Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Nollywood

Last night I was watching Don't Tell My Mother on National Geographic Channel, this is my brother's favorite show and he always talks about it but last night was the first time I saw a full episode and I really enjoyed watching it. Don't Tell My Mother is a travel-documentary show where it features rarely traveled places in the world mainly because they are not considered safe. It's really a good show, I love the concept because it really gives a new look to places that are considered scary by a regular person.
The episode I watched featured Lagos, Nigeria and I was really fascinated with how similar it is to Metro Manila with the traffic, the market, how the city looks like, the religious culture and more. But what really got me was their film industry which they call "Nollywood". The produce hundreds of movies every month and they all shot it digitally and what's interesting is that those movies are sold direct-to-video (VCD/DVD). The host visited the biggest market for selling those movies and they actually sell hundreds of copies each day. WOW! Local movies sell way more than the hollywood movies and makes the movie industry one of the largest-employer in Africa. Since the movies are shot digitally, it does not cost that much but since they sell a lot of copies they really make a profit out of this. I've read that each copy of the a Nollywood just cost $2 which is really cheap and I guess the reason that piracy could not overtake their industry. Even if their movies are virtually unknown outside of Africa, Nollywood is the third-largest film industry in the world. The way they shoot their movies are like the indie film industry here in the Philippines. I can't help but envy how strong their movie industry is. I hope someday our local film industry will be as healthy.

2 comments:

jp said...

Key to what? Hehehe. :D

forg/jecoup said...

haha I should have deleted that, will delete it now haha