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The 2009 movie, ‘The Reader’ never aired on cinema screens in Nigeria. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was initially not aired, but soon made it to Nigerian screens when it became too difficult to ignore as a worldwide hit. About the same time, I was watching those movies at Odeon Cinemas, outside the country. I can guarantee that Nigerians would have missed an excellent film had ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ passed us by. I’m sure that ‘The Reader’ was even better than Slumdog, but it was ‘Slumdog’ that won more awards. What I can guarantee though is that Nigerians missed out on an excellent movie in ‘The Reader’. It was that good!

Fast forward to summer 2010, and as a film lover, I had gone to the Lagos cinemas, Genesis and Silverbird, to entertain myself. The most prominent movies I have been served with in the last few months are ‘The A-Team’, ‘Grown Ups’, ‘The Karate Kid’, ‘The Last Airbender’, ‘Ije’ and ‘Salt’. There are some others that I refused to watch such as ‘Toy Story 3′. Taking a look at Odeon’s website, there is a lot more choice. Which leads me to wonder what the problem is. Could it be that our cinema operators don’t get to pay for the rights to show these movies?

Small range

If that is the case, then I really don’t have a problem with them showing us a smaller selection of movies than what audiences in the UK enjoy. Two reasons; first, we do not have a serious movie going culture here yet, regardless of what people may say.

The truth is that most people in this country still see cinema-going as a big Sunday event, and prefer to buy their movies from the Alaba Brothers at the road sides. Going to the movies is still largely seen as something for young people, and anyone of my father or my uncles would more than likely balk at the thought of going to the movies. Again, movies are a good avenue for people to mix, but in a highly stratified society like ours…

The second reason why I don’t mind the smaller selection of movies is that I know for a fact that Odeon, again as an example, is a huge chain with millions of pounds behind them. They can afford to take the potential losses that would occur if they invest in showing a movie that tanks at the Box Office. I can only imagine how much was lost by such chains when they showed the Bennifa movie, ‘Gigli’. It is understandable to some extent that the Silverbird Group as an example would not have the kind of disposable cash that they must have lost on ‘Kajola’, for example.

However, given these constraints, especially that of cost, it behoves the movie selectors to make the best possible choice of movies. For instance, I think that Salt was a bad movie. But the sheer expectation that greeted its release means that it could not be ignored as a movie, and had to be shown. Then again, a lot of people who watched it in the cinema thought that it was a fine film. So, that difference of opinion is more than enough to justify its selection. However, one movie that annoyed just about everyone that saw it, was ‘The A-Team.’ Sitting in the theatre watching it, I actually noticed my IQ drop a few percentage points. That movie was DAFT!

Stereotypes

A few years ago, a Caucasian friend of mine, on listening to my taste in music, asked how I felt when people automatically assumed that I loved rap music because I am black. A poignant question, considering that my preferred music types are soft rock, opera, and Igbo Christian tunes. It is the same problem that faces our cinema culture.

You see, I began this by talking about the fact that Kate Winslet’s movie ‘The Reader’ was not aired in Nigerian cinemas. Same way, I was also informed that the cinema this way never showed ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ and ‘Milk’. These were solid movies, all of them. But yet, the same cinemas had no problems showing ‘The Dark Knight’ (I have no issues with that great movie), ‘Iron Man’, ‘Get Smart’ (?), ‘Speed Racer’ and ‘Wanted’. Now, ‘Wanted’ was one silly movie, let’s not even begin to talk about ‘Get Smart’ (very ironic, considering the title)!

What I have a problem with is our own movie selectors type-casting us. Nigerians are not a set of people who only love octane action dramas that are high on blowing up cars and one person beating up 30 bigger people, or surviving multiple plane crashes. There is a significant number of us who want to go to the movies and take something away from the experience whilst being entertained at the same time.

Agents’ selection

I did a little bit of digging. A Silverbird source who didn’t want to be named, explained that the cinema does not get the movies directly from Hollywood studios, but through an agent, and they have to take what is given to them. My source further explained that the studios and their licenced agents have conducted market surveys for the kind of movies supposedly preferred by people in different parts of the world, and it is based on those surveys that they push certain kinds of movies in our direction. The source cited ‘No Country For Old Men’ as an example: while it did extremely well in Europe and America, it was a loss for movie theatres in this part of the world.

But personally, I wouldn’t judge on just that one experience because I see people buying serious stuff from hawkers on the streets. Which is why I disagree not a little, and think there’s a bit of stereotyping at play here; but they pull the financial strings and make the important decisions, which is a little painful for me.

So far, all the reviews I have read about Ben Affleck’s ‘The Town’ are very positive; and the movie has topped $15million at the box office. But there is no mention of it being shown in our cinemas.