Film production in Nigeria An inventive response Romance African style	Africa's video alternative
	Ola Balogun, Nigerian film-maker.
Video film production in Ghana has become an industry. An inventive response Attempts to describe today's global communications landscape often include glib references to information highways along which all humanity is supposed to travel, following in the footprints of the technologically advanced nations. Time and again we are told that the future lies in advanced technology per se, and not in the content of the products of communication. According to this viewpoint, everyone should hook up to the Internet without delay and be inundated with messages emanating from web sites in the world's major nations. It is also thought unseemly for a country to try to protect its airspace from being bombarded by satellite television broadcasts from powerful transnational commercial conglomerates and state-funded television concerns in parts of the world that share the same basic cultural, political and economic outlook. Some African governments have been unwise enough to sign agreements allowing foreign state-funded radios to broadcast on FM in their countries, thus unwittingly creating unfair competition for their own local radio stations. Similarly, most Third World television stations believe they are making good use of the information highway by accepting virtually free satellite news coverage transmitted worldwide by powerful overseas broadcasters. Since they do not own satellites themselves and often lack the financial means to send television crews to cover events even in neighbouring countries, the executives of these television stations are often only too willing to overlook the political and cultural implications of continuously relying on overseas sources. It may well be that by agreeing to travel along the information highway in a manner scripted in advance by others, Third World decision-makers are exposing the citizens of their countries to a new and insidious form of colonization. From this perspective, gifts of free television programmes have a heavy cost. The key to Third World participation in the so-called information highway lies in making imaginative use of new forms of technology that fall within their reach for the express goal of serving their interests and needs. Against this background, the rapid growth of indigenous movie production on video tape over the past few years in a number of African countries may be a step in the right direction. O. B. Romance African style ‘And then they got married and lived happily ever after and were blessed with lots of children. . . ." What could be more universal than the denouement of romantic novels, tales of love and luxury, passionate affairs between tough guys and tender women leading up to the inevitable happy ending. One need only browse through the book section of any supermarket in the Western world to get an idea of the fictional settings favoured by successful exponents of this kind of literature such as Barbara Cartland and the Spanish writer Corín Tellado: tropical paradises, Alpine ski resorts, Loire valley châteaux, mansions in European principalities and beaches in California. But in Adores, a series of novels with an African background which has recently been launched by the Côte d'Ivoire publishing house Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes (NEI), the characters eat manioc or fried banana instead of caviar, drink ginger juice instead of champagne, and instead of waltzing throw themselves into the mapouka, a dance that is all the rage in Abidjan. Series editor Méliane Boguifo, who is also an official with the Côte d'Ivoire ministry of education, explains that “the idea came from the observation that the women of our country and African women in general adore love stories from the West and are as partial to them in book form as in the cinema. We are now giving them an opportunity to recognize themselves in an African setting." Six books have been published so far, including such evocative titles as Coeurs piégés (“Trapped Hearts"), Cache-cache d'amour (“Hide-and-Seek Love") and Un bonheur inattendu (“Unexpected Happiness"). As a result of several book-signing sessions and a promotional campaign on television and radio and in the press, 36,000 copies were sold in two months in Côte d'Ivoire and neighbouring countries like Senegal and Benin. Published in French, the novels in the Adores series cost 1,500 CFA francs ($2.5) at newsstands and in bookshops. Their authors are well-known writers who prefer to use pseudonyms, or law and literature students such as Guet Lydie and Koné Fibla. If the example catches on in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, Barbara Cartland will have to look to her laurels.	Movie-makers in English-speaking Africa who cannot afford to produce classic celluloid films are winning popular acclaim with low-cost video productions In the Third World and among urban ghetto dwellers in advanced countries, some technological inventions are used in ways that were never imagined or intended by their originators. They open up new areas of endeavour that can be independently pursued by the underprivileged. To take one example, the availability of low-cost samplers and four-track sound recording equipment has triggered a formidable explosion of ghetto-based rap music in the United States by making it possible for relatively unsophisticated young people with very little money to record high-quality music tracks in their own homes. In the same vein, the emergence and proliferation of inexpensive VHS video tape recorders have led to the growth of video-based movie production in several African countries, especially Nigeria and Ghana. To