Browsing by Author "Holm, Emmi"

This is a study of the Nigerian video-film industry called Nollywood. The twenty-year-old film industry is estimated to be the second largest film industry in the world in terms of production. Nollywood productions are based on shooting with video cameras, quick releases, small budgets and informal distribution networks. The contents of Nollywood films are mostly a mixture of 'from rags to riches'-kind of stories, occultism and melodrama. Through the study of film production I approached my other subject-matters: modernity, globality, popular culture and the different standards of living in Lagos. The data was gathered in Lagos, the natal home of Nollywood, during a three-month fieldwork. The methods used in the field were participant observation, interviews and free-flowing discussions. The data consists of field notes, diaries, photographs, films and daily blog/gossip writings in the Nigerian media. The main informants were film practitioners in various fields of film production and distribution, and a group of young and wealthy Lagosians to whom I refer with the term 'friends' throughout the study. The main topic for my research is film production in the Lagosian context. However, the film production is very much related to the broader cultural and societal way of being in Nigeria: the anxieties and the aspirations of the Nigerian people are mediated in Nollywood films. Nollywood is a product of the global and the local. In this case ‘global’ means the technicalities of filmmaking and the global ‘messages’, a stream of global information, of the globalized world. Nollywood is an apt example of a local media’s wellbeing in the globalized world of today. Nollywood also functions as a mediative power in the Nigerian society. On the one hand Nollywood makes the global more intelligible locally and on the other hand it reflects and represents the local cultural and societal entities. The film industry and the surrounding Nigerian society are not separate entities. It is important to study cultural producers in order to understand how the media takes part in constituting a society. Similar to its surrounding society, Nollywood is going through a fundamental change. Nigeria is on the road of becoming Africa’s biggest economy while Nollywood is promoting itself in the global film scene: filmmakers now look to better quality films and cinema distribution. The storylines of Nollywood remodel the collective sphere of Nigerian aspirations and hope: the films and the real-life stories of the celebrities show Nigerians a possibility of improving one’s life. Nollywood tries to make sense of what it means to be Nigerian today by intertwining traditional and modern, global and local forces together, creating its own style of storytelling and a way of being in the global world.