Videos in Motion

Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Dipartimento di Studi e Ricerche su Africa e Paesi Arabi Tesi di Dottorato di Ricerca in Africanistica, IX ciclo - Nuova Serie VIDEOS IN MOTION Processes of transnationalization in the southern Nigerian video industry: Networks, Discourses, Aesthetics Candidate: Alessandro Jedlowski Supervisor: Prof. Alessandro Triulzi (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) Co-supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Haynes (Long Island University – New York) Academic Year 2010/211 Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” Dipartimento di Studi e Ricerche su Africa e Paesi Arabi Tesi di Dottorato di Ricerca in Africanistica, IX ciclo - Nuova Serie VIDEOS IN MOTION Processes of transnationalization in the southern Nigerian video industry: Networks, Discourses, Aesthetics Candidate: Alessandro Jedlowski Supervisor: Prof. Alessandro Triulzi (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) Co-supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Haynes (Long Island University – New York) Academic Year 2010/2011 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS P. 5 INTRODUCTION. Videos in motion P. 16 CHAPTER I. Defining the field of enquiry: History, concepts and questions P. 40 SECTION I. Beyond the video boom: Informal circulation, crisis of production and processes of transnationalization in the southern Nigerian video industry P. 45 CHAPTER II. Regulating mobility, reshaping accessibility: The production crisis and the piracy scapegoat. P. 67 CHAPTER III. From Nollywood to Nollyworld: Paths of formalization of the video industry’s economy and the emergence of a new wave in Nigerian cinema P. 87 SECTION II. The “Nollywoodization” of the Nigerian video industry: Discursive constructions, processes of commoditization and the industry’s transformations. P. 93 CHAPTER IV. When the Nigerian video industry became “Nollywood”: Naming and branding in the videos’ discursive mobility. P. 114 CHAPTER V. Nigerian videos in the global arena: The postcolonial exotic revisited. P. 137 SECTION III. Global Nollywood: Nigerian videos’ openness and the videos’ diasporic transformations. P. 141 CHAPTER VI. The openness of Nigerian video genres: Melodrama, realism and the creation of a pan-African public 3 P. 169 CHAPTER VII. Nollywood abroad: The transformations of Nigerian video production in the diaspora P. 194 CONCLUSION. Videos’ mobility and Nigerian socio-cultural transformations P. 206 FILMOGRAPHY (Videos and films) P. 211 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Books and academic journals; newspaper and blog articles; interviews) 4 INTRODUCTION Videos in motion The research that I discuss throughout the pages of this thesis, the way it was conducted and the direction it took are profoundly indebted to two episodes I experienced in the first few months of my fieldwork. I want to briefly discuss them here as a way of introducing the topic of this dissertation and its structure. When I wrote my PhD proposal I wanted to concentrate my research on the Nigerian video industry, but I was not yet sure about which aspect of the industry’s complex reality I wanted to focus on. As a student of anthropology and media studies, I had studied African visual arts and the history of African cinema and I was fascinated by the way Nigerian videos were revolutionizing these disciplinary fields. The existing literature on the topic was already wide, and became even wider while I was conducting my research. Thus I was not sure about how to locate my work within this corpus of well-documented studies.1 Somehow imprudently, my belief was that once arrived in Nigeria something would finally size my attention. With some kind of optimism I was following what I often considered an important epistemological principle, the principle of listening, suggested in a short quote from Maurice Merleau-Ponty that I had once copied in my diary: the reflection is not to presume upon what it finds and condemn itself to putting into the things what it will then pretend to find in them; it must suspend the faith in the world only so as to see it, only so as to read in it the route it has followed in becoming a world for us; it must seek in the world itself the secret of our perceptual bond with it [...] It must plunge into the world instead of surveying it, it must descend toward it such as it is instead of working its way back up toward a prior possibility of thinking it – which would impose upon the world in advance the condition for our control over it. It must question the world, it must enter into the forest of references that our interrogation arouses in it, it must make it say, finally, what in its silence it means to say… (1968: 38 – 39). 1 I will discuss in depth the existing literature on Nollywood and the specificity of the Nigerian video phenomenon in relation to the history of African cinema in the first chapter. 