A Break With The Past

A Break with the Past: The Nigerian Video-film Industry in the Context of Colonial
Filmmaking
Author(s): Ikechukwu Obiaya
Source: Film History, Vol. 23, No. 2, Black Representations (January 2011), pp. 129-146
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.23.2.129
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Film History, Volume 23, pp. 129146, 2011. Copyright 2011 Indiana University Press
ISSN: 0892-2160. Printed in United States of America
A Break with the Past:

The Nigerian Video-film
Industry in the Context of
Colonial Filmmaking
A Break with the Past
Ikechukwu Obiaya
frica has a fairly long history in the cinema, in

the sense that it featured early in films which
contained views popularized by Western jungle melodramas, where Africa was a mere
backdrop with stereotypically uncivilized, childish,
or cruel natives for triumphant acts by great White
hunters and treasure seekers.1 But African cinema
in itself has not had such a strong showing. Filmmaking in Africa and by Africans has been rather turbulent
with, above all, problems of limited funds and a poor
production and distribution infrastructure. While it is
true that certain African film directors have made
names for themselves, African cinema has never
really been a serious player on the world stage.
Generally speaking, the development of African cinema has lagged behind that of other regions.
In 1961, Jean Rouche said that
the rather comatose state of African cinema are

traceable to colonialism, an experience which was
more or less common to all the African countries. The
colonial experience has been the strongest influence
in African cinema because it laid the basis not only
for the cinematic structures of the former colonies but
also, to a large extent, for their ideological conception
of the cinema. Under the influence of their former
colonisers, the African countries would take on approaches to the cinema ranging from the artistic,
through the pragmatic, to the downright revolutionary. Colonialism facilitated both dependency and
underdevelopment.5 This has been clearly manifested in African cinema where funding and the channels of distribution have been largely controlled by
non-Africans. Claire Andrade-Watkins has pointed
out that the
sub-Saharan Africa remains not only one of

the most underdeveloped areas of the world
in terms of films shown but moreover the most
backward continent in the area of film production. While Asia, South America, and Indonesia
have long been making films, sub-Saharan
Africa has not yet in 1961 produced a single
feature-length film.2
history of film production in sub-Saharan

Africa, and of films by African filmmakers in
general, must be considered in the context of
an acute shortage of technical and financial
resources, as well as a lack of viable circuits of
distribution and exhibition. These difficulties, in
turn, have been compounded by colonial and
post-colonial traditions and policies regarding
cinema: first, cinema targeted for Africans dur-
About forty years later, Jude Akudinobi would

still have cause to say, the growth of African cinema
has been slow and unsteady.3 This is an opinion that
Frank Ukadike shares as he points out that film
production in Africa has mimicked the general uneven pattern of Africas overall development.4
Most of the factors which have contributed to
Ikechukwu Obiaya lectures at the Pan-African University in Lagos, Nigeria. His research work is based on
the Nigerian film industry with particular focus on the
efforts of the National Film and Video Censors Board
to establish a distribution framework. Correspondence
to iobiaya@smc.edu.ng
FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 129
130 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)
Ikechukwu Obiaya
Fig. 1. A
video-film store
in Lagos.
[Copyright Isi.]
ing the colonial period, where it existed, was

integrally linked to administrative, military, religious or educational objectives; second,
post-colonial either European or African
film policies, and filmmakers initiatives aimed
at ameliorating colonial conditions have been
unable to generate an economically viable and
stable industry in the region.6
Independence came to the African countries
during the 1950s, but the process of constitutional
decolonisation did not bring an end to imperial control and power in the economic, political, social or
cultural spheres; rather this process can be seen as
part of a global imperial realignment that continues
today.7
In the light of the above, it is of particular
interest to note the phenomenal growth which has
taken place in Nigerias film industry, which has been
termed Nollywood. The country has moved from a
situation of practically zero production to being credited as second only to India in terms of the number
of films produced.8 Jonathan Haynes has noted that
Nigerian cinema presents an interesting, even striking contrast to the situation of cinema in other West
African countries.9 And according to Akin
Adesokan, most scholars of African cinema now
look to the development in Nigeria as the solution to

the chronic dependency of African filmmaking on
French money and North American/Western European art houses and academic curricula.10 What
exactly has changed in the Nigerian film industry?
What has changed is that the Nigerian cineastes
have switched from celluloid filmmaking to straightto-CD/DVD video filmmaking. It is an approach which
has surmounted most of the problems faced by
Africa cinema.
There is a growing body of work on the Nigerian video-film industry, and most of it has been
carried out from a socio-cultural/socio-economic
perspective. For instance, in the work of Brian Larkin,
Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome, the emphasis is more on the video-film as it refers to social
structure.11 Haynes and Okome have also made an
important introduction to the ethnic dimensions of
the video-films.12 This reflects the socio-cultural peculiarities of video-film production in Nigeria in which
three streams of film culture can be identified. These
three streams originate from the three largest tribes
of the country, the Yorubas, the Igbos and the
Hausas. The films produced in the North by the
Hausas, for instance, do not fit into the rather loose
characteristics which the typical Nollywood videofilm possesses, and are generally not considered as
FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 131
Fig. 2. A
present-day
mobile cinema
audience.
[Copyright
Mainframe
Productions.]
belonging to this genre. The Hausa video-film takes

its key influences from the Indian films and Hausa
literature, and is also heavily moderated by Islamic
morality.13 The video-films which truly fit under the
term Nollywood are produced in the South of Nigeria
and are more reflective of the indigenous cultures of
that area. The video-films, which are largely in English, also tend to be more open to influences from the
Western world. The Igbos are seen as the greater
force behind the Nollywood video-films. Their contribution here lies more in terms of being the financial
muscle. They are known to be hard-headed, astute
businessmen, and the distribution system which they
developed for the movement of their goods electronics and otherwise became the channel for the
video-film distribution.14 Yoruba video-films are also
produced in the South, but they are not considered
Nollywood films; they are based on the rich culture
of the Yorubas.15 Although their films are not considered as strictly Nollywood, they have left their mark
on the Nollywood productions in terms of the thematic focus on issues such as witchcraft and the
netherworld.
The study of the video-films remains a fairly
new area, and the difficulty of how to categorise them
remains. Haynes, pointing out that this study does
not fit easily into established African film criticism,
has proposed the paradigm of African popular arts
as a means of understanding the phenomenon.16

The populist nature of the video-films makes his
proposal an apt one.
Most of the writing on the Nigerian video-film
industry acknowledges the role of colonialism in the
history of Nigerian film. However, the need remains
to draw out clearly just how much of an influence, if
any, the colonial past has had on the video-film
industry. This article seeks to consider this phenomenon within the context of the colonial experience. The
article posits that the success of this industry is due
largely to a break away from the influence of colonialism. According to Chukwuma Okoye, the Nigerian
video phenomenon is one of the truly successful
strategies in the postcolonial agenda of constructing
a sovereign framework in spite of the cultural and
economic imposition of the West.17 The video-film
trend in the Nigerian film industry can be seen as part
of an ongoing decolonisation process. The industry
has adopted a model which bears no relation whatever to the colonial filmmaking structure that was
handed down. Rather, its success could be said to
arise from its very ability to overcome the strictures
of the inherited approach to filmmaking. This article
will detail the process of colonial filmmaking, particularly as it relates to Nigeria, with a view to highlighting
the ways in which those of the video-film industry
have broken away from the colonial inheritance.
Film in colonial development

