Nigeria

Abstract

The standard story of Nollywood, southern Nigeria’s remarkably prolific film industry (currently the world’s second largest in terms of annual output), is thus: with the average production budget settling somewhere between nine and ten million naira (or between 45,000 and 50,000 US dollars), the shooting of an individual feature often occurs on a necessarily tight (typically two-week) schedule, occasioning planned as well as unexpected shortcuts, compromises, and combined professional functions. Directors often double as performers; costume designers can be recruited from the ranks of production assistants; and sets — more often than not — are Lagos living rooms belonging to relatively well-heeled patrons of the arts who may or may not be acting out of a self-centred desire to see their properties employed as on-screen backdrops (Haynes 2007: 138).