The tides of globalization swept across Africa long before Kofi Annan joined the UN or Akon "smacked that". Wed to Asian, European and American influences, many of the continent's cultural practices are syncretic responses to outside technologies, politics and aesthetics. Accordingly, Nigerian video films, which are usually too long to be feature movies and too short to be televised series, are the result of such a creolization.
Nigeria is not typically thought of as a cinematic hub outside of Africa. The country - Africa's most populated - gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, and like most post-colonial African nation-states, suffered from massive corruption, brutal rulers and violent regime changes. Even with the oil-boom in the 1970s, the country lacked economic and political stability. As the '90s began, the country was marked by inflamed ethnic tensions in the southern Niger Delta between impoverished Ogonis and the government-backed petroleum corporations. That this country's soil also grew an economically successful and autonomous film industry is remarkable.
Owing to the diversity of cultural regions, Nigeria's video films are commonly made in languages such as Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo and English. Adhering to a different set of artistic standards than those of Western media, video films are usually extremely low-budget and unabashedly melodramatic. The look consists of a shaky camcorder, natural lighting and an editing job that appears to be more in-VCR than iMovie. And with titles like Dangerous Sisters (2004), He Lives In Me (2004), and Costly Mistake (2006), it's tempting to label these films as shabby African imitations of the European and American soap-opera traditions.
Yet, as the film historian Jonathan Haynes has noted, Nigerian video films are often products of both cultural saturation and maturation. If saturation implies a hegemonizing culture's imposition onto a subordinate's - think "Americanization" and McDonalds - then maturation implies one culture's willing appropriation and adaptation of another culture's products - think Al Jazeera as a response to CNN. Though Indian cinema has become increasingly popular in Nigerian theaters, video-filmmakers have adopted elements of the Bollywood aesthetic in their own unique way. The sari-laden, bindi-dotted and musically-based Hausa movie Gimbya Fatima still retains its Nigerian essence as its protagonists attempt to navigate the typical themes of love and marriage.
The lack of corporate interests, governmental influence and international demands for exportation allows Nigerian video film creators to maintain their unique cultural identities, absorbing and using international sources at their whim. As writer and producer, Esosa Kabat Egbon says, "they have been able to touch a sensibility of the people - their life, their aspirations, their world view, spiritualities, and otherwise." Blurring the line between modern and traditional, these cinematic creations remind the American viewer that movies arise from complex cultural forces, and that ultimately, Africa consists of more than safaris and disasters.
