A Review of NOLLYWOOD BABYLON
Welcome to Nigeria where every year, nearly 2500 low-budget movies are being produced, making it the third biggest film industry in the world. Don’t feel ignorant if you’ve never seen any of them, these products are not even shown theatrically in their own country ! In order to get them, you’ll have to visit the Langos market where you can buy them on VCD. This particular type of distribution doesn’t stop the films from being very popular amongst Nigerians. Over the years, the African industry named Nollywood managed to create its own star-system by offering to the public a wide variety of genre flicks, from devastating family dramas to terrifying tales of black magic.
Nollywood Babylon is a fantastic Canadian documentary exploring this rather unknown side of the cinematographic planet. It allows us to meet local and excentric celebrities and witness clips from the crazy films they work on.
It is always a pleasure for a cinephile to discover obscure titles he never heard of. Considering this, Nollywood Babylon has a lot to offer to the adventurous filmgoer by featuring many excerpts from Nigerian films. The first reaction towards them is to laugh and, let’s face it, they are quite funny with their less-than-average special effects and questionnable performances from mostly unprofessionnals actors. But as the doc goes on, the filmmakers make us look at them under a new perspective. As we quickly learn through interviews with the industry’s key players, Nollywoodian productions owe their popularity because the viewers can easily relate to them. The films tell stories about the dream of becoming wealthy, the dangers of prostitution and the fascination for magic, a strong belief in the country. It is quite interesting to learn from Nollywood Babylon that cinema was brought into Nigeria by the English colonies who made racists films featuring tribes and then slowly but surely became the voice of a nation.
Beyond the exhaustive documentation are the people behind and in front of the camera. The documentary also follows prolific filmmaker Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen while he’s working on his 157th feature film (!). The shooting is almost unbelievable. Instead of being private, it gathers many people curious to meet their idols and make the whole event a joyful communial experience. Lancelot is a movie character himself, he refuses to sleep in order to keep his creativity going, isn’t afraid to insult his crew but, being a proud Christian, always begins a new film by blessing the camera. He becomes as interesting as the film he’s working on.
Nollywood Babylon is fun look at an industry that will probably never leave its own country. You will enter a world of guerilla filmmaking where the only limit is the passion the artists have for cinema. The lesson to take from this documentary is that beyond poverty and crime, the seventh art remains a powerful form of expression. This film deserves to be seen amd enjoyed by everyone.
