Black History Month: Whose History, Whose Culture?

An interesting discussion on Black History Month in the United Kingdom, focused on whether Africans in Africa are getting enough knowledge of their own cultural heritage and how repatriation of African artworks held in the West might rekindle an interest in precolonial African heritage.

More on Herskovits Award

Click here for a link to a nice article published on the Nigerian Village Square by Moses Ochonu on my 2009 Herskovits Award.

Enwonwu book wins Herskovits Award 2009

My book, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press, 2008) has won the 2009 Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association. The Herskovits Award is presented annually for the best scholarly work on Africa published in English in the previous year and distributed in the US.

CROWN FRAUD: Copyright and Looted Nigerian Cultural Patrimony

Above, a very interesting clip from YouTube featuring ongoing efforts to challenge and countermand Britain's claims of copyright ownership of looted Nigerian cultural patrimony. Basically, it concerns the British loot from the invasion of Benin in 1897. Like many other major museums in Europe and the USA who hold large collections of Benin Cultural Patrimony, the issue of who actually owns the copyright to such cultural patrimony is a hot issue. Not only do Western museums hold African art objects literally in bondage, they assert an ownership claim on the copyright of those objects. This is akin to double dispossession of the African producers of these artworks, who are denied physical ownership and also, through such claims to copyright ownership, denied ownership of the intellectual property rights of those artworks already lost to colonial adventurism.

Crown Fraud, a documentary film, raises a pertinent issue: the question of "Who Owns Africa's Cultural Patrimony" will be a major aspect of the intercultural relationship between Africa and the West for decades to come. In the meantime, let us state categorically on this blog that African cultures and societies who produced these artworks own any intellectual property rights that may accrue to the artworks. Any counter claim (of the sort the British Museum and other Western museums make on these artworks) is false and fraudulent, and completely illegal.

Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria

Video introduction to an ongoing exhibition of African royal art from the ancient Yoruba City of Ife. (Erratta: My previous entry on this video failed to correctly identify the person being interviewed: Enid Schildkrout, Chief Curator of the Museum for African Art, New York. Apologies).

Nollywood Lady: Peace Anyiam Fiberesima

From a press release by Women Make Movies:

NOLLYWOOD LADY, a new educational resource now available through Women Make Movies, plus a special offer for documentaries on African Cinema from the new special collection Behind the Lens: Women in Cinema.

Africa's film industry is one of the world's largest, third to only Bollywood and Hollywood. WMM's new release NOLLYWOOD LADY by Dorothee Wenner offers an insider's look into the vibrant film production hub of Lagos, Nigeria, and captures the vision of this thriving and innovative $250-million industry.

Leading this all-access tour to film locations, markets, and sit-downs with Nollywood professional is Peace Anyiam-Fibresima, an impresario of showbiz otherwise known as "Nollywood Lady," an ex-lawyer, producer, filmmaker, and the founder and CEO of the influential African Academy of Motion Pictures. In this revealing new release, she shares her vision for transforming the way Africans see themselves-and how the world sees Africans.

Above, a clip from the movie © Women Make Movies

Nollywood Actress Genevieve Nnaji featured on OPRAH

Nollywood Actress Genevieve Nnaji was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show yesterday in a segment about famous people from film and media industries outside the USA. In a way, this marks the emergence of Nollywood into global media and provides a fitting cap to the tireless work done by the Nollywood Foundation over the previous five years of hosting conventions about the Nigerian Film Industry in Los Angeles. As co-founder and current president of the Nollywood Foundation, I think we can take some pride in directing attention to Nollywood in the USA through our annual conventions. With Oprah's imprimatur conferring a status of "cool" on the industry, look for more stories on Nollywood in the American media over the next few months. Without prejudice, I predict those stories will attempt to assert a claim of discovering "Nollywood" for the American media, and will probably not take into consideration previous substantial work done by the Nollywood Foundation and other organizations that have battled tirelessly to make Nollywood a household name in the USA.

