african cinema

While Hollywood made thousands of films from the 1920s to the 1960s, the African film industry can only be traced back to the decolonization period of the continent. What film production existed under foreign rule was stereotyped, and merely used Africa as an “exotic” background for Western cinema.

Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry, is second only to Bollywood as a producer of films, putting out more than 2,000 of them a year. These days, it’s an $800 million business employing more than a million people, but just 30 years ago, in its fledgling state, it was churning out movies on the cheap, most of them shot within a week and generally for less than $25,000, with low production values and simplistic storylines.