I had a discussion with a friend the other day... we talked about Nigerian entertainment and I complained about a couple of obvious issues one can see when comparing Nigerian entertainment content to foreign media content. I wondered if there was any creativity left in the entertainment industry and told my friend I hadn't seen any. he replied "mehn, you've been here too long!"
Our movies mostly show the reality of Nigeria because most stories probably happen in real life. Most of which are quite depressing .
He made me sit and put a series of Nigerian music videos to watch, here are the two I liked best
Be Your Man- Dipo
Bottom Belle- Omawunmi ft Flavour
I'll have to admit there is a lot of creativity in some Nigerian music videos and the quality has greatly improved. The thing is, why cant this be applied to Nigerian movies?
In my opinion, Nigerian movies are really difficult to watch! the repeated story lines and themes can give one a headache! Then to top it all up the video quality is quite poor.
American Movies made up to 60 years ago still have better quality than Nigerian movies, even better story lines.why cant we improve?
12 angry men- Simple setting, good plot and good acting! year 1957
Beyonce and Rihanna- ????
To be fair, film culture abroad is quite different from film culture in Nigeria: Although both make use of celebrities to attract the audience, shooting styles and themes are quite different. For example, American themes are mainly focused on contemporary American life,bizarre ghostly events, love, exaggerated comedy and hyper reality while Nigerian movie themes are mostly on religion, rags to riches or the reverse, family feuds and so on.
Our movies mostly show the reality of Nigeria because most stories probably happen in real life. Most of which are quite depressing .
Even if American movies show horror, thrillers and other hair raising or bucket-filling movies, one could easily be re-assured that they dont happen in real life unless indicated that such was based on a true story (in which quite a few are). while one could say that Nigerian movies portray the realities of life and the challenges people face.
Nigerian movies do not have to be a carbon copy or very similar to Hollywood movies (In fact it shows lack of creativity and culture when Nigerian movies dub the same script an American movie has used) but we could try to be a bit more creative and improve on the quality of our videos!
movies like The Figurine and Jenifa (although part 3 had too much propaganda) should be commended for an improvement in the creativity and quality of Nollywood movies.... Hopefully in a few years from now one would rush to the cinema, not to watch an action packed American movie but a good Nigerian movie!
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