WHERE THE HELL IS NOLLYWOOD?

Sometimes things just hit me. I’m going about my usual business and something catches my eye. Once it was a sign on busy street in the middle of Phoenix: AFRICAN FOOD & MOVIES.

They make movies in Africa? I’ve long been a fan of movies from places like Mexico and the Philippines, so why not Africa? Maybe they have something wonderful and weird going on there.

I can be such an optimist.

I forgot about it for a while, then was channel surfing up and down our cable selection, hoping to find something that would divert me. I stumbled onto a documentary about Nigerian film making. I was impressed with the modern, light-weight digital cameras, the guerrilla production tactics, and the girls with green and pink hair.

It got me curious enough to Google "Nollywood," which is a take-off on India’s "Bollywood." I was hoping to find some homegrown fantasy/horror/folklore stuff. Before long, I was watching videos of some movie trailers that were stranger than I’d dare imagine.

For example:

Hitler. Yes, that’s the title. No, it’s not an all-black World War Two epic. This Hitler is a vicious gangster with dredlocks. I guess if they released this film in the U.S.A. they’d have to call it Black Hitler. At first it looks like traditional blaxploitation with gaudy Nigerian clothes and hairstyles, but ends with Hitler fighting for his life in a "village of cannibals."




End of Money. Again, we start looking like blaxploitation transplanted to Nigeria. "What if men behaved like gods?" asks an hysterical narrator. Suddenly, clunky, CGI demons show up – they start out as men and end up bigger than houses. For some reason, the embed was disabled by request on this one -- we are treading on bizarre territory.

Across the Bridge. A woman with a painted face and large breasts shoots lasers out of her eyes. Punctuated by machine-gun like sound effects, a hyperactive voice-over explains that she is a goddess who steals men's souls. "Do you dare suck the breast of everlasting milk?" she challenges. Her breasts get gigantic, like props in an American monster movie from the Fifties. Men line up, suck, and shrink down to the size of dolls. I’ve had to show this to people so I could prove that I didn’t hallucinate it.




I’m delighted to find a new world to explore. I’ll let you know what else I discover.