That said, congratulations to Genevieve Nnaji and to Nollywood-the Nigerian Film Industry. It is nice that they are recognized for their achievement and this particular achievement is quite substantial.

Pictures: Genevieve Nnaji at the 2006 Nollywood Foundation Convention. Video clip of Genevieve on Oprah

Osahenye Kainebi at CCA-Lagos

Trash-ing. New Works by Kainebi Osahenye
Opening: Saturday, 12th September 2009, 3pm
Exhibition continues till 10th October 2009

Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos is pleased to present an exhibition of new mixed media and painterly installations by acclaimed Lagos based artist Kainebi Osahenye. With over twenty years of artistic practice, this current incarnation Trash-ing builds on the continuous process of experimentation
which has pushed the boundaries of his painting.

Trash-ing signals a new departure from his well-known large-scale neo-expressionist paintings towards the incorporation of more conceptual concerns through a format that increasingly borrows from an installation
orientated process. Losing none of his gestural signature strokes, nor the luminosity of his colors or the edginess of his subject matter, Trash-ing highlights some of the issues that have pervaded his work for over a decade. In the recent works these existential, political, religious and everyday themes which habitually manifested with a degree of playfulness are presented less implicitly in favor of a suggestiveness which attests to the state of maturity he has attained in his career.

Osahenye moves seamlessly from the metaphysical to the physical, from the unreal to the real, foregrounding issues for which he is well-known and expanding on others such as globalization, consumerism, man’s inhumanity and the environment forming the entral(nodal) focus of this new body of work. In so doing the exhibition’s title succeeds in playing on the multiple connotations of the word to ‘trash’ to signify destruction, abuse, rejection and waste. It also serves as an explicit reminder on the one hand of man’s disregard for one other and on the other, towards the environment.

Using appropriation as a tool, Osahenye’s most ambitious work to date is the ceiling to wall installation titled ‘Casualty’, 2009. Made of thousand of beer cans, the work is less about the ‘trendy’ fad in recycling than in acknowledging the limitation of the traditional mode of painting whilst simultaneously recognizing the abilities and the possibilities of pushing boundaries without losing the essence of the painterly. On sighting the burnt cans near a garbage dump of a hotel in Auchi, Osahenye states that he ‘was instantly confronted with thoughts of war, cruelty, melancholy, pain, displacement, anguish and deformity and I started conceiving ways to install this large scale work to express the force and the power that I felt.’ Whether the totality of this and other works of the artist marks the beginning of the ‘new’ face of contemporary Nigerian painting remains to be seen.

Trash-ing is a collaboration between Kainebi Osahenye Studios and CCA,Lagos. The exhibition has been organized by CCA,Lagos Project Coordinator/Artist, Jude Anogwih.

www.ccalagos.org
www.facebook.com/ccalagos

Microsoft Photoshops Black Man Out Of European Ad

From the Huffington Post, this interesting evidence of the unstable location of black people in global space:

Doing business abroad sometimes requires companies to tweak their marketing strategies. Companies often swap idiomatic phrases or images in advertisements to better suit cultural sensitivities and achieve better sales. But do those edits ever go too far?

A black man was replaced with a white man in a Microsoft online advertisement intended for use in Poland. An Asian man in the ad apparently made the cut, and appeared in both the Polish and stateside versions of the ad.

The editorial tweak however forgot to photoshop out the black man's hand. Read the full story here. Pictured below, the original image and its doppelganger.

America is Changing--but are its art museums?

Interesting article from The Art Newspaper on the demographics of museum management in the USA:

Nobody seems to have any meaningful statistics. But you do not have to look at major US art museums for long to realize that most of the senior management is white, unlike staff at comparable levels in corporations, universities and government offices. When is this going to change? Those leading efforts to diversify museums say the economic reality of who pays to support institutions has not evolved sufficiently to require any lasting push for change. But American demographics are shifting swiftly. US minority groups will become the majority in a few decades. And art museums will have to diversify to survive.