To a large extent, the introduction of cinema to the
African continent came through the colonialist structures. Of all the various colonial authorities, the British
could be said to have had the most developed preindependence film policy. Film was introduced into
the Anglophone regions on a platter of pragmatism
since the British authorities used it primarily as a
means of promoting development in the African colonies rather than as a source of mere entertainment.
The cinema served the strictly practical function of
education and propaganda. According to Ukadike,
while the French pursued a so-called assimilation
policy, British involvement with its colonies was pragmatic business. Similarly, observers point out that
while the French gave feature film to its colonies, the
British gave theirs documentary.18
Cinema made its appearance in Africa within
the first few years following its invention Rouch
gives the early date of 1896.19 In Nigeria, the first
recorded showing took place in Lagos, in August,
1903, thanks to Messrs Balboa of Barcelona, Spain,
who carried out a tour of the West African coast with
a silent film exhibition in the early 1900s.20 By the
1920s, the British colonial authorities had already
begun to explore the use of film to promote development. The first two films made in the British colonies
along this line had their origin in individual initiative.21
A doctor of the Kenya Department of Medical and
Sanitary Service, A. R. Paterson, made a health film
on hookworm in 1926. This 16mm amateur film introduced and recorded the campaign against hookworm in the region.22 The second film was made in
Nigeria three years later by a health official, William
Sellers. Sellers used his film, Plague Operations in
Lagos (1929), to combat the outbreak of the plague
in Lagos. Sellers, who would later play a key role in
the spread of the use of film to promote development, would also contribute to the promotion of a
negative stereotypical colonial image of the intellectual capabilities of the African.
By 1927, the British colonial film policy for
Africa began to take a firmer shape. In that year, the
Secretary of the Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa, Hanns Vischer, proposed
the use of films in the colonies as both a teaching aid
in formal schools and as a means of spreading
general knowledge. The Colonial Advisory Committee on Native Education eventually sent biologist
Julian Huxley to East Africa in 1929 to assess the
status of biology education. In his final report, Huxley
Ikechukwu Obiaya
expressed the conviction that film would be a powerful weapon for propaganda. Huxley, who had taken
three films from the Empire Marketing Board (EMB)
to show to schoolchildren, noted that films could be
satisfactorily used for both school children and
adults.
The growing interest of the government in the
use of film for educational and propaganda purposes was further expressed that same year, 1929,
with the creation of the Colonial Films Committee.
The Colonial Secretary, L.S. Amery, who set up the
committee, gave it the task of examining the educational use of the cinema. The Committee, made up
of a number of ex-governors, Colonial Office officials
and representatives from the Board of Trade, Marketing Board and the British film industry, endorsed
the educational and cultural value of films but warned
that there was insufficient experience with the medium to embark on anything more than an experiment.23 The report was tabled at the 1930 Colonial
Office Conference. Based on that report, approval
would later be given for the use of films for educational purposes in the widest sense not only for
children but also for adults, especially with illiterate
peoples.24
Also in 1929, the Commission on Educational
and Cultural Films was set up in Britain by the British
Institute of Adult Education and the Association of
Scientific Workers to carry out an investigation of film
in education. Although the Commission was an unofficial body, it had representatives from various government departments including the Colonial Office.
The Commission published its report, The Film in
National Life, in 1932 and recommended that a
national film institute be established to encourage the
development and use of the cinema as a means of
entertainment and instruction in both Britain and the
Empire. The result was the British Film Institute (BFI),
founded in 1933.25 It is noteworthy that in spite of
the various mentions of the cultural values of film and
the need to use the cinema as a means of entertainment, the primary focus of the films produced in the
colonies was that of instruction.
In 1932, William Sellers received some official
backing for his work in film in the form of a grant from
the Colonial Development Fund. This was in line with
a recommendation by the 1930 Colonial Office Conference which indicated that these funds be used to
make cinema vans and related equipment available
to the colonies. By this time, Sellers was already
running a health propaganda unit as part of the
Nigerian Health Services Department which relied to

a large extent on the use of film. The unit produced
films and carried out mobile film shows. Sellers introduced specially designed mobile cinema vans into
the colony in 1931 and produced about fifteen health
films on various themes.
At about this same time, the first major initiative
with respect to the cinema in the British colonies
began in the form of the Bantu Educational Kinema
Experiment (BEKE). This initiative arose, however,
not so much from government authorities as from a
missionary group, the International Missionary Council. In 1932, J. Merle Davis, the Director of the Department of Social and Industrial Research of this
Council, headed an inquiry in the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt into the effect of industrialisation on
African society. The report on the inquiry indicated
the profound effect which the mines were having on
the pre-industrial society of Central Africa. The report
recommended the use of the cinema to help the
Africans come to terms with the changes and the
novelties being introduced as a result of contact with
the Western world. Davis then went on to put together
a plan for an experiment to study how cinema could
be used to facilitate the required educational and
cultural adjustment.
The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment
was carried out in eastern and central Africa from
March 1935 to May 1937. It was organised by the
International Missionary Council, but the bulk of the
funding came from the Carnegie Corporation. Funding also came from various mining companies based
in Rhodesia the Roan Antelope, Rhokana, and
Mufulira copper-mining companies the International Institute of African Languages and Culture and
the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation. The project
was entrusted to Major L.A. Norcutt and his team of
five Englishmen and various African assistants. They
set out to produce a series of simple films which
would educate the African on the values of Western
civilization while providing some entertainment. In
the two years of the BEKE operation they produced
35 films, ranging from one to seven reels. The nature
of the films is indicative of the greater inclination
towards instruction than entertainment. According to
Rob Skinner,
The films reveal a fixation with commercial
agriculture, medicine, and improving standards of housing and hygiene; in essence,
encouraging the adoption of European forms
of economic exchange, medical practice and

lifestyle. Predominant among these themes
was the question of agriculture, and the desire
to stimulate native production. The final
group of films promoted the use of crop-rotation, fertilisers and other improvements in
peasant agricultural practice. Some, such as
Coffee under Banana Shade, High Yields from
Selected Plants, Cattle and Disease and Artificial Insemination of Cattle, dealt with specific
problems of arable and livestock farming;
while Marketing Export Native Maize and Coffee Marketing sought to promote change in the
social and economic practices of farmers.26
The films were shown to about 80,000 people
in 95 showings, covering an area of about 9,000
miles. All the films were produced and processed
locally by Norcutt and his staff. Norcutt wrote, shot
and directed most of the films. However, the BEKE
organizers insisted that their films were guided by
African advice and reactions to their productions.
The African assistants were also trained in the various
aspects of production and exhibition. The BEKE was
eventually discontinued due to the lack of interest on
the part of some of the colonial administrators. Nevertheless, the idea was not completely discarded
and it would be taken up by the Colonial Film Unit.
The Colonial Film Unit and

instructional film
Following the outbreak of the Second World War in
1939, a propaganda blitz was organised in the colonies and, to promote it, information officers were
appointed and public relations offices established.
Films, pamphlets, posters, government-sponsored
newspapers, etc., were all utilised to promote the war
effort. It was at this point that the Colonial Film Unit
(CFU) was established to produce propaganda films
for illiterate Africans. The Unit would later be placed
under the direction of William Sellers. According to
Smyth, the Colonial Office disliked the idea of war
propaganda films, but took the long-term view that
at the end of the war the unit could concentrate on
the production of development films. In 1942, the
Colonial Office succeeded in persuading the Treasury to enlarge the brief of the CFU to include the
making of instructional films.27 Although the Treasury approved the extra expenditure, it accorded the
making of films for colonial welfare purposes a lower
Fig. 3. Youth
Leadership in
Togoland
(Colonial Film
Unit, 1949).
From Paul Rotha,
Documentary
Film (third
edition, 1952).
priority and established that it should not interfere

