Going all out for Nollywood

I passed by someone’s blog the other day and she had a nasty comment about Nigerian films. Something about all the films being crap. Now had the entire post been on Nigerian films, I may not have been so upset but it wasn’t, it was on a totally unrelated matter. She just felt the need to chip that in.

I write for Nollywood. I also write short stories, which have been published locally and internationally, I have even managed to win myself an award. The same brain/skill/talent I use to write these short stories is what I use to write Nollywood scripts. But because the white man has put a stamp on my stories, the Nigerians have therefore called it good. I would sooner write the screen play than the story because for the screen play I tell Nigerian stories in any way that I want to tell them. For the stories, the market is not here so when I write, because my audience is the westerner, I am continuously looking over my shoulder to be sure that he is following me therefore I am often forced to write to type.

I was privileged to meet a very well known young Nigerian author whose works I admire. In the course of our chat, I mentioned that I did not like one of her works. She did not give me a chance to complete the sentence but jumped to defend herself almost in anger. This is a lady whose works have received much acclaim, why did it matter to her that a layman like me did not like it. I expected that by now she would have been used to criticism but perhaps no one can get used to them.

My first question to self appointed critics is always, what have you done yourself? When last did our engineers build bridges , or the scientist invent a thing, or the mathematician a formula or the doctor/pharmacist a cure. It is only in the Arts and Fashion world that we are creating our own content. It is easy for the office worker to sit behind his high chair and criticize other people’s efforts because we are unable to judge him, but I bet that a large percentage of these oversabi’s are performing poorly in their own respective fields. Big brother can testify to that.

I read stories on blogs every now and then and some of them are so bad yet these same writers would say all Nigerian films are crap. The generalisation just makes me mad. Yes 80 %, maybe even more of our films are poor , but for whatever little percentage that is left, they deserve credit. Criticism is good but only when it is constructive, all I ever hear is oh, the story is unrealistic. Yes, stories should be believable but if I wanted to write reality, I would be writing nonfiction.

Nollywood has got it’s challenges, we know it more than you do, and we are doing the best we can towards overcoming them and producing better content but in the meantime, this is what we gat. If you don’t like it, don’t watch or as one of my friends would say, Abeg fly!