Exporting Nollywood: Nigerian video filmmaking in Europe

The Nigerian video industry, Nollywood, grew rapidly over the past few years becoming one of the most productive film industry in the world. Following the wave of its success, a number of Nigerian production companies emerged in numerous European countries. Some of them marketed their products as part of the Nollywood phenomenon, trying to achieve a recognition through the strategic use of this branding. Some other contested the international understanding of the Nollywood phenomenon, affirming new aesthetic and production values. The differences between these positions are connected with diverging experiences of migration as well as with different ways of relating with local national cinema industries and with local Nigerian diasporic communities.
This paper looks at Nigerian video film production in Europe in a comparative perspective, and intends to highlight the different production and marketing strategies adopted in different contexts (United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Italy). The paper argues that for the Nigerian production companies active in Europe, Nollywood has worked as a brand to gain recognition. However the position of these production companies toward the video industry in Nigeria is ambiguous. They found themselves stuck in between European and Nigerian audiences, styles, production and distribution strategies. Their in-betweennes is at the same time their force and their weakness. They would hardly exist without such a condition, but this same condition condemns them to a radical marginality (toward both Nigerian and European cinema). How then can we define their work and the role they are having in the evolution/transnationalization of the Nigerian video film industry?