with the primary work of war propaganda.
The CFU limited itself initially to distributing
European and American films which were often reedited and given new commentaries to suit their
African audience. New instructional films could not
be made because, given the war situation and the
consequent shortage of manpower and material, it
was not possible to send a film unit to Africa. The CFU
resorted to re-editing and releasing films that had
been made before the war. Some of these were the
health films that had been made by Sellers. A poor
substitute for instructional films in an African setting
were those made in England by the CFU, in the hope
that the message would be extrapolated to an African
setting.28 Some of the themes of those films such
as those that dealt with the Boy Scouts or the play of
English children were wholly inadequate. A Nigerian musician, Fela Sowande, subsequently joined
the Unit in 1944 in order to contribute towards producing films which would be more relevant to their
audience.
The problem of the shortage of footage was
eventually resolved by the so-called Raw Stock
Scheme. According to this Scheme, Colonial Information officers were provided with raw stock film and
a camera and encouraged to shoot their own films,
which they did using 16mm cameras. By the end of
the war, this operation had allowed for the distribution of 200,000 meters (about 666,000 feet) of 16mm
film, and the equipping of twenty mobile cinema
Ikechukwu Obiaya
trucks in tropical Africa.29 Two of the best known
films produced at this time were Mr English at Home
(1940) and An African in London (1940). Mr English
at Home is about a day in the life of an English artisan
and his family and shows them going about their
daily routine: getting up in the morning, washing,
having breakfast and leaving for work and school.30
According to Smyth, the film is both instructional and
a piece of propaganda in that it offers the English
artisan as a role model and proclaims the superiority
of the British way of life.31 An African in London
depicts a prominent Nigerian being given a tour of
London. The aim of the film was to emphasise that
Africans were true members of the British Empire.32
The post-war operations of the CFU began
fully with the arrival in Africa of a team headed by
William Sellers. Apart from Sellers, the team consisted of a director-cameraman, an assistant cameraman, and an editor-manager. They would go on
to make Fight TB in the Home (1946), Weaving in
Togoland (1946), Good Business (1947), Towards
True Democracy (1947), Better Pottery (1948), and
Village Development (1948), among others. These
films, as can be guessed from the titles, ranged from
such issues as health to social and economic development. According to Rouch, between 1945 and
1950, the running time of finished films totalled five
hours, and distribution rose to over 1,200 prints
shown in Africa.33 The films were taken around by
mobile cinema vans that staged showings in different
towns and villages. An article in an edition of Colonial
Cinema (a publication of CFU) gives, in a rather
pompous fashion, an idea of this work:
The work of carrying enlightenment and education in the forms of amusement to the less
privileged people in the rural areas of the country is being effectively handled by the Public
Relations Department through its Cinema Section. The Section has screened many shows in
different parts of Lagos and surrounding districts whilst the mobile cinema van tours the
different towns, villages, schools, institutions,
clubs and churches screening films of educational, cultural and entertainment value and
bringing the people up to date with contemporary events in all parts of the world.34
In the post-war period, the CFU dedicated
itself fully to the production of instructional film. Its
role in terms of educating the masses was height-
ened and given top priority. The films of the CFU in

this period are typical of the educational/documentary style which would later be passed down to the
Nigerian Federal Film Unit. Towards True Democracy
(1947), Good Business (1947) and Village Development (1948) were all shot in Nigeria. Towards True
Democracy recorded the first session of the Nigerian Legislative Council under the Richards constitution while Good Business aimed at promoting the
co-operative movement.35 The theme of the latter
was the work of the cocoa co-operative societies of
West Africa. Village Development, on the other hand,
was designed to promote community development
in Nigeria by arousing the competitive spirit. Villagers
were to be stirred to greater efforts through being
shown the achievements of their neighbours.36 The
film focused on Udi Division, in Eastern Nigeria, and
its district officer, E.R. Chadwick. Village Development was the inspiration for the highly praised documentary of the Crown Film Unit, Daybreak in Udi
(1948), which was actually shot in the same village
and featured the same persons, Chadwick and the
villagers. Daybreak in Udi received the 1948 Academy Award for feature documentary and the 1949
British Documentary Film of the Year award.37
However, time was running out for the CFU.
The Secretary of State for Colonies, Arthur Creech
Jones, brought decolonisation closer and it became
a chief concern of the British government to ensure
that the ties of friendship with the colonies would be
extended into the post-colonial period. The CFU thus
took up the task of assisting colonial governments in
the establishment of their own film units, while its own
role became more of an advisory one.
The need to leave things in the hands of the
African was further stressed in a conference on The
Film in Colonial Development organised by the British Film Institute in 1948. John Grierson, the Films
Controller of the Central Office of Information, under
which the CFU fell, spoke of the need for the CFU to
put the film into the Africans own hands as an
instrument for their own development. He went on
to add that it is not a question of films coming from
outside, but of films being created from the inside by
and for the colonial persons themselves.38 The Director of the Information Department of the Colonial
Offices Africa Department, Kevin Blackburn, buttressed this point and added, we are hoping this
year to set up in West Africa the first training school
to be run by a unit of the Colonial Film Unit with the
idea of training people in West Africa to make their
own films. Later on I hope the school will extend to

East Africa, and later on to other parts of the world
like Fiji or the West Indies.39
In the year following the conference, 1949, a
film training school was initiated by the CFU in Accra,
Gold Coast. The school began with seven trainees
from Gold Coast and Nigeria and the goal was to
inculcate in them sufficient skill such that they could
film local events in newsreel fashion and also to
produce simple instructional films of more lasting
importance. Instruction was in 16mm with some assistance from a 35mm CFU unit which was filming in
the vicinity.40 The fruit of this training was the upgrading of the film section of the Public Relations
Department of the Gold Coast to form the Gold Coast
Film Unit in 1949. The Gold Coast Film Unit replaced
the CFU in the region.
A similar unit, the Federal Film Unit (FFU), was
set up in Nigeria in 1950. The FFU, when it started,
was within the film exhibition section of the Ministry
of Information. It began as the Public Relations Section of the Marketing and Publicity Department of the
Federal Government of Nigeria with the functions of
exploring the nations resources and enhancing its
economic growth. The units main task was to produce newsreels and documentaries for viewing
through the public cinemas, the mobile cinema units,
and television (this aspect was a later addition).
Through this assignment, the organisation received
the threefold charge of propaganda, education, and
information. The FFU was supposed to publicise the
goals and activities of government in order to lead to
a better appreciation of those activities on the part of
the general populace; contribute to the education of
the public by producing films that showed them how
to improve their standards of living and modes of
working; promote the nations culture both locally
and internationally by dwelling on its achievements;
and inform the public on newsworthy events which
have taken place within and outside the country. The
FFU would thus remain very much within the framework established by the CFU.
In its first year of operation, the FFU produced
four films, two in 35mm and two in 16mm. In terms
of their themes, the films also remained within the
pattern established by the CFU. They focused on
health and village development matters as well as on
methods of wood carving. The main centres of operation for the Unit were Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, and
Enugu, representing the main administrative regions
of the country. According to an article in Colonial
Ikechukwu Obiaya
developed, Nigerians continued to be trained in the
art of filmmaking. The trained Nigerian personnel
made films on local events under the supervision of
three experienced film professionals. These professionals included a director, cameraman and an editor.44 Some of the early Nigerian trainees had
already undergone a stint in the film training school
which was set up by the CFU in Accra, Gold Coast
(Ghana), in 1949. However, it is noteworthy that in the
FFU, just as in the Ghanaian unit, the Africans were
only employed in junior positions. Fifteen years
would pass from the inception of the Nigerian Federal Film Unit before its management would be handled entirely by Nigerians.
Fig. 4. An
African
Audience. From
Paul Rotha,
Documentary
Film (third
edition, 1952).
Cinema, In order to serve the whole country effectively, the Section has been regionalised, each regional unit being directly under the Regional Public
Relations Officer.41 Each of these centres functioned as a semi-independent unit and had its own
budgetary allocation. They each also had a film library, and the ten vans for the mobile film units were
distributed among the centres. There were two vans
each in Lagos and Ibadan, while Kaduna and Enugu
had three each. The vans were put to a lot of use
since the various units regularly went on tours lasting
three to four weeks. Films were shown four times a
week in the open air to village and college audiences.
Seventy percent of the showings were for village
audiences. The films were shown free of charge.42
The Colonial Cinema article gives a picture of the
extent of the work undertaken by the centres. It talks
about the regular shows screened in various communities, and for various groups, at community centres, remand homes, hostels, training schools and a
hospital. The article adds that:
In spite of the fact that the Section is always
fully occupied with work, some of the officials
were able to go out on tour occasionally. During last month, a unit of the cinema staff made
a tour of Epe Division, South-East Waterside
and screened shows at Epe, Lekki, Igbogun,
Ise and Abomiti. The tour was done on the
launch Primrose, kindly supplied by the Divisional Officer, Epe Division. The shows drew
large and appreciative crowds in each place
and attendance varied from 350700 people.43
It is clear that the FFU remained very much in
the pragmatic mould of the CFU in terms of the kind
of films produced. Nevertheless, as the Federal Unit
Colonial filmmaking for Africans