understand the importance of this phenomenon, it must be borne in mind that film production in most African countries originated primarily as a result of external assistance, rather than truly indigenous efforts. It was essentially because of the availability of technical and financial assistance from the French Co-operation Ministry that countries of francophone Africa such as Senegal and Burkina Faso made considerable progress in film production. Prohibitive production costs In the English-speaking countries, on the other hand, where assistance of this kind was not readily available, film production generally lagged behind in the absence of meaningful cultural policies designed to support indigenous film-makers. Non-subsidized film production was possible for a time in the 1970s and 1980s because the economy was buoyant enough to recoup the high costs of using rented equipment from overseas and paying for processing and printing in European laboratories. In the late 1980s, the local economy virtually collapsed, robbing the middle classes and the population at large of the means to pay consistently for leisure entertainment. The cost of film production became prohibitive. Even a low-budget film costing only $50,000 could not pay for itself on the local market. As a result no one ventured into film production. Hence the drought of Nigerian-made films, a seemingly incomprehensible paradox in view of the growing number of films made in relatively small and economically less well endowed countries of francophone Africa. Another major obstacle to film production in most African countries has been that there are no true television stations. In most cases, African television stations are shells which serve as relay posts for films produced elsewhere. They have little or no production capability, and have no funds with which to purchase or co-produce feature films or television series. Story-telling with panache However, the proliferation of VHS video tape recorders in private homes in countries like Nigeria and Ghana has created a radically new situation which has led to the emergence of a legion of independent indigenous movie directors and television producers. They have emerged because of their ability to solve two key problems: first, pegging movie production costs at a level that can be easily recovered on the local market, and second, creating distribution mechanisms that bypass the lack of indigenous television stations and the limitations of a feeble network of cinema houses. Most of these productions are low-budget films which are shot principally in U-matic or even VHS format, although a few are shot on Betacam or on the new generation of consumer-level digital cameras. The technical quality is often below par, because most of the production staff, especially the directors of photography, generally lack formal training. However, what these productions lack in technical quality and finesse they make up for in astonishingly colourful story-telling and popular appeal. As a result of successful mass marketing techniques reminiscent of the early days of Hollywood, Nigeria has been inundated with these productions. According to the Nigerian Film Censorship Board, no fewer than 858 full-length video films were released between December 1994 and May 1998. Because this production is entirely market-driven, the films are closer to the tastes of African audiences than the vast majority of foreign-assisted films made in francophone African countries. The reasons for this are clear: Who pays the piper calls the tune. The content and style of foreign-assisted films are often dictated by Western movie critics or civil servants in the French Co-operation Ministry. The success of the films depends on the reception they receive in festivals and art house circuits in Europe, rather than on their popularity with African audiences. The contents and style of video movies, on the other hand, are necessarily dependent on mass audience tastes in Africa and are totally unsuitable for film festivals and art house audiences. Hopefully, however, there will be a meeting point some day between the need for quality and depth and the quest for mass market appeal. With the growing development of digital television technology and the concomitant fall in costs, it will soon be possible for African video products to be remastered on 16 mm or 35 mm without great loss of quality and so become available for cinema distribution. Meanwhile, the availability of video projectors is beginning to make possible a new type of distribution in relatively small viewing centres. These movies are also remarkably popular with Nigerians and Ghanaians in Europe and the United States, suggesting that in the not-too-distant future a market might emerge for distribution by cable or satellite to these expatriate communities. There can be no doubt that video movie production in countries like Nigeria and Ghana represents an African response to today's information jungle. It is the response of people who have chosen to carve out their own path, rather than wait for the ambiguous benefits of travelling along glistening information highways in a manner scripted by the powerful forces that currently dominate the world political and economic scene.  The UNESCO Courier Film production in Nigeria   Dec. 1994 1995 1996 1997 Jan.-may 98 Total No of video films In English In Yoruba In Ibo Hausa, Itsekiri, Pidgin 3 1 2 0 0 201 15 161 15 2 258 62 166 22 1 256 114 89 19 4 140 54 59 6 3 858 245 475 32 10 Celluloid films 0 0 1 0 0 1 There can be no doubt that video movie production in countries like Nigeria and Ghana represents an African response to the existence of today's information jungle Posters like this pepper the streets of Lagos.