in the U.S., at least) Nigerian film industry, this documentary speeds its way through seventeen years of their film history. Starting in 1992, the video market in Lagos has provided financial opportunities for hundreds of actors and directors making thousands of films. Clocking in at about 2500 films a year, Nigeria has the third largest film industry (the first and second being the U.S. and India, respectively). Seeing the passion that these artists share for films showing the real experiences of Nigerians, and the love of Nollywood itself, is inspiring for independent filmmakers everywhere, struggling to get their little pictures made.
The star of the film, the Nollywoood director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen (known as “Da Guv’nor in Lagos), had made 157 movies when “Nollywood Babylon” started filming. By now I’m sure that number has increased drastically as he directs two more during the four-month period the documentary crew was filming. Lancelot is a quirky, very serious, loveable character. Watching him scream at his grip in one scene and then comfort his actress after an emotionally draining performance, you can see just how much he cares about this business.
I only wish the film made an effort to slow down a bit more than its star. The directors, Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal estimated some 9000 cuts, and that seems to exclude the cuts made within the Nollywood film clips themselves. This MTV-style editing makes watching the film a little bit like wiping out under a giant wave. The new information hits you full speed, and you’re left with a mouth full of sand and an unsatisfying feeling of accomplishment. Each Nollywood poster shown in a split second has a wealth of information just beyond our grasp and the effect is a bit nauseating. The style matches the subject, but in this case a moment of silence, or even a single extra second spent on each shot would be very much appreciated. Perhaps the responsibility is placed on the audience to sit up, pay attention, and do our own research later.
A Review of NOLLYWOOD BABYLON
By Simon Laperriere
Featured on Twitch
Published: November 9, 2008
Welcome to Nigeria where every year, nearly 2,500 low-budget movies are being produced, making it the third biggest film industry in the world. Don’t feel ignorant if you’ve never seen any of them, these products are not even shown theatrically in their own country ! In order to get them, you’ll have to visit the Langos market where you can buy them on VCD. This particular type of distribution doesn’t stop the films from being very popular amongst Nigerians. Over the years, the African industry named Nollywood managed to create its own star-system by offering to the public a wide variety of genre flicks, from devastating family dramas to terrifying tales of black magic.
Nollywood Babylon is a fantastic Canadian documentary exploring this rather unknown side of the cinematographic planet. It allows us to meet local and excentric celebrities and witness clips from the crazy films they work on.
It is always a pleasure for a cinephile to discover obscure titles he never heard of. Considering this, Nollywood Babylon has a lot to offer to the adventurous filmgoer by featuring many excerpts from Nigerian films. The first reaction towards them is to laugh and, let’s face it, they are quite funny with their less-than-average special effects and questionnable performances from mostly unprofessionnals actors. But as the doc goes on, the filmmakers make us look at them under a new perspective. As we quickly learn through interviews with the industry’s key players, Nollywoodian productions owe their popularity because the viewers can easily relate to them. The films tell stories about the dream of becoming wealthy, the dangers of prostitution and the fascination for magic, a strong belief in the country. It is quite interesting to learn from Nollywood Babylon that cinema was brought into Nigeria by the English colonies who made racists films featuring tribes and then slowly but surely became the voice of a nation.
Beyond the exhaustive documentation are the people behind and in front of the camera. The documentary also follows prolific filmmaker Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen while he’s working on his 157th feature film (!). The shooting is almost unbelievable. Instead of being private, it gathers many people curious to meet their idols and make the whole event a joyful communial experience. Lancelot is a movie character himself, he refuses to sleep in order to keep his creativity going, isn’t afraid to insult his crew but, being a proud Christian, always begins a new film by blessing the camera. He becomes as interesting as the film he’s working on.
Nollywood Babylon is fun look at an industry that will probably never leave its own country. You will enter a world of guerilla filmmaking where the only limit is the passion the artists have for cinema. The lesson to take from this documentary is that beyond poverty and crime, the seventh art remains a powerful form of expression. This film deserves to be seen and enjoyed by everyone.
Planet Nollywood: A Canadian doc explores Nigeria’s extraordinary and prolific film industry
By Greig Dymond
Featured on CBCNews.ca
Published: January 23, 2009
Back in 2005, Montreal filmmakers Samir Mallal and Ben Addelman decided to check out a little-known Nigerian drama called Emotional Crack at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. It blew their minds.
“I’d never seen a film that used special effects in such a melodramatic way,” Mallal enthuses, still stoked by the memory. “I’d never seen a film about contemporary urban Africa told by Africans, about the clash of the old and the new, with this fantastic backdrop of Lagos, a city of 14 million people. I’d never seen Africa portrayed in that way. Also, it looked like a B-movie, like a Roger Corman movie — it had great visual appeal. Something told us to pursue this as an idea.”
Now, three and a half years later, Mallal and Addelman are at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, promoting Nollywood Babylon, their compelling portrait of the Nigerian movie industry.
“It seemed like a great way to tell a different kind of story about Africa,” said Mallal during a recent phone interview. “It’s an entrepreneurial story, it’s hopeful, it’s about beating the odds and building something for a local audience that’s now exported to people all over the world. And it’s about the importance of people being able to tell their own stories.”
