11.6: Notes

¹ Amelia Arsenault and Manuel Castells, “The Structure and Dynamics of Global Multi-media Business Networks,” International Journal of Communication 2 (2008): 707–748.

² Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell, and Ting Wang, Global Hollywood 2 (London: British Film Institute, 2008).

³ This chapter does not directly compare Nollywood to Hollywood. To compare the two is to suggest that Nollywood is a less-funded imitator of Hollywood, when it is more accurate to view Nollywood as on its own trajectory, growing out of and flourishing in a different position in the global economy. However, in the context of this edited volume, I engage in a general comparison of Nollywood to more formal global media industries worldwide, as part of this book’s charge to illuminate how global concerns about labor issues play out across a diversity of contexts.

⁴ It has become popular in recent years to cite a UNESCO statistic that Nollywood is second only to Bollywood in number of titles produced per year, but scholars have questioned the significance of such a statistic in comparing theatrical and home-viewing based industries. See Carmela Garritano, “Introduction: Nollywood—an Archive of African Worldliness,” Black Camera 5.2 (2013): 44–52; and other articles in that Nollywood special issue of Black Camera.

⁵ See Brian Larkin, “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy,” Public Culture 16.2 (2004): 289–314, for a full argument on informal distribution as a source of industrial strength.

⁶ Despite recent efforts in formalization in cinema, online, and satellite distribution, the core of industry profits are still in physical copies sold in networks of domestic open-air markets.

⁷ Jade Miller, “Global Nollywood: The Nigerian Movie Industry and Alternative Global Networks in Production and Distribution,” Global Media and Communication 8 (2012): 117–133.

⁸ See ibid. for an analysis of Nollywood’s formal inputs, such as cameras and sound equipment.

⁹ See Ramon Lobato, “Creative Industries and Informal Economies: Lessons from Nollywood,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13 (2010): 337–354.

¹⁰ Matthew Gandy, “Learning from Lagos,” New Left Review 33 (2005): 36–52; Alessandro Jedlowski, “Nigerian Videos in the Global Arena: The Postcolonial Exotic Revisited,” Global South 7.1 (2013): 157–178; Nyasha Mboti, “Nollywood’s Aporias Part 1: Gatemen,” Journal of African Cinemas 6 (2014): 49–70.

¹¹ Jonathan Haynes, “Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films,” Africa Today 54.2 (2007): 131–150.

¹² Figures, to be taken with many grains of salt, are derived from Rem Koolhaas, Harvard Project on the City, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Mutations (New York: ACTAR, 2000).

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Koolhaas et al., Mutations. And counting comparative global generator density by neighborhood is perhaps the epitome of figures that could never be accurately counted.

¹⁵ See Elizabeth Rosenthal, “Nigeria Tested by Rapid Rise in Population,” New York Times, April 14, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/africa/in-nigeria-a-preview-of-an-overcrowded-planet. html. This statistic is at the high end of estimates; the population may well be lower.

¹⁶ National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria, Annual Abstract of Statistics, 2012, 115–117, www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/nbslibrary/nbs-annual-abstract-of-statistics/nbs-annual-abstract-of-statistics.

¹⁷ Those who made the movie see no direct profits from this.

¹⁸ Jonathan Haynes, “New Nollywood: Kunle Afolayan,” Black Camera 5.2 (2013): 53–73; Moradewun Adejunmobi, “Evolving Nollywood Templates for Minor Transnational Film,” Black Camera 5.2 (2014): 74–94.

¹⁹ Connor Ryan, “Nollywood and the Limits of Informality: A Conversation with Tunde Kelani, Bond Emeruwa, and Emem Isong,” Black Camera 5.2 (2013): 168–185.

²⁰ See Larkin, “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds.”

²¹ Ibid.

²² Those advocating loudest for more formality are those who would likely lead the industry were the marketers to lose control. This small group of big-name Nollywood producers and directors make movies that emerge from a largely separate self-financed system known sometimes as “New Nollywood.” This chapter, however, deals not with “New Nollywood” but with the bulk of the industry, which produces the majority of titles and employs the vast majority of workers.

²³ It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the institution of guilds has proven so popular in structuring primarily informal Nollywood. Nigerian society is full of organizations and leadership positions. It is not uncommon for people to spend their little spare time going from meeting to meeting: church governance groups, church committees, groups of those originally from the same village, and so on. It seems that anyone who is anyone (and many who are, in effect, nobodies) holds or has held a leadership position in some organization or another. Ascendency to leadership in any organization is afforded a high degree of respect and importance, and leaders of even the smallest of these organizations are usually hailed by their title in public.

²⁴ Richard Caves, Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

²⁵ Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

²⁶ Ramon Lobato, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (London: British Film Institute, 2012).

²⁷ A popular cinematographer suggests that ten to fifteen days is the bare minimum for a movie shoot, while a “good” movie will take twenty-one or more days. Shooting has been taking longer in recent years.

²⁸ Caves, Creative Industries.

²⁹ Elizabeth Currid, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

³⁰ In Nigeria, a wealthy, successful man is usually referred to as “big,” and underlings and servants are often referred to as “boys,” no matter their age.

³¹ With the exception of sudden dramatic overtures, such as former president Goodluck Jonathan’s disjointed multimillion-dollar funding scheme late in his tenure or the censorship board’s ill-fated efforts to restructure distribution.