Mention must be made of a common thread which
ran through the films made by the colonialists. This
was the constant and continuous presupposition
that African audiences have limited cognitive abilities
and therefore are unable to understand modern film
language.45 A key proponent of this view was Sellers. Between 1929 and 1936, Sellers made fifteen
more films in Nigeria similar to his first one. Early in
his filmmaking, he had reached the conclusion that
African audiences were inevitably confused by the
sophisticated techniques employed in most motion
pictures. His own films therefore used several special
techniques that he had adopted by a process of trial
and error.46 On the basis of this, he drew up a set of
rules for colonial filmmaking which would influence a
generation of filmmakers.
Sellers advocated the utmost simplicity in the
making of films for Africans. The films should include
only simple action and few potentially distracting
characters and props while sophisticated filmmaking techniques were to be avoided since the African
was incapable of understanding them.47 The Africans lack of imagination, according to Sellers, also
made it unwise to show him any films which included
any unfamiliar scenes, characters or situations.
These rules of Sellers became popular in all the
British held colonies and were also taken up by the
other colonial governments. Sellers would hold onto
his views until his retirement in the late 1950s. By that
time, however, those views had already been discredited by the research of Morton Williams, for example, which culminated in the 1953 report, The
Cinema in Rural Nigeria.48
Major L.A. Norcutt, the producer of the BEKE
films, shared the sentiments of Sellers. According to
Alberto Elena, the Bantu Educational Kinema

Experiment was based on the doubtful premise of
the incapacity of the Africans to deal with a complex
and mature cinema, as well as the harmful effects of
American films which were thought to be inappropriate for them.49 Norcutt himself expressed it in this
way:
With backward peoples unable to distinguish
between truth and falsehood, it is surely in our
wisdom, if not our obvious duty, to prevent as
far as possible the dissemination of wrong
ideas. Should we stand by and see a distorted
presentation of the white races life accepted
by millions of Africans when we have it in our
power to show them the truth?50
These views were also manifested in The Film
in Colonial Development, a conference organised
by the British Film Institute in 1948. In spite of the
avowed commitment of some of the speakers to the
training of the Africans, in the spirit of the so-called
Africanisation, their comments tend to be rather
patronising. The CFU Director, George Pearson, who
poses the question, What aim could be of more
potential value than films for Africans, with Africans,
by Africans? urges in the same paper that cinematic
conventions like dolly shots, montages, panning
shots, mixes and wipes should be avoided in films
for Africans. Preference, he adds, should be given to
the fade since the Africans experience of the approach of darkness and dawn helps him to the understanding of the fade-out or fade-in as an
indication of an ending or beginning of something.51
In the face of comments like this, the chairman of the
conference, Aidan Crawley, MP, had cause at the
end of the conference to warn the colonial filmmakers
to beware of patronising their audience. He had
noted, he said, a certain smugness in the discussions on colonial development, pointing out that
over and over again the phrase has come up that
we have to adjust films for primitive people .
According to him, he preferred to lay emphasis on
what could be learnt from other cultures.52
However, by this time complaints were beginning to arise as regards the simplistic and patronising
nature of the films being made for the colonies. Thus,
in 1948, when the Crown Film Unit arrived in Nigeria
for the filming of Daybreak in Udi, it was hailed by a
section of the nationalist press as yet another film
unit come out to our country to depict us as naked
savages and unfit to rule ourselves.53
Such reactions against films of this type might

have been behind the ideas of independent film
production which manifested themselves in Nigeria
as early as 1945. On 21 May 1945, the African Music
Research Party placed a fund-raising advert in the
Daily Service. The goal was a projected 10,000
Scholarship fund which would be used to award
Scholarships to suitable youths in its rank, to enable
them study film production and theatre organization
in America and so come back to render services to
their country.54 In the same advert, the Party had
announced as one of its objectives the establishment
of public theatres in the key towns of West Africa to
foster the adequate interpretation of the African way
of life by means of artistic performances. According
to Ekwuazi, this concern of the Party was not unconnected with the ideological practice of the colonial
cinema. There was, obviously, already the consciousness that the control and propagation of cinema images all originate from the economic practice
of the cinema: from the economic control over the
cinema technology and institutions.55 (Emphasis in
the original)
The colonisation of the channels of

film distribution
The true legacy of the colonial authorities to their
former colonies, according to Elena, was to leave in
the hands of foreigners a monopoly over the distribution of films in the entire continent.56 Thomas
Guback explains the effects of such a legacy:
In film, the imposition of the imperialists cultural material hinders locally-made products
from being exposed to public view, and this
often leads to withering of financial backing for
them, especially in market-dominated economies. When half the cinemas in a country are
playing American films, and many of the rest
are showing French or Italian films, there is
simply that much less opportunity for local film
makers to present their own work.57
During the colonial era, 80 per cent of the
distribution and exhibition of film in the French western and equatorial region was controlled by two
companies, the Compagnie Africain Cinmatographique et Commerciale (COMMACICO) and
the Socit dExploitation Cinmatographique Africaine (SECMA). The other 20 per cent was handled
by groups, such as the Syrians and Lebanese, who
depended on the two big companies for their films.

In the Anglophone region, the United States
reigned supreme. The United States had no African
colonies, but through its films it held sway over much
of Africa.
As a market for American films, Africa really did
not attract much attention from American companies until the 1950s. Independence [for
the African states] meant a restructuring of
prevailing film marketing patterns and offered
American companies an opportunity for a foothold on the continent.58
To this end, a tour of West Africa was carried
out by representatives of the Motion Picture Export
Association (MPEA) to survey the existing facilities for
exhibition. One of the aims of the team was to
develop a strategy for organising a market and for
stimulating demand for American films, while thwarting any trade barriers that could protect these countries and their potential to make their own films.59
The report of the 1962 UNESCO-sponsored
conference on media in Africa advocated encouragement and support for national film units in order
to foster the rapid establishment of a production and
distribution network of films truly African in style and
content.60 It goes without saying that this was the kind
of barrier that the American industry was out to
circumvent. The sub-Saharan market had been
largely ignored by this cartel prior to 1950 because it
was not considered worthwhile. However, by 1959,
when the MPEA representatives carried out their tour,
the association was extracting $125,000 US from the
West African market. Seven years later, in 1966, this
figure had increased to about $500,000.61
In April 1961, the American Motion Picture
Export Company (Africa), AMPEC, was created to
cover the Anglophone African countries. AMPEC was
made up of the same eight major American film
production companies that formed MPEA, namely
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, 20th
Century-Fox Film Corporation, RKO Pictures Inc.,
Warner Bros. Inc., Universal Pictures, United Artists
and Columbia Pictures. In setting up AMPEC, these
companies took advantage of the Webb-Pomerene
Export Trade Act, which allowed companies that
were (in principle) competitive in the United States to
form cartels for purposes of external trade.62 It was
more profitable for these companies to function collectively through AMPEC than individually, given the
small size of the West African market. It also meant
that they could attain a greater control of the market
Ikechukwu Obiaya
and avoid competitive price-cutting amongst themselves. The cartel had a monopoly over the supply of
films and could make the exhibitors toe the line by
turning off the supply of films. AMPEC would eventually have in its grasp most of the regions which had
been covered by the British Colonial Film Unit. It
would also make great inroads into Francophone
Africa with the creation of the West African Film
Export Company. This company, whose name was
later changed to Afro-American Films Inc. (AFRAM)
had as a specific goal to fight the monopoly of
COMMACICO and SECMA.63
The first office of AMPEC in West Africa was
opened in the then Nigerian capital, Lagos, in 1962.64
The distribution of films in the country was firmly
controlled by AMPEC, as well as two Lebanese
owned companies, NDO Films and CINE Films. AMPEC controlled the inflow of American and European
films into the country, while NDO and CINE specialised in Indian, Egyptian, and Asian films. The two
Lebanese companies depended on AMPEC for
American films. These distributors were not interested in distributing locally made film. Haynes indicates what is probably the key reason for this:
Economic motivations still encourage distributors to take foreign films being dumped at very
low prices rather than Nigerian films whose
producers are trying to recover their whole
costs on the local markets: imported films cost
the exhibitor around a fifth to a tenth of the daily
rental Nigerian films must demand.65
With their stranglehold on distribution, AMPEC
and the other distributors were more interested in
financial gain than in the quality of the films they
imported. Thus, Enahora accuses them of screening
very old films that they bought at give-away prices
and the core of their politics is to discourage indigenous film production.66 All of this was an obstacle to
the growth of the national film industry. In an effort to
break the distribution monopoly and nationalise the
cinema, the Nigerian government promulgated the
Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree in 1972. The
decree, which is generally referred to as the Indigenisation Decree, was meant to correct the imbalance in the ownership and control of companies
operating in Nigeria. It limited the involvement of
foreign interests in various economic activities and
reserved for Nigerians the exclusive right to other
activities. The decree came into force in April 1974
and forced foreign enterprises operating in Nigeria
to sell a stipulated percentage of their capital to