5 Hence approaching my fieldwork I was hoping that within this “silence” I could recognize the right position to look at the intricate world of cultural production in Nigeria. The research was beginning and I was full of expectations and uncertainties. Before going to Nigeria there were some logistical problems I had to solve. First, I had to give myself a solid background as a Nollywood videos connaisseur. I had already watched a number of Nigerian videos while I was living in London, a few years earlier, and those were the films that actually generated my interest in the topic. But evidently that was not enough. I needed to watch more videos and I was sure that this would help me in better understanding which direction my research should take. The problem was, however, where to get the videos. I thus found myself walking through one of the many markets in the central part of Naples, close to the main train station, looking for some Nigerian videos to buy. Most of the African stands that I found were run by Senegalese vendors and were selling copies of what I thought were Francophone videos. Most of the DVDs exposed on the shelves were pirated copies, and at first glance it was hard to get an idea of their content. Thus, to satisfy my curiosity, I decided to buy a few of them. When I watched one of them at home I realized that its content was not, as I had imagined, a copy of some Senegalese or Ivorian television series. It was instead the copy of a recent Nigerian hit dubbed in French. In this version of the film, Nigerian video trailers, which precede most movies, were substituted for specific adverts oriented toward diasporic audiences. In addition, before the film’s original credits sequence someone had included the logo of a francophone production company with addresses and phone numbers in Paris and Piacenza. When I rang the number, the head of the production company – a young Ivorian who moved to Italy a few years ago and set up a production and distribution business using his previous experiences in television and theatre in Abidjan – answered. It transpired that his company trades both Ivorian and Nigerian media products in Europe. While chatting with him, I discovered that the film I bought in Naples was a copy of a copy of a copy, whose biography was fascinating and difficult to retrace. The video was shot in Lagos around 2005. Probably only a few weeks later, a pirated copy of it was acquired by a television studio in Abidjan and dubbed by professional artists. The Ivorian producer based in Italy managed to get access to a copy of the dubbed version and replicated it, in partnership with an Italian digital media company. The film was then sold in Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Germany. One of these “original” pirated copies ended up in the hands of some other, presumably Senegalese, entrepreneur who pirated it once again and put it on the market in Naples. This was the version I finally bought. 6 As I advanced in my research, this episode progressively assumed a particular relevance. Before discussing the influence it had, however, I want to describe the other episode I mentioned. The second problem I had as I was beginning my research concerned the organization of my fieldwork in Nigeria. I wanted to create a network of relations that would help me to get accommodation and a number of contacts in Lagos and within the video industry’s environment in Nigeria. My university did not have any particular contact with academic institutions in southern Nigeria, and thus I decided that the best thing to do was to start from what was closer to me. The Nigerians I met earlier in my life always told me that there is no place on earth where you would not find a Nigerian. Thus I told myself: “Naples, Lagos or New York: the place does not matter at this stage of the research!”. A few months before starting my PhD I accidentally bumped into a newspaper article that mentioned the existence of a Nigerian production company based in the northern part of Italy. I thought that this was a good starting point for my trip to Nigeria. Through a friend of mine I got the telephone number of a Nigerian singer living in Turin, the same city where the Nigerian production company I heard about was based. According to my friend this singer was in touch with most of the artists and cultural entrepreneurs of the Nigerian diaspora in Turin.2 She seemed to be the best vector to get in touch with the production company. We fixed a meeting and I organized my trip to northern Italy, full of anticipation and curiosity. I booked a bed and breakfast and I took the night train from Naples. It was my first visit to Turin and I took a day off to visit it before meeting with the singer.

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