Read the full article here.

Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles

The Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles (DFFLA: August 12-22, 2009) comes to a close today after a ten-day run. The Nollywood Foundation was represented at this event which opened with the acclaimed Spike Lee movie--Passing Strange and closes today with the West Coast premiere of Jackson 5 in Africa, a rare, never-before-seen documentary of Michael Jackson performing with his brothers in Senegal, Africa in 1974. Highlights of the DFFLA 2009 was a special African Cinema event showcasing two powerful documentaries: Jareth Mertz's sublime Soul of Ashanti and acclaimed director Euzhan Palcy's stunning Aime Cesaire: A Voice for History. The Africa Cinema event was sponsored by the Africa Channel and was a grand gala event. Below, posters for one of the numerous filmmaker receptions held at the event and the African Cinema event.

Hear Now, My Country

I have been mostly offline for over two months taking a break from blogging and trying to process momentous recent events in my life. In May 2008, after 16 years in the USA, I finally received American citizenship in a formal ceremony in Los Angeles. In June, I returned to Nigeria for summer research and made my first trip outside the USA on an American passport. The experience was surreally different and definitely blogworthy, given my extensive previous posts on questions of borders and access. I still don’t have the words to write up the experience but suffice it to say that it proves conclusively my earlier contention that the real and imagined borders that confront African (and black) travelers globally make mockery of the discourse of globalization. There is truly a First World and a Third World as there are immense efforts by powerful nations to ensure that neither the twain shall meet, except in the context of the rapacious and persistent exploitation of the Third World by the First World. But more on that later.

I thought I’d get back to blogging because I seem to have returned to a country I barely recognize, one tethered on the brink of a monumental disaster. I am not talking about the economic meltdown that signals the end of an age of consumption, whose toll on American eminence is yet to be tallied, though it may in part be the cause of this impending problem. In bad economic times, political problems bubble to the surface as the lubricating influence of cheap money vanishes and exposes fissures in society. I am talking about the madness (to put it mildly) of a Conservative minority increasingly tending towards lunacy. I am seeing a concerted effort by the right-wing to foment social upheaval and I think the government of President Obama doesn’t quite understand what it is up against. Under other circumstances, this wouldn’t really matter: it would all be politics. But there is a difference: commentators in major news outlets have speculated that the Obama ascendancy seemed to have driven arch Conservatives completely insane. This can be seen for example in militant efforts by the right wing to disrupt the free flow of ideas in various forms of public debate centered on health care. It is evident in the vituperative rhetoric of the right-wing media, which would, in many European countries, constitute hate speech. But it is even more evident in signs of increasing threats against the life of the President of the United States by right-wing activists.

This blog was prompted by the appearance of gun toting right wingers at various rallies on health care, and the appearance of a gun toting protester at a Presidential rally no less. Basically, a person who is not a law enforcement officer but who was openly sporting a handgun (albeit in a gun holster), was in the vicinity of the President of the United States, while holding up a placard that openly advocated political assassination in the service of “democracy”. AND HE WASN’T ARRESTED. This is a very dangerous development for a simple reason: it is in the interest of the country to ensure that that open threats against the life of the President are actively resisted but what we see happening is that threats are being made against the life of President Obama without any public concern other than inane commentary in the so-called mainstream news media. Well, I think it is important to firmly state the following: If any attempt is made against the life of President Obama, and if anything happens to him as a result of such attempt, the USA will not recover from the political and social disaster that will ensue.

Forget for a moment the fact that the President in question is the first African American president of the USA, though it speaks to the very heart of this issue. Forget also the country’s history of political assassination of both Presidents and significant African American leaders. Think instead of how the implied threat of violence encapsulated in the appearance of gun toting right-wingers at various political rallies completely undermines the very idea of free speech that protects their right to flaunt their violent opinions in public. In this atmosphere, I have been utterly astonished by the way this matter is being treated in the public space as a mere issue for debate as the right wing media continue to whip up storms of hatred in their constituents above and beyond insanity itself. (The gun-totting protester was promptly interviewed on national TV in the name of “fair and balanced” reporting, which increasingly makes mockery of the American news media in general).