Nigerians.67 Under this decree, Nigerians received
the exclusive monopoly over the distribution and
exhibition of feature films. However, this attempt at
nationalisation failed in Nigeria principally due to the
governments lukewarm attitude towards its enforcement. With the complicity of some Nigerians, the
foreign companies involved in film distribution merely
took on Nigerian fronts and continued business as
usual. In 1981, the Motion Picture Association of
American imposed a ban on Nigeria in response to
the seizing of its assets which came about through
the nationalisation process.
The legacy of colonial filmmaking

The end of the African operations of the CFU in 1950
(and its Central African equivalent, the CAFU) also
brought an end to the period in which the British
government promoted film in Africa, albeit for developmental purposes. The CFU would render minor
services till 1955, particularly to colonies which were
too small to have their own film units such as
Somaliland, Sierra Leone and the Gambia but no
more films would be produced. Africa would not gain
much support in the years ahead by way of formal
intervention in its cinema by the British authorities. It
would not be fair to completely negate the contribution of the British authorities to filmmaking in Nigeria.
One must recognise that in addition to introducing
some cinematic technology and skills into the country, they also created a certain audience base for the
cinema.68 According to Rosaleen Smyth, Nigeria, in
1944, reported that 1,770,472 people had been exposed to Colonial Film Unit films out of a total population of 21,000,000. The Colonial Film Unit, in 1944,
estimated that 140,000 Africans saw its films each
week.69 It is worthwhile to also note the number of
those who patronised the commercial cinemas. A
survey carried out by the authorities in 1932 indicates
that Lagos had five such cinemas, while Jos, Port
Harcourt and Benin City had one each. The average
weekly attendance in the four cities is as follows:
4,000 in Lagos, 99 in Jos, 100 in Port Harcourt and
20 in Benin City.70 The numbers for both the Colonial
Film Unit and the commercial cinemas may not be
terribly significant considering the total population,
but they do hint at a certain sensitisation towards the
medium of film. However, this contribution had flaws
which would undermine filmmaking in Nigeria and
the other British colonies, and the independence of
the former colonies made clear how little they had

inherited in terms of filmmaking structure.
At the level of production, according to Elena,
the colonial inheritance for Africa was practically insignificant.71 All the material for filmmaking was imported, and the Colonial Film Unit capped its African
operations with a structure which ensured that the
colonies would be dependent on Britain in developing their film production.72 The CFU was transformed into the Overseas Film and Television Centre
in London, and the former colonies were dependent
upon this body for their post-production work. Production and post-production of later filmmaking thus
gulped a lot of foreign exchange since the completed
films were processed in laboratories outside the
country. Consequently, with the economic crisis of
the 1980s, filmmaking fell into a decline.
A further problem which Nigeria, like all the
other Anglophone African countries, faced at the time
of independence was the lack of persons trained in
cinematography. According to Ukadike,
In the 1950s, Africans who managed to enter
film schools in Europe, East Berlin, and Moscow were from French-speaking West African
countries. Francophone African countries thus
took the lead in developing cinema in Africa
partly because no film schools in Britain offered admission to African colonial students
and partly because the British were less interested in promoting education in the field of
cinematography.73
The French colonialists, in the pursuit of their
assimilationist policy and the spread of culture, did
not place obstacles in the way of African colonial
students who desired to attain a cinematographic
education. The same did not hold true in the British
colonies. The few trained persons available had been
trained by the CFU, but they had been kept very
much in the background and had functioned only as
assistants.
After independence, the Nigerian authorities
also adopted the filmmaking ideology of their former
colonial rulers. Policies that influenced the production of films for the African audiences in colonial
society were adopted to serve the needs of the newly
independent states that emerged from the late
1950s.74 In Nigeria, with the FFU, the approach was
largely a pragmatic and didactic one, with a preference given to documentaries and newsreels. Between 1979 and 1983, for instance, it produced 25
Ikechukwu Obiaya
Fig. 5. Tunde
Kelani, renowned
Nigerian
filmmaker.
[Copyright
Mainframe
Productions.]
documentaries, 65 newsreels, and 390 short information films.75 As Haynes has noted, neither before
nor after Independence did [the British] give any
encouragement to Nigerians to make fictional feature
films.76 Thus, the newly independent Nigeria had no
tradition of feature filmmaking. The first film of this
kind to be made in the country by Nigerians would
come ten years after independence, in 1970.
According to Paul Willemen, the attitude of
Britain towards film in her colonial territories both
during and after colonisation should be traced not so
much to a deliberate policy aimed at the colonies but
rather to a flaw in Britains own developmental history
which led to film being considered as low culture.
Although Britain was the first country to embark on
the industrial revolution, it failed to carry it through.
The consequent social formation was marked
by a political-economic structure still in place
today: the industrial bourgeoisie was allowed
a significant measure of political power on
condition that it absorbed and defended aristocratic ideologies and values . Culturally,
this has meant that the bastions of feudal high
culture are very tenacious (symbolized by the
collective noun of Oxbridge), while underneath

the industrialisation of culture proceeds
apace, producing debased and despised
forms of culture whose only rationale, other
than its indoctrinational effectiveness, is profitability.77
Willemen adds that cinema, as an industrial
art form, paid a heavy price for this development.
Even as late as the 1960s, cinema was still not
deemed to be a legitimate art form fully recognised,
for instance, by the Arts Council of Great Britain.78
Thus, in the post-independence world of Africa, Britains presence would not be felt with regards to the
cinema. Nigeria and the other Anglophone African
countries would have to shift for themselves, but their
governments would have imbibed this negative conception of the cinema.
Independent film production

