20 Years Since The New York Times Named #Nollywood
Norimitsu Onishi was the Chief of The New York Times’s southern Africa bureau, based in Johannesburg when he discovered the phenomenon of the first indie film industry in Africa in 2002 in the hustle and bustle of Lagos city, the heart and soul of the guerilla filmmakers of Nigeria.
How The Times Named ‘Nollywood’ in 2002
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/insider/how-the-times-named-nollywood.html
The name of Nollywood has become the identity of the Nigerian film industry even though the making of the genre started in the 1980s which I have chronicled in my widely read and shared article,
The Nollywood Phenomenon: From Analog to Digital - SHADOW & ACT
https://shadowandact.com/the-nollywood-phenomenon-from-analog-to-digital-2
The article shows the evolution of Nollywood over the years and how the digital cinema revolution has made a critical impact in the advancement of Nollywood since 2002.
Traditional filmmakers of the old school of filmmaking on celluloid still say Nollywood is video and not cinema. But top people in the global film industry said: Every region has unique stories to tell. And we should encourage them to tell their stories first and not be hindered by the technical requirements for professional film production. That the first thing is to supply on demand, because it was the overwhelming quantity of Nollywood home videos in the 1990s that attracted the rest of the world before the improvements in the quality.
There have been significant improvements in the quality of the movies as Nollywood filmmakers have been adapting to current developments in filmmaking by using the same digital cinema cameras used by their counterparts in Bollywood and Hollywood following international standards in film and TV productions.
The improvement in the quality of the content has attracted the leading International acquisition and distribution companies, major studios and OTT video streaming services from America and Europe. Netflix, Disney and Amazon are now demanding for the best content in Nollywood and well produced movies have been acquired.
"The American King" is currently showing in movie theaters in America and coming up next month in cinemas across Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia from February 25, 2022.
It is importan we document the new developments in Nollywood since 2002 to date for film history and film studies. That is why I working on a documentary film on "Nollywood Rising: The New Generation".
Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series,
The first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry published since 2013.
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