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The next
generation of Nigerian film makers will surely surpass the efforts of
the current crop of Nollywood practitioners and will proudly take their
rightful place alongside their counterparts from recognised film-making
countries, America, India, Burkina Faso, and South Africa included. The
most obvious reason for this informed prediction is that this new
generation of Nigerian film makers will be better equipped to function
in the medium because of their specialist training.

Nollywood is a
classic example of the sarcastic irony implied in a song by Kio
Amachree titled ‘Any Dummy Can Play Guitar.’ This song, released in the
eighties, is also a commentary on the Nigerian situation in which
professions are infiltrated and virtually saturated with all manner of
charlatans, who by virtue of their financial success are automatically
equated as successful experts. Simply put, Nollywood is a trade, not an
art!

The new crop

Among the talents
currently ‘underground’ and unknown are the following: Chinedu Iregbu,
Mildred Ayendeng, Idhebor Kagho, Adaobi Obiegbosi, Akpor Kagho, Hafeez
Adeyemi, Osegba Abdullahi, Rahila Abubakar, Gbenga Soyinka, Nannak
Ndam, Uwemimo Ekpewo, Effiong Daniel, Ladi Dogonyaro, Usho Baba, Austin
Itshore, Saaka Victor, Janet Sambo, Esther Tujegbe, and Dike Okeh.

However, it is
from the above list that the new generation of genuine Nigerian film
makers will emerge. More importantly, they will be armed with the
essential tools with which to change the face of the Nigerian film
industry for the better. For now, they are among the fresh graduates
and advanced students of the National Film Institute, NFI, Jos; which
is the academic arm of the Nigerian Film Corporation, NFC, also based
in Jos.

These future
filmmakers ultimately earn degrees and diplomas in film making, awarded
by the University of Jos, to which the NFI is affiliated. What is so
heartening and reassuring for Nigeria, is the fact that the NFI Jos is
patterned after well-established film schools like the London Film
School, British Film Institute, Swedish Film Institute, and the film
departments of the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of
Southern California, Los Angeles.

The bottom line
in all these schools is that all the students are given hands-on
training as well as theory courses in all aspects of film-making. They
actually get to make films as students and these are accessed by
external experts and juried for international student film festivals.

Trained and untrained

I recall, with
amusement, my days in the Nigerian Television Authority, Lagos, as a
consultant in the mid-eighties. The trend then was to employ graduates
with Mass Communications degrees from Nigerian universities.
Incredibly, unlike their counterparts produced by American
universities, these Nigerian graduates were never privileged to have
had any experience working on the television and radio stations of
their universities. Nigerian universities offering Mass Communications
courses had no television or radio stations then, and so offered just
theoretical training.

It was hilarious
watching these fresh graduates now producer/directors, working on set.
I suppose to them it was the ultimate mark of authority to shout
instructions like, “cameraman, give me a close-up, cameraman give me a
low shot.” The poor cameramen most times ignored them and took the
shots they thought were most appropriate.

The cameramen and
other technicians were usually members of staff who had risen up the
ranks, and although they had been trained on the job, they were
subservient in rank and salary structure to the fresh graduates. This
explains why for a very long time, apart from news programmes, NTA was
never able to produce good documentary or drama programmes.

For a long time,
Nollywood duplicated this production pattern in that the only trained
members of the crew were mostly the cameramen, soundmen, and editors
who actually ‘rescued’ the technical disasters that were churned out as
home videos or Nigerian movies.

What the NFI Jos
is thankfully trying to impress upon the film industry in Nigeria are
the facts that film-making is a collective team-collaboration and, all
members of the team must be well-trained to achieve a professional
end-result.

Thus, a
cameraman, scriptwriter, soundman, editor, and others are all graduates
who have majored in specific areas of film making. Predictably, this
ensures mutual respect and even inputs on set.

The right thing

It is within this
framework that the importance of the NFI within the Nigerian film
industry is better appreciated. Although there are now more than 40
Nigerian higher institutions offering Mass Communications training,
very few have radio stations and, nearly all don’t have TV stations and
newspapers for practical training.

We recently
witnessed the highly publicised and absurd situation in which a
supposed affiliate of a New York Film School trained some Niger Delta
youth in filmmaking, in the space of a month!

It is when we get
the right mix of well-trained film-makers and theatre-arts-trained
actors and actresses that the Nigerian film industry will finally come
of age. It is not about money, as Nollywood-lovers are bound to proudly
point out. It is not quite about the technical divide between
cinematographers and videographers. It is simply about doing the right
thing well.

The right thing
is that Nigeria now has a functional National Film Institute and the
Nigerian Film Corporation, is for a change, headed by a trained and
experienced film-maker in the person of Afolabi Adesanya. It is this
combination, with a little help from professional friends, that will
ensure that sooner than later, the next generation of real film makers
will emerge in Nigeria to reclaim and advance an industry which was
lovingly pioneered by the first generation of trained Nigerian
film-makers in the early seventies.

It will not be
easy for the new generation. As one of the NFI students pondered, “Will
Nigerian home video watchers recognise our better films, having been so
used to Nollywood films?”

Will these new generation filmmakers get funding away from the
Onitsha-Lagos cabal of trader-promoters who will want to keep Nollywood
stagnant in technical creativity and theme-direction just because it is
now a reliable cash cow? New money and new talent must come together to
steer the Nigerian film industry into a brighter future.