NOLLYWOOD BABYLON (Ben Addelman, Samir Mallal) Rating: NNN
Nollywood, a movie industry that began as a way to use up blank videotapes, has become the third-largest producer in the world after Bollywood and Hollywood.
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Filmmakers Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal (Bombay Calling) slap together a solid, amusing profile of Nigeria’s low-rent movie industry, whose films never see the light of the silver screen but sell briskly as home videos in Lagos’s bustling street markets.
These amateur productions, shot over a few days utilizing what they call the “pop, pop, pop” filmmaking style, make Bollywood’s worst look like contenders for the Palme d’Or. Not that their makers aspire to Cannes. In fact, the filmmakers, in particular Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, despise festival fare, especially those films from Africa that no Africans have seen.
While tracking Imasuen’s latest production, Addelman and Mallal spend much time figuring out Nollywood’s community appeal, interviewing locals to get their perspective on why these movies click.
Nollywood Babylon shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s often repetitive and takes frequent detours, and its outlook sometimes seem skewed.
Yet it’s insightful, particularly in analyzing how these movies offer a window into Nigerian culture, how they bear witness to both the stalled transition between tradition and modernity and the recent evangelical craze that holds the country hostage. A cinema studies class could spend a week on this material.
Screens August 11-13 at the NFB Mediatheque. Co-director Mallal is attending the August 11 screening.