The violent rhetoric is growing to the extent that well meaning commentators have found it necessary to point out its dangers. As E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post stated in his column, “try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?" I followed the virulent rhetoric that greeted President Obama’s run throughout his campaign. I have since observed closely the rising pitch of hate spewing from right wing outlets since his election. This hate is brewing irrationality and but it seems no one has any power to stop it since those who foment hate always hide behind the curtain of free speech. But what is the limit of free speech and why is it permissible to openly threaten the life of the President by appearing at his rallies with firearms? If this kind of action was not permissible under previous presidents, why is it permissible now? It is a tenet of security strategies that the main way to prevent dangerous threats is to deny them a platform for action. A lunatic fringe Republican right-winger shooting a gun at his own TV is permissible since a man’s home is his castle (though being in his own house did not prevent a rookie white police officer from arresting Prof. Gates recently). To allow such a person to show up at a Presidential rally without challenging him goes beyond the pale since you give them a chance to be in the vicinity of the President, in a situation where irrational behavior can easily lead to damaging action. It is always a straw that breaks the camel’s back. For over two hundred years, home grown terrorism against African American leaders have robbed the nation of some of its best and brightest. But they will not have this one: his detractors will flounder. I mean, how long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?

It is in our collective interest to ensure that threats against the life of public officials are answered with appropriate force. However, Dionne further comments that White House spokespersons purported to be okay with the idea of gun-totting protesters. Eight months into his Presidency, I think it is time for President Obama to counter the irrational liberal leaning that permits his opponents to foment dissent and openly threaten his very being without repercussions. His desire for collective action and deliberation is already leading his most cherished programs down a path of doom (I predict here that unless the President takes radical action, his health care reform will be defeated and as the Republicans hope for, this defeat will literally kill his presidency: click here for analysis of the Republican game plan). No one denies that being the first African American president imposes the weight of history on him but he ran for the office and worn fair and square. We get it: he is a nice guy and would like us all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. But it is clear some people are determined to remain outside of this circle of fellowship and common citizenship. This is the same kind of people that have sustained white supremacy over the ages and now agonize over the appearance of an African American president who they are busy turning into a toothless tiger through determined fundamentalist opposition. But President Obama is no coward: he is an audacious man who of late only appears to have forgotten who he is. There may be no greater story in American history than that of the African American who became the first non-white person of any ethnicity to ascend to the nation’s highest office. President Obama has already made history in this regard. He should now stop worrying about how perceptions of his race or liberal leanings might affect his actions and for God’s sake, wield the power of government that was entrusted to him. You can’t negotiate with lunatics or with people who are out to destroy you. If you do, you will end up doing their work for them. And if the President himself does not see the damage to his authority that emerges from unbridled challenges to his very existence, then perhaps we have waited in vain for his coming.

CFP: WHO OWNS AFRICA'S CULTURAL PATRIMONY?

Call For Papers

Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture
Fall 2010

WHO OWNS AFRICA’S CULTURAL PATRIMONY?

Critical Interventions invites submissions for a special issue on the question of Africa’s cultural patrimony in Western museums, especially in the context of recent international debates about repatriation of historical artworks relocated from one culture to another through conquest, colonization or looting. In the first decade of the 21st Century, demands by various countries for repatriations of significant artworks and cultural objects have shaken up established ideas about the ownership and location of historical cultural objects. While many Western museums have been willing to reach agreements about repatriating or compensating for culturally important artworks in their collections claimed by other Western countries, there has been no acknowledgment of the right of Africans to ownership of African artworks looted from Africa during colonialism, which are now held in the so-called “Universal Museums” of the West. Aside from the fact that Western museums hold large quantities of looted African artworks (the case of the British Museum’s holding of the Benin bronzes being a canonical case in point), these museums also appear to claim ownership of the cultural patrimony of these objects by enforcing copyright claims to the artworks. Since African artworks emerged as part of complex knowledge systems in various indigenous African cultures, such claims deprive Africans of any share in the economic value produced by these objects as a result of their redefinition as a canon of artworks with discursive and financial value. Western countries also routinely deny Africans access to these artworks through enforced localization (no Western country will grant an African a visa merely to visit any museum in Europe or America), which invalidates their claim of housing the artworks in “universal museums”.