Following Nigerias independence, its filmmakers
had to contend with a filmmaking legacy which
brought along with it such problems as the absence
of an infrastructure for feature filmmaking, funding
difficulties, a lack of adequately trained personnel,
inaccessible distribution channels, and an unsupportive government that, in the words of the producer, Amaka Igwe, considered their work to be mere
play.79 In spite of these obstacles, some production did take place.
Independent indigenous filmmaking began in
Nigeria in 1970. Son of Africa (1970), the first film
produced that year, was directed by Segun Olusola
and produced by a Lebanese-Nigerian production
company, Fedfilms Limited. However, the Nigerian
input was so minimal that Son of Africa is denied the
title of the first indigenous film. Kongis Harvest
(1970), which received that title, was produced by
Francis Oladele and directed by an African-American, Ossie Davis.80 Oladele went on to produce
Bullfrog in the Sun (1971), which was directed by a
West German, Hans-Juergen Pohland. Unfortunately, Bullfrog in the Sun, just like Kongis Harvest,
was not successful commercially. Oladele would
subsequently dedicate himself solely to the production of newsreels and documentaries on demand.
Ola Balogun was the next notable filmmaker to
come on the scene. Baloguns first works were short
documentaries, such as One Nigeria (1969), Les
ponts de Paris (1971), Thundergod (1971), Fire in the
Afternoon (1971), In the Beginning (1972), and
Owuama, a New Yam Festival (1973). His first non-fiction film was Alpha (1972). He established a production company, Afrocult Foundation Limited, in 1973
and produced two medium-length films, Vivre (1974)
and Nigersteel (1975). Baloguns first full-length film,
Amadi (1975), was the first Nigerian film to be made
in one of the indigenous languages, Igbo in this case.
Tapping into the interest raised by Amadi, as well as
the newly discovered advantage of filming in the local
languages, Balogun co-produced Ajani-Ogun (1975)
with Duro Ladipo, a well known actor of the Yoruba
travelling theatre. The film was in Yoruba and the cast
was made up of members of Duro Ladipos theatre
group. Balogun went on to make Ija Ominira (1977),
Aiye (1979) and Orun Moorun (1982), co-produced
with Adeyemi Folayan, Chief Hubert Ogunde, and
Moses Olaiya Adejumo (alias Baba Sala) respectively, all celebrated personalities of the theatre.
While all these films were hits, Baloguns other films,
in non-indigenous languages and on culturally distinct themes Musik-Man (1976), A deusa negra
(1978), Cry Freedom (1981), and Money Power
(1982) failed to strike a similar chord with the
audience.
Another pioneer of Nigerian cinema, Sanya
Dosunmu, is best known for the popular television

series he created, The Village Headmaster. Primarily a television producer, Dosunmus sole feature film,
Dinner with the Devil (1975), received very good
reviews. Count-down at Kusini (1976), a joint Nigerian-American production, was directed by the
American director, Ossie Davis. The failure of this
project, and a subsequent effort to attract black
American involvement, motivated the production of
Bisi, Daughter of the River (1976). That film was
produced by Ladi Ladebo and directed by Jab Adu,
a popular television actor and director. It was shot in
English with a completely Nigerian crew and cast.
Adamu Halilu, a northern director, directed two films
in Hausa during this period, Shehu Umar (1976) and
Kanta of Kebbi (1978). His third film, Moment of Truth
(1981), was shot in English. Chief Eddie Ugbomah,
described as the most prominent independent filmmaker in Nigeria, produced all his films himself
through his own production company, Edifosa Film
Enterprise.81 Following his first film, The Rise and Fall
of Dr. Oyenusi (1977), he went on to make The Mask
(1979), Oil Doom (1981), Bulos 80 (1982), The Boy is
Good (1982), Vengeance of the Cult (released 1984
but shot in 1982), The Death of a Black President
(1983), Esan (1985), Apalara (1986), Omiran (1986),
The Great Attempt (1988), Toriade, (1989), America
or Die (1996), and Aba Women Riot (1999). Ugbomah
initially made all his films in English since he was
targeting the wider audience. However, he turned to
the use of Yoruba for some of his later films.
Some other films which were produced in the
eighties and worthy of note include Frank Ukadikes
Turning Point (1980) and Him Don Die (1982); Segun
Oyekunles Parcel Post (1982); Wole Soyinkas Blues
for a Prodigal (1984), which was initially banned by
the government; and Mayo Ogundipes The Song
Bird (1986). Like most of the Nigerian films made in
1980s, these films are all relatively unknown. None of
them was distributed commercially.
Following their early co-productions with
Balogun, the Yoruba theatre practitioners went on to
produce films of their own. Ogunde produced Jaiyesimi (1980) and Aropin Ntenia (1981); Folayan
produced Kadara (1982), Ija Orogun (c. 1983), and
Taxi Driver (1983); while Olaiya produced Are Agbaye
(1983). The films were all in Yoruba, and, regardless
of the fact that they lacked technical quality, they
were a big success with the Nigerian popular audience since it gave them the opportunity of seeing
themselves and their lives mirrored in moving pic-
Ikechukwu Obiaya
Fig. 6. Nigerian
video-film crew
working on
location.
[Copyright Femi
Odugbemi.]
tures.82 The filmmaking of the Yoruba theatre practitioners created a bridge between celluloid film production and the eventual video-film production. They
are credited with being the initiators of video-films
which they saw as the cheapest possible way of
producing audiovisual material for projection to an
audience.83
Rejection of a legacy
Thanks to an economic depression, the early flow of
celluloid feature films in Nigeria began to decline by
the late 1980s and finally died out in the mid nineties.
Nigerian celluloid film production was plagued
throughout by the problems listed above. It was
heavily dependent on foreign resources, especially
as regards postproduction work. Thus, the industry
was crippled by the economic crisis of the 1980s.
With the presence of filmmakers willing to make films,
an audience wanting to be entertained and a technology which was within reach, the resort to video
filmmaking was merely a logical step. Although the
Yoruba travelling theatre artistes began to put their
work on video as early as 1988, Kenneth Nnebues
Living in Bondage (1992), which was shot in Igbo, is
considered the pioneer video-film. This is so because it was the first to be packaged in a full-colour
printed jacket and wrapped in cellophane, like an
imported American or Indian film.84 Nnebue himself
had previously made a video-film in Yoruba, Aje Ni
Iya Mi (1989).
The advent of video-films drastically changed
the outlook of film production in the country. Videofilms, as Haynes describes them in the introduction
to his book on the subject, are something between
television and cinema.85 They are shot on camcorders and distributed directly to the viewing audience
on video tapes or, with the new technology, on VCDs.
The productions are generally low budget and tend
to be shot within the space of two weeks. The purists
of Nigerian filmmaking initially snubbed this form of
filmmaking, but it provided answers to problems
which the industry had always faced. In the first
place, by making creative use of the new technology,
the cineastes overcame the absence of infrastructure, such as studios, soundstages and postproduction facilities. The new technology made available
lightweight cameras which were easier to manage,
and the filmmakers shot in borrowed houses and on
the streets with no qualms about holding up traffic

and converting passersby into film extras. All shooting is done on location because Nollywood does
not have the capital to construct its own spaces.
Interior scenes are shot in houses borrowed for a few
days, so the colour of the walls behind an actor
cannot be changed.86 Postproduction facilities
when shooting in video began were improvised. Nnebues first film, for instance, was shot on an ordinary
VHS camera and edited on two VCRs.87 This creative use of available technology is a clear negation of
the colonialists notion of the Africans inability to
grasp the nuances of filmmaking.
The industry has depended completely on local funding, and it has grown and functioned mainly
in Nigerias huge informal sector. It has developed
without the support of the government or foreign
investment. The video-films draw on the wealth of
the business class. They may be backed by big
merchants from Onitsha or Aba or elsewhere .88
The producers recoup their investments from direct
sales to the audience and the returns are ploughed
back into the business to fund the next video-film. As
can be seen, the industry is popular by its very nature.
The films it produces are for the people, by the
people, and about the people, and it is sustained by
the people. The great strength of the video-film industry lies in its proximity to the popular imagination.89 The industry, which is now one of the largest
employers of labour in Nigeria, has proved its viability
and has made the government review its previous
noncommittal attitude to the sector. As Onishi points
out, the video-films have changed the traditional
perception of acting and actors in Nigerian society.90
The video-films were enthusiastically welcomed by the audience. It was a chance for Nigerians to see themselves on screen without the
mediating influence of foreign and prejudiced perceptions. As the filmmaker Gaston Kabor notes,
Africas experience with cinema has been through
the eyes and imaginary of non-Africans. To me, cinema is of vital importance to Africans because it can
portray the world as Africans experience it. By creating their own cinematic images, Africans can confront and transform their reality.91 It is for this reason
that the audience of the Nigerian video-films has
grown and gone beyond the borders of Nigeria.
According to Haynes, In New York, their biggest
consumers are now immigrants from the Caribbean
and African Americans, not Africans, and Chinese
people are buying them too. In Holland, Nollywood

