nollywood content: a template for african content development in a digital era?
TRANSCRIPT
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25TH – 27TH AUGUST, 2015 NAIROBI - KENYA
A TEMPLATE FOR AFRICAN CONTENT DEVELOPMENT IN A
DIGITAL ERA? BY
ABDULKAREEM MOHAMMED B.Sc. Radio-TV-Film USA &
MA Mass Communications, BUK Email: [email protected]
Phone:+234 8o3 586 3023
} PRODUCTION q Pre-production
planning q Production q Post production q Delivery/marketing
} PROGRAMMING
q Programme search q Acquisition q Scheduling q Creating a coherent
programme service
} It is “democratic” (of the people, for the people & by them).
} It brings more people excluded into the information mainstream.
} As it serves the people, content development must then drive digitization.
} Digital era offers channels for ALL.
} AFRICA – WHY NOT?
} Africa loses USD 50 billion annually to “illicit outflows”
} Actions to mitigate: 1. Job creation 2. Poverty reduction 3. Improvement of
social services CONTENT HOLDS
PROMISES
} It is the process of transferring analogue radio & TV services to digital platforms and then switching off the analogue services.
} Digital migration is estimated to create about 3-5 million new jobs.
REQUIRING MORE CONTENT FROM ALL POSSIBLE SOURCES.
DIGITAL MIGRATION MEANS: HAVING MORE CHANNELS
ü How does digital migration affect every stakeholder?
ü How should each stakeholder react to it?
ü How can each stakeholder group be positioned to take advantage of it?
ü How can it be used to address minority issues? (women, children & the vulnerable)
ü How can it be used to redress the imbalance of information flow between Africa & the rest?
} Black-Americans as lazy, loud, criminals, good for nothing etc.
§ Out of Africa § The Color Purple § Mister Johnson
} Africans as “savages’, of the ‘jungle’ neither cultured nor civilized; with no language but ‘Mumbo-Jumbo’. i.e. Tarzan, The Ape Man, Heart of Darkness etc.
}
‘Black Girl’ (1966) } It was a film that
Sembene wanted to reach wider
audiences in Africa but could not go
beyond Senegal. } Neither recouped
investment nor made profit.
‘Mandabi’ (1968) Ø Sembene shot the
film in his Wolof language to present it
like any other language.
Ø To also contradict and rewrite the
misrepresentations of Blacks.
} It simply stands for the “video” films made in Nigeria.
} First referred to as
“Nollywood” in 2002 by, Norimitsu Onishi, a columnist with the New York Times.
} But the industry is largely made up of different ethnic production groups mainly of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba.
} Each has a distinct character and style.
} However, the brand has ‘decolonize’ African entertainment with distinctly African offerings.
} Nollywood found new ways of utilizing the camera & use it as an instrument of African storytelling.
} It is not heavy, has speed in absorbing light, records sound on tapes; with long recording time.
} They bypassed ‘global standards’ to suit their story requirements in different manner from the francaphone and Southern African filmmakers.
} Might have been a product of poverty that was overcome.
} By appropriating the digital camera as an African storytelling instrument, Nollywood makes everything available everywhere.
} Thus, Manthia Diawara said it has, in a sense turned, out to
being “a copy of a copy that has become
original through the embrace of its
spectators.”
} Intellectuals dismissed & derided Nollywood as “a good escape into metaphysics.”
} Others say “the asylum is being overtaken by the lunatics.”
} African spectators, having watched films for the last 100 years, now need to see themselves.
} African stars are being created: Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade-Ekainde, Ali Nuhu etc
} An exotic space where unchanging African popular cultures appropriate & cannibalize technologies to reveal to us where the collective desires of the large African population reside.
} A new source of knowledge about local cultures in contemporary Africa.
} Nollywood films now represent an unconscious collective desire for Nigerians, the rest of Africa & its diaspora.
} Nollywood content has deployed an African-ness as new & revolutionary form of content development representation.
} “We stand to gain more by looking at the ‘OTHER’ in terms of recognition & difference. We can
change by exchanging with the ‘OTHER’ without losing or destroying our identities.” Edourd Glissant Ø African content
developers must own their continent & be accountable for the state of their own societies & cultures in the digital era.
} It has effectively cut-off from “celluloid cell” in the spirit of defying the economic malaise of the cinema.
} In the process, it has developed a realist cinema based on African realities.
} And something is African when owned by Africans, Nollywood is African, and we cannot change it without changing the audience.
} It has become possible to conclude that what seemed like imperfect has turned into a new and original content out of Africa which must not be wished away.
THANK YOU NOLLYWOOD CONTENT IS A TEMPLATE FOR AFRICA