To paraphrase Ivan Karp (1991) demands for recognition of Africa’s ownership of its cultural patrimony in Western museums assert the social, political, and economic claims of African producers in the larger world and challenge the right of established Western institutions to control representation of African cultures. In this regard, the proposed issue of Critical Interventions posits a fundamental question: who owns Africa’s cultural patrimony and why are African claims to their looted cultural objects held in Western museums denied in contemporary discourses of repatriation and reparations?

We seek papers that posit or contest African ownership of its cultural patrimony in the dual contexts of the relationship between African artworks in their contemporary locations (Western museums, Western private collections, the art historical construction of meanings), and the history of their origins as part of communities of objects, whose use in religious, ritual, secular, and social space formed part of knowledge systems and cultural heritage of particular African peoples. We particularly encourage submissions that interrogate the commodification of African cultural patrimony and cultural identities in the context of global capital, and examine the representational, legal, political, and cultural positions that support or deny African claims to ownership of historical art objects as relevant aspects of contemporary African cultural patrimony.

Please send articles (5000 to 9000 words preferred) and CV, by December 10, 2009, to the editors:
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (ogbechie@arthistory.ucsb.edu)
John Peffer (j_peffer@yahoo.com)

Critical Interventions is a peer-reviewed journal of advanced research and writing on African art history and visual culture. Submission and subscription information can be found at www.criticalinterventions.com.

CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS, NUMBERS 3/4

Announcing the publication of

CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture
NUMBERS 3/4: INTERROGATING AFRICAN MODERNITY

Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture announces the publication of issue Numbers 3/4 (Spring 2009): Interrogating African Modernity. The special double issue evaluates African modernist practices in art and visual culture, and uses interdisciplinary analysis to elicit new critical frameworks for interpreting modern African art's intersection with local and global discourses of modernity. Featured authors include (in order or appearance) Everlyn Nicodemus, Moyo Okediji, Hakim Abderezzak, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Gitti Salami, Jennifer Bajorek, Julie McGee, Afe Adogame, Nicholas J. Bridger, John Peffer, Monique F. P. Kerman, Manfred Zylla, Cornelius O. Adepegba, Francis Ugiomoh, and Peter Probst.

Subscriptions and subscription inquiries available at www.criticalinterventions.com

Summer Passing

London Heathrow, en route to Los Angeles. I am besieged by death this summer. Needing time to make sense of great losses.

And this, brief though it is, to the memory of my mentor, Martin Reinheimer, who passed away while I was away in Nigeria this summer.

Martin, a WWII veteran, was born in Germany. I met him in 1993 when I started my graduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He bought me my first laptop computer. In the acknowledgments for my book on Ben Enwonwu (which I could not have finished were it not that Martin provided me with free accommodations in Chicago for one year while I wrote my dissertation), I stated that he and his very dear wife, Lucy Reinheimer, were the closest things to parents I had in the USA and were the kindest people I know. Lucy took care of him in the house he built until he passed away, and with his passing, she is now perhaps the kindest person I know.

Martin "adopted" several foreign students at Northwestern and provided them with loving invitations for Thanksgiving and much assistance as they needed it. There are very successful people across Africa, Asia, and Europe who benefited from his kindness and who will equally mourn his death as I do.