And boy, does Nigeria tell its own stories. As the third-largest film industry in the world — trailing only Hollywood and Bollywood — Nollywood’s numbers are staggering: it produces 2,500 movies a year. But we’re not talking James Cameron-type budgets here — most of the films cost less than $15,000 to produce. Although the production values are low-tech — the movies are typically shot on video rather than celluloid — and the actors are often non-professionals, the films are teeming with visceral energy, an appealing side-effect of shooting schedules that rarely last longer than a week. These down-and-dirty productions embody a style that Nigerians have dubbed “sharp sharp let’s go let’s go.”
The plotlines are a fascinating mix of action, crime, domestic drama, traditional mysticism and Christian ethics. Nollywood basically started in 1992, when a Lagos electronics merchant named Kenneth Nnebue shot a no-budget film called Living in Bondage and distributed it on videotape. It sold over half a million copies, yielding insane profit margins.
“The typical Nollywood plot comes from that film,” explains Mallal. “It’s the archetype: someone comes from the village to the big city and has a hard time navigating it. He finds the city difficult to survive in, then turns to witchcraft to try to make ends meet. That leads him to lose everything. In the end, he abandons witchcraft and finds redemption in the church.”
Co-director Samir Mallal interviews a parishoner outside Liberty Gospel Church for the documentary Nollywood Babylon. (National Film Board) Co-director Samir Mallal interviews a parishoner outside Liberty Gospel Church for the documentary Nollywood Babylon. (National Film Board)
Nollywood’s visual style is also unique. Many of the films combine the raw feel of American drive-in movies of the ’70s with crude, crowd-pleasing special effects. The look and feel is apparently charming audiences at Sundance.
“People are really enjoying it. The Nollywood aesthetic is an important part of why people like the films,” notes Mallal. “We spent a lot of time trying to pick clips and find the best examples of what makes Nollywood appealing to so many people. Who doesn’t love seeing lightning bolts flying out of people’s fingers and people shrinking into eagles? It’s great stuff.”
If the visual feel and disparate story elements are different from modern-day Hollywood, so is the distribution model. Nigerian cinemas essentially died during the violence and economic turmoil of the 1970s and ’80s; in fact, there are only three movie theatres still operating in Lagos, and none of them show Nigerian films. Nollywood films go straight to DVD and VCD, and are sold in Lagos market stalls for about two dollars each. They’re screened constantly in homes, shops and restaurants, serving as the cultural pulse of the country and easily outselling Hollywood product.
Mallal and Addelman’s documentary deftly traces the evolution of this popular industry, but the star of Nollywood Babylon is Lancelot Idowu (a.k.a. “The Guv’nor”). He’s a Nigerian filmmaking legend and the director of Emotional Crack, the film that introduced the Montrealers to the vibrant scene. Nollywood Babylon follows Idowu during the shooting of Bent Arrows, a typically intense Nollywood drama about redemption, incest and prostitution. Idowu was only 36 at the time; remarkably, it was his 157th movie.
Judging by the footage, he’s a whirlwind of energy, a natural leader. We see him conducting auditions, cajoling and berating his cast and crew, even doing some camerawork while hanging precariously outside a moving car. In the film, he calls Nollywood “the voice of Africa, Africa’s CNN.” Idowu is in Sundance to help promote the doc, and he has boundless enthusiasm for the topic.
“Movies about Africa made by Hollywood are always depicting Africa from a negative perspective,” he explains over the phone. “I’m very concerned about letting everyone around the world know that every African city has the good, the bad and the ugly. Overemphasizing the negative is very demoralizing to Africans. And I feel I’m championing the cause of having African stories told by Africans, and a true picture of Africa is presented that is a complete and unique society.
“The world has become very global: Jamaicans, the Caribbean, Cubans, all of these guys are glued right now to Nollywood. And they’re so excited that Africans don’t live in the trees after all, as always presented by the Western media.” Director Lancelot Idowu, a.k.a. \Director Lancelot Idowu, a.k.a. “The Guv’nor,” is a Nollywood legend. (Samir Mallal/National Film Board of Canada)
Idowu was initially skeptical about participating in the Canadian doc, but Mallal and Addelman allayed his fears. “Most times when westerners come to Nigeria, they just do an interview and we never hear from them again. But these guys, I made them promise me that they’re going to take this movie far and wide, and Nollywood is going to ride on it. And they said they’re going to try.”
Idowu hopes that by getting the message out, Nollywood can advance artistically. Like any director, he’d ideally like to spend more than a week or two shooting a film; Idowu dreams of co-production deals and more substantial budgets.
“Yes, we know the qualities technically are not what is attainable here, but we’re saying, ‘Hold on.’ Someone in the film says the great Nigerian film has not been made. Africa is coming soon and with this film, I’m hoping a lot of people will look beyond what you’re seeing on screen right now, to say if these guys can do this much with literally nothing, if the money grows just a little bit, then we’ll do the real, real stuff. You’ll be amazed at what you’re going to see.”
Idowu has high hopes for Nollywood Babylon, but the cultural exchange goes both ways. Its Canadian co-directors have already been inspired by their Nigerian experience. “We do documentaries, so we can really relate to the spirit of Nollywood,” says Addelman. “The main attraction to documentary was that you can do it cheaper, you can do a lot of it yourself, you don’t have to wait to raise so many millions of dollars to start working. And Nollywood just takes all those things to the next level.”
