Indian movies such as “Sholay”, “Amar Akbar Anthony”, Chinese movies including Fist of Fury, Enter the Dragon, The Game of Death reigned in the 70’s into the 80’s era. Nigerian film makers such as Ola Balogun, Eddie Ugbomah, late Herbert Ogunde, Adeyemi Afolayan, Afolabi Adesanya produced films on celluloid, especially during the 70’s. Films such as Bull Frog in the Sun, Ajani Ogun, Muzik Man, Bisi, Daughter of the River, Ija Ominira, Aiye were viewed by Nigerians.
However, many Nigerians preferred the foreign films to the local ones. In the late 80’s into the 90’s, VCRs stormed the country, resulting in the dearth of cine films from our founding film makers. Ken Nebue’s, “Living in bondage” in 1992, paved the way for Nollywood a.k.a “The Nigerian home video industry” which has metamorphosed into a multi million naira industry.
Preference now shifted to the home videos, being made by Nigerians for Nigerians and in general Africans, with the avenue to tell our stories. However, the charlatan invasion, low ebbed professionalism, shamy productions, flawed stories, amongst others has made the industry a shadow of itself. The Ghanaian invasion of its actors and actresses into the industry, coupled with the problems of piracy, despite the new distribution framework most marketers are yet to strictly comply, with have not helped matters.
The Silver Bird galleria which houses the cinema, NU metro and Genesis Deluxe cinemas show dominantly Hollywood movies, and with the availability of DVDs of foreign flicks around the corner, down the street, the choice pendulum has once again swung to the foreign flicks. Foreign flicks offer a wide genre of movies ranging from Action, Comedy, Romance, Thriller, Science-fiction, Animation, Mystery, Film-noir, to Violence, Adventure, Crime, Suspense, Drama, Musical, Horror and Fantasy have good special, visual, sound effects, amongst others.
Although a few Nollywood film makers have upped their game to swing in the direction of the international standard, Home videos generally fall below the set quality standard. Time will however tell whether the Home videos will once again dominate the Nigerian movie market.
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