I took the picture below in November 2008, when I made what now turns out to be my last visit to Martin in his Glencoe, Illinois residence. I am on the right in red turtleneck. Next to me is Lucy, Martin and Nnamdi Elleh, one of those foreign students like myself that Martin looked after as if he were his own son, as he looked after us all.

I am besieged by death this summer and I grieve for the passing of my mentor, Martin Reinheimer. May his soul rest in peace.

THE NEVERLAND ASCENSION

Fourteen days. I thought that was long enough to pay my respects to the fateful departed, Michael Joseph Jackson. I chose to remember him as he was at the height of his fame, through the famous photograph on the cover of the Thriller album, before he embarked, in the last two decades of his life, on a remarkable process of performance art comprising of extreme body modification and radical self-reinvention. For quite a while now, futurists have predicted a future in which celebrity became a true coin of the realm, concretized in Andy Warhol’s conjecture that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes (hence “15 minutes of fame”). Warhol was only partly right: in our contemporary era, fame now accretes for much smaller intervals and celebrity is mutating fast into meta-celebrity, the condition of the already famous reflecting on the paradox of fame, enabled by a media besotted with inventing new contexts and subjects of fame, and by the rapacity of a general public in relentless pursuit of fame for no earthly reason at all.

It was already evident long ago that this relentless drive for newfound celebrity coupled with the minimalist context of fame itself (its increasing micro-temporality, i.e. the famous are increasingly superceded at an alarming rate by yet more pointless fame) will create an entirely new social relationship to the idea of celebrity. I had long predicted that in my lifetime, I’d live long enough to see a “virgin” offered up in live sacrifice at Yankee Stadium, with the rites broadcast live worldwide on all media formats. One assumes of course that such anachronisms as “virgins” would still exist in the fame-driven economies of a future in which broadcast media of all sorts focus mainly on reality TV. You can already see the slide starting in the “reality programming” offered to just about anyone you can imagine, most without any credible reason other than having done the most inane or horrendous thing, or having had such done to them. I avoid “reality TV” like the plague for that reason: I consider it a form of media contamination and a sure sign of the end of Western civilization—a modern day reinvention of the “Vomitorium” of Rome in the period of the decadence. No matter: it’s the future. We have no choice but to boldly go.

We may well revisit this historical epoch and realize that Michael Joseph Jackson was both at the beginning and end of a specific type of celebrity: his fame was anchored on solid achievements, and he personified how the relentless witch-hunt of media vampires who feed on the blood of celebrities (are you listening Gerardo Rivera?) can ultimately destroy even the most hardy. Michael made MTV a global platform; right around the time another Michael (Jordan in this instance) was making the NBA a global institution and cementing the feudal fortunes of the quintessential corporate exploiter--Nike. And this is how I remember Michael Jackson, as a supreme performer operating in a state of grace: the rapid spin forms of his dance, the flash of his outstretched white-gloved hand, and that uncanny moonwalk that spawned a whole new culture of popular dance. This was the Michael Jackson of the astonishing Thriller videos, perhaps the first truly significant music video in the history of the medium: an elfin entity walking on light, surrounded by the detritus of the ancient order of celebrity whose demise his video and plaintive songs heralded. I remember the endless footage of young girls collapsing at the sight of the Uberstar, and thinking about the impact of concentrated charisma, this uncanny ability to affect solid bodies without even touching them. This power was the chi of the ancient Shaolin masters, the “Force” of the Jedi; the inexorable power of unbridled energy crackling across space like lightning. You could see it in all images of Michael Jackson in this era, as he ascended to higher and higher triumphs. It seemed he could do no wrong or make any wrong move: the force was with him.