stars are recognised on the streets by people from
Surinam, and in London they are hailed by Jamaicans.92
The distribution of the video-films has largely
been handled by the businessmen who fund the
productions. They distribute the finished product
through their own trading channels, previously established for other goods. With the straight to video
formula, they are not dependent on the exhibition of
the video-films in cinemas. Thus, they have bypassed the established film distribution channels
and gone straight to the public. It is a common sight
to find the video-films being hawked in traffic as well
as made available at roadside stalls.
And although it churns out roughly 600 titles a
year, making Nigeria one of the worlds top
film-producing nations, Nigerian video film,
perhaps because it is perceived as a snub of
well-meaning ex-colonial paternalism, lives on
the far fringes of the Western cinema consciousness. Few international distribution
channels for Nigerian video films have been
opened. As a result, local distributors have
supported Nigerian video films financially, and
the content tends towards regional and local
cultural preferences.93
According to the statistics of the National Film
and Videos Censors Board, the number of videofilms classified has steadily increased since 1994
when the Board began functioning. In 1994, three
video-films were classified. But in 2005 the number
reached an all time high of 1,711.94
It is important to note, as does Okoye, that the
industry does not programmatically position itself to
talk back to, or contest foreign-authored narratives
which largely denigrate the African subject; rather, it
is produced principally by small entrepreneurs simply interested in making money.95 The industry did
not set itself an agenda of decolonisation, rather it
found out that success for it required casting off, or
finding a way around, the existing strictures that had
kept it dependent. The practice of this cinematic
culture has no place for the postcolonial state of mind
that is described as colonial mentality. Actors, producers, crew men and women, aspiring artists, and
video film buffs in the industry eloquently declare the
presence and autonomy of Nollywood.96 (Emphasis
in the original.)
Colonialism in Nigeria, as well as the rest of the

Anglophone region, laid the basis for the cinematic
structures of the former colonies, but this was a
structure which contained various flaws. In the first
place, it was aimed at documentary and developmental film, and was built around a negative conception of the intellectual capacities of the African. It was
also a structure that ensured a certain dependence
on the former colonial authority. In addition, the Nigerian governments inherited ideological conception of the cinema led to a certain neglect of feature
filmmaking. Furthermore, the control of the distribution channels by foreign organisations with no interest in promoting African films proved a great
hindrance to the filmmakers.
The success of the Nigerian cineastes arises
from their having found ways to bypass the problems
plaguing the industry. The video-film boom in the
Nigerian film industry can therefore be seen as a
break from the early tradition of filmmaking in the
country as well as a reaction to the problems which
existed. The new technology facilitates the making of
Ikechukwu Obiaya
low-cost video-films which are anything but documentary style film. Their offerings are sold directly to
their audience on CDs or DVDs thereby bypassing
the regular distribution channels. Furthermore, the
industry, which generates hundreds of jobs annually,
has made the government sit up and take notice,
thus changing the traditional perception of cinema in
the country. Above all, the industry has made the
breakthrough that previous African cinema failed to
do which is that of attaining a popular outlook by
presenting the people with unprejudiced cinematic
representations of themselves.
There is no doubt that the colonial experience
has played an important (even if negative) role in
defining the film industry in much of Africa. It is certain
that other socio-economic factors have come into
play in the structuring of the Nigerian video-film industry. But it is equally certain that the industry has
chosen to overcome that experience and find new
grounds.
Notes
1.
Franoise Pfaff, Introduction, in Franoise Pfaff

(ed.) Focus on African Films (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 111.
9.
2.
Jean Rouch, Situation and Tendencies of the Cinema in Africa, in Jean Rouch, Cine-Ethnography
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003),
47.
Jonathan Haynes, Nigerian Cinema: Structural Adjustments, in Kenneth Harrow (ed.) African Cinema:
Post Colonial and Feminist Readings (Trenton NJ,
and Asmara: Africa World Press, 1999), 143175.
10.
3.
Jude Akudinobi, Introduction to Specal Issue: African Cinema/Critical Configurations, Social Identities 6.3 (2000): 237.
Akin Adesokan, Loud in Lagos: Nollywood Videos.

Wasafiri 19.43 (2004): 4549.
11.
Brian Larkin, Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds:

Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy,
Public Culture 16 (2004): 289314; Jonathan
Haynes, Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood
Films. Africa Today 54. 2 (2007): 131150; Onookome Okome, Nollywood: Spectatorship, Audience
and the Sites of Consumption, Postcolonial Text
http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/
view/763/425 (November 2007).
12.
Jonathan Haynes and Okome Onookome, Evolving

Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films, in Jonathan
Haynes (ed) Nigerian Video Films, (Ohio: Ohio University Centre for International Studies, 2000), 5188.
4.
Frank U. Ukadike, Black African Cinema (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1994), 1.
5.
Imruh Bakari, Colonialism and Modern Lives in

African Cinema, Screen 48.4 (2007): 501505.
6.
Claire Andrade-Watkins, Portuguese African Cinema: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,

1969 to 1993, in Michael T. Martin (ed.) Cinemas of
the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence and Oppositionality (Michigan: Wayne State University
Press, 1995), 181.
http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?ID=7650_201&
ID2=DO_TOPIC (6 May 2009).
7.
Simon Faulkner and Anandi Ramamurthy, Introduction, in Simon Faulkner and Anandi Ramamurthy
(eds), Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain
(Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006),
119.
13.
Brian Larkin, Hausa Dramas and the Rise of Video

Culture in Nigeria, in Jonathan Haynes (ed.) Nigerian
Video Films , 209241; Hyginus Ekwuazi, The Hausa
Video Film: The Call of the Muezzin, Film International 5.4 (August 2007): 6470.
8.
UNESCO, Nollywood Rivals Bollywood in

Film/Video Production, UNESCO Institute for
Statistics,
14.
Hyginus Ekwuazi, The Igbo Video Film: A Glimpse

into the Cult of the Individual, in Jonathan Haynes
(ed.) Nigerian Video Film, 131147.

15.
Wole Ogundele, Yoruba Poplular Theatre, in

Jonathan Haynes (ed.) Nigerian Video Films, 89130.
39.
Ibid., 35.
40.
Smyth, The Post-War Career of the Colonial Film

Unit in Africa: 19461955, 168.
16.
Haynes, Nigerian Video Films, 1318.
17.
Chukwuma Okoye, Looking at Ourselves in Our

Mirror: Agency, Counter-Discourse, and the Nigerian
Video Film, Film International 5.4 (August 2007):
2029.
41.
Vans Carry Visual Education to Rural Areas in Nigeria, 93.
42.
Mgbejume, Film in Nigeria: Development, Problems

and Promise, 46.
Nwachukwu F. Ukadike, Anglophone African Media, Jump Cut http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC36folder/AnglophAfrica.html (26 May
2008).
43.
Vans Carry Visual Education to Rural Areas in Nigeria, 93.
44.
Mgbejume, Film in Nigeria: Development, Problems

and Promise, 44.
45.
Leen Engelen, The Black Face Of Cinema In Africa,

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 26.1
(2006): 103109.
46.
James Burns, Watching Africans Watch Films:

Theories of Spectatorship in British Colonial Africa,
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 20.2
(2000): 197211.
47.
Ibid., 199.
48.
Ibid., 206.
49.
Alberto Elena, Los Cines Perifricos: frica, Oriente

Medio, India (Barcelona: Paids, 1999).
18.
19.
Rouch, Cine-Ethnography, 47.
20.
Onyero Mgbejume, Film in Nigeria: Development,

Problems and Promise (Nairobi: African Council on
Communication Education, 1989), 21.
21.
Rosaleen Smyth, The Roots of Community Development in Colonial Office Policy and Practice in
Africa, Social Policy & Administration 38 (August
2004): 418436.
22.
Ibid., 424.
23.
Ibid., 424.
24.
As quoted in Smyth, ibid., 424.
25.
Ibid., 425.
50.
26.
Rob Skinner, Natives Are Not Critical of Photographic Quality: Censorship, Education and Films
in African Colonies Between the Wars, University of
Sussex Journal of Contemporary History,
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/research/usjch/p
astissues (12 November, 2010).
Norcutt as quoted in Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992), 1.
51.
British Film Institute, The Film in Colonial Development: A Report of a Conference, 26.
52.
Ibid.
53.
Smyth, The Post-War Career of the Colonial Film

Unit in Africa: 19461955, 167.
54.
Hyginus Ekwuazi, Film in Nigeria (Ibadan: Moonlight

Publishers, 1987), 10.
55.
Ibid.
56.
Elena, Los Cines Perifricos: frica, Oriente Medio,

India.
57.
Thomas Guback, American Films and the African

Market, Critical Arts 3.3 (1985): 5.
58.
Ibid., 7.
59.
Ibid.
60.
Kerry Segrave, American Films Abroad: Hollywoods

Domination of the Worlds Movie Screens (Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 1997).
27.
Smyth, The Roots of Community Development in

Colonial Office Policy and Practice in Africa, 428.
28.
Ibid., 428.
29.
30.
Rosaleen Smyth, The British Colonial Film Unit and

sub-Saharan Africa, 19391945, Historical Journal
of Film, Radio and Television 8.3 (1988): 285298.
31.
Ibid., 288.
32.
Ibid., 295.
33.
34.
Vans Carry Visual Education to Rural Areas in Nigeria, Colonial Cinema 10.4 (December 1952):
9294.
35.
Rosaleen Smyth, The Post-War Career of the Colonial Film Unit in Africa: 19461955, Historical Journal
of Film, Radio & Television 12.2 (1992): 163178.
61.
Ibid.
62.
Guback, American Films and the African Market.
Ibid., 167.
63.
Ukadike, Black African Cinema.
37.
David Giltrow, Review, American Anthropologist,

New Series, 81.3 (September 1979): 736737.
64.
Segrave, American Films Abroad: Hollywoods Domination of the Worlds Movie Screens.
38.
British Film Institute, The Film in Colonial Development: A Report of a Conference (London: British Film
Institute, 1948).
65.
Haynes, Nigerian Cinema: Structural Adjustments,

146.
66.
Augustine-Ufua Enahora, Film Makers and Film
36.
Ikechukwu Obiaya
Making in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects, Africa

Media Review 3.3 (1989): 98109.
67.
Eno L. Inanga, The First Indigenisation Decree and

the Dividend Policy of Nigerian Quoted Companies,
The Journal of Modern African Studies 16.2 (1978):
319328; Enahora, Film Makers and Film Making
in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects.
http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/
524/418 (13 December 2007).
83.
Haynes and Okome, Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films, 55.
84.

Films, 137.
85.
Haynes, Nigerian Video Films, 1.
86.

Films.
68.
Haynes, Nigerian Cinema: Structural Adjustments.
69.
Smyth, The British Colonial Film Unit and Sub-Saharan Africa, 19391945, 294.
87.
70.
Despatch from the Office of the Chief Secretary to

the Nigerian Government, 15 February 1932, No.
350, CSO 26/1, 02764, Vol. II, National Archives,
Ibadan.
Jonathan Haynes, Nnebue: the Anatomy of Power,

Film International 5.4 (August 2007): 3040.
88.
Haynes and Okome, Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films, 64.
89.
Haynes, Nnebue: the Anatomy of Power.
Elena, Los Cines Perifricos: frica, Oriente Medio,

India.
90.
Norimitsu Onishi, Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for

Nollywood, The New York Times (16 September
2002): 1.
71.
72.
Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture, 4.
73.
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 68.
91.
74.
Imruh Bakari, Colonialism and Modern Lives in

African Cinema, 501505.
Michael T. Martin, Interview, Research in African

Literatures 33.4 (2002): 161179.
92.
Jonathan Haynes, Nollywood: Whats in a Name?

Film International 5.4 (August 2007): 106108.
93.
Mark NeuCollins, Nigerian Cinema, Mark Neucollins Web Site http://www.mark-neucollins.org/writing/NigerianCinema.pdf (11 May 2009).
94.
National Film and Video Censors Board, Classification Decisions http://www.nfvcb.gov.ng/statistics.php (14 May 2008).
95.
Chukwuma Okoye, Looking at Ourselves in Our

Mirror: Agency, Counter-Discourse, and the Nigerian
Video Film, 2029.
96.
Onookome Okome, Introducing the Special Issue

on West African Cinema: Africa at the Movies, Postcolonial
Text,
http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/view/776/433 (13 December
2007).
75.
Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture.
76.
Haynes, Nigerian Cinema: Structural Adjustments,

144.
77.
Paul Willemen, Paul, Review: The Making of an

African Cinema, Transition (1992): 138150.
78.
Ibid., 142.
79.
Nollywood: Just Doing It. Directed by Jane Thorburn

(2008).
80.
Ukadike, Black African Cinema; Diawara, African

Cinema: Politics and Culture.
81.
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 85.
82.
Babson Ajibade, From Lagos to Douala: the Video

Film and its Spaces of Seeing, Postcolonial Text,
Abstract: A Break with the Past: The Nigerian Video-film Industry in the
Context of Colonial Filmmaking,
by Ikechukwu Obiaya
This article examines the Nigerian video-film industry from the perspective of the countrys colonial past.
It begins with the premise that the development of the video-film industry can be seen as part of a
decolonisation process. It therefore seeks to establish what links, if any, exist between the present day
video-film industry and colonial filmmaking. It posits that the growth and success attained in the industry
reflect an overcoming of the strictures which, thanks largely to the legacy of colonialism, had held back
the growth of African cinema.
Key words: Nigerian video-films; African cinema; Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment; Colonial Film Unit
(CFU).

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A Break with the Past: The Nigerian Video-film Industry in the Context of Colonial

A Break with the Past:

frica has a fairly long history in the cinema, in

the rather comatose state of African cinema are

sub-Saharan Africa remains not only one of

history of film production in sub-Saharan

About forty years later, Jude Akudinobi would

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 129

130 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

ing the colonial period, where it existed, was

look to the development in Nigeria as the solution to

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 130

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 131

belonging to this genre. The Hausa video-film takes

as a means of understanding the phenomenon.16

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 131

132 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

Film in colonial development

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 132

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 133

Nigerian Health Services Department which relied to

of economic exchange, medical practice and

The Colonial Film Unit and

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 133

134 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

priority and established that it should not interfere

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 134

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 135

ened and given top priority. The films of the CFU in

own films. Later on I hope the school will extend to

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 135

136 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

Colonial filmmaking for Africans

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 136

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 137

Alberto Elena, the Bantu Educational Kinema

Such reactions against films of this type might

The colonisation of the channels of

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 137

138 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 138

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 139

to sell a stipulated percentage of their capital to

The legacy of colonial filmmaking

the former colonies made clear how little they had

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 139

140 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

collective noun of Oxbridge), while underneath

Independent film production

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 140

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 141

Dosunmu, is best known for the popular television

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 141

142 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011)

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011 p. 142

A Break with the Past

FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 2 (2011) 143