Of course, there was another side to this story: the inexorable cannibalization of a falling star. Michael fell hard, besieged by predatory lawsuits and unproven but extraordinarily horrible allegations. The same media that sang his praises to high heavens convened to feat off the carcass of his waning fame. I remembered watching an MTV program in which the hosts callously made fun of Michael Jackson and feeling really murderous rage at the station, for how easily they forgot how much they owed their success to the man they now mocked relentlessly. This is the Western World at the height of its own arc of triumph, busy consuming its own entrails in its quest for even greater titillation. I watched Michael decay and feared he would probably commit suicide at some point when it all became unbearable. He didn’t (at least I hope he didn’t) but I was right in one respect: there was no way Michael was going to live to a ripe old age. By the time he died, he had already beaten great odds in living for as long as he did. How do you sustain a creative life that flared like a nova? Ultimately even the sun consumes all its energy and dies: it is only a matter of time.

Above all, I remember the white glove, the primal marker of popular music for the 1980s generation. I ran a soundset for a while in my teens and used a white-gloved left hand as my signature style. Behind the high table, surrounded by the crude equipment that served early DJs in the late 1970s and very early 1980s, I’d acknowledge a good sequence of dancehall hits by raising my hand, so the crowd of dancers knew who was the DJ behind the rousing dancehall run. I remembered being quite astonished when I first saw Michael’s sequined white-gloved hand. I am sure I would have doubted the veracity of my own claim to have done the same thing much earlier, if I didn’t have that single picture of myself as a gangly youth wearing a left-handed glove to prove it.

Would future celebrities have the kind of cohesive global fame that Michael Jackson had? It was obvious that this was the first significant global media death of the Internet era. As news of Michael’s demise rippled across the world-wide-web, Internet portals buckled and threatened to collapse under the weight of data. Even the almighty Google portal scrambled to keep up. Michael’s death continues to break all mainline and online dissemination records and I was pleasantly surprised by the very positive memorials to the star that sprung from places no one would have thought to associate him with. And this in itself is something important: would there be enough fame to generate this kind of global identification in the future? It doesn’t seem so, since the Internet that was supposed to create global audiences have in fact fractured public space into more and more minimalist domains, in which individuals congregate with like-minded persons and celebrities occupy smaller and smaller niches. Of course, the future will always surprise us, but it seems to me that with Michael’s death, we have come to the end of the era of mega-celebrities. The fame of those who remain is incredibly dimmed by his passing.

To the fateful departed then, at the event horizon of Michael’s ascension to Neverland. The man is gone but there’ll yet be years of legal challenges to his will and endless cycles of litigation from jackals trying to dispossess his children of their inheritance. It is not often that carrion eaters chance on a feast of a lifetime: in the annals of celebrity, this is a feast of a dead elephant, a blue whale basting in its own blubber. Expect to have stories about Michael running right through the end of the year and beyond as “reporters” spin gold out of the dross of his family’s grief. It is the ultimate irony of life in the limelight that the famous are often more useful as news after their demise. But the inexorable truth is that Michael Joseph Jackson has gone on to his maker and is clearly beyond the reach of his detractors and well wishers alike. This is death’s reward, that the dead do not really care what we think of them and that the afterlife is nothing at all like we think it is. I know: I’ve been there and back. There is only one truth--man comes, man goes: earth abides. May his tortured soul finally rest in peace.

In Memoriam: MICHAEL JOSEPH JACKSON (1958-2009)

CNN Story on Nollywood: Problems of Accreditation...

My post on the CNN story about Nollywood illustrates a very problematic situation that confronts African culture workers when they try to get their stories into the international news media. The author of the story, Mairi Mackay, interviewed me extensively for this story both by telephone (we spoke for close to one hour on an international call from London), and by email (read the CNN story here). Mairi Mackay sent me a list of twelve questions on various aspects of Nollywood-The Nigerian Film industry, and I responded to this by sending her a six-page, 2000-word document with detailed answers based on ongoing research I have conducted on Nollywood since 2005 when I convened and hosted the First Nollywood Convention in Los Angeles, USA. Afterwards Mairi asked me to put her in touch with a producer in Nollywood who can give her some additional information and I put her in touch with the Nollywood producer Emmanuel Isikaku.

I have had some negative experience in the past with reporters who sideline me from stories after mining me for information. I made this concern clear to Mairi and asked her to specifically credit me by name for all the information I provided for her story. However, her published story on CNN mainly attributes all the information I provided to someone else and I was mentioned in what amounted to a footnote with no attempt made to clarify my role in sourcing information for the story.

I am happy that Nollywood is gaining international visibility and that reporters are interested in covering this phenomenon. However, I think it is unconscionable for a CNN reporter to misrepresent my work and attribute it to someone else. My work in general is about the value of information derived from African interlocutors and of African cultural knowledge. I asked for credit for the information I provided to Mairi Mackay and CNN because it costs me a lot of money to put the information together. Over the past five years, I have incurred enormous expenses organizing conventions and traveling back and forth from Nigeria to conduct research on various aspects of the Nollywood phenomenon (I have made six trips in the past 18 months with another trip imminent). The information I meticulously gathered on this subject over the past five years cost me a lot of money, and I provided this information to Mairi Mackay of CNN London for free with the simple request that she credits me with the information. Obviously that request was too much to ask since she basically wrote a story that credits my information to someone else. Depriving me of credit for this information amounts to fraud since it now seems that Mairi Mackay sourced me for information under false pretenses.

The main issue here is lack of respect for African interlocutors as sources of information. There is a general idea in the West that African knowledge is free and easily accessible, and can be used without accreditation or consequences. This attitude towards African information simply has to stop if Africans will ever be able to benefit in any tangible manner from the effort they put into creating cultural knowledge and information in the first place.

I am posting below the full context of the email interview questions Mair Mackay sent to me and my responses, which can be compared with the context of her CNN article. Over the next couple of days, I will also post our email communications on my blog to show exactly our conversation on the subject of her interview and my specific request to be credited for my information. Compare the data and let me know what you think.
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Nollywood Foundation on Nollywood: Responses to Mackay Mairi, CNN London
© Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, June 2009.


Q: How much does the average film cost to make? How many copies will they sell? Are films always self-funded by producers?

NF: The cost of production of Nollywood movies used to range about $10000 (ten thousand dollars each) but this cost has been rising lately. According to Emmanuel Isikaku, average cost of production varies according to the nature of the script but in general is around N3.5 million (three and half million Naira) which comes to about $25,000 (twenty-five thousand dollars).

Note that collaborative productions between Nollywood and foreign collaborators are generally higher in cost. A recently concluded titled Close Enemies produced in Los Angeles by Prince Ade Bamiro using major Nollywood stars cost $300,000 and was screened at the Nigerian Pavilion at Cannes. I am tracking a $6 million (six million dollars) proposed co-production between Nollywood and Hollywood, which will shoot later this year. For confidentiality reasons, I cannot divulge the name of the producers of this project but I know that they have already raised most of the required funds.

Q: Are the films in English? Any other languages?

NF: The primary context of filmmaking known as “Nollywood” comprises mostly English language films produced in Southern Nigeria, out of which a formal cadre of celebrities have arisen including actors like Zack Orji, Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Kate Henshaw-Nuttal, and Fred Amata; plus directors like Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen and producers like Charles Novia, and many others. Many Nollywood actors of Igbo extraction also work within a vibrant IGBO language film industry that produces films on or about Igbo cultural concerns. This core constituency, mostly influenced by Hollywood genres, operates alongside many Nigerian local language film industries including a very vibrant YORUBA language film industry that has the oldest tradition of filmmaking in Nigeria. There is also “Kanowood” comprising of filmmakers working in the Hausa language, who are very much influenced by Bollywood. Recently, Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen produced a Benin language film titled “Ebuwa”, according to the director, as a means of moving the Edo-Benin language into the arena of contemporary film discourse.

Note also that there is a very lucrative practice of films targeted specifically to religious constituencies of which Christian-themed films are quite prevalent. In this regard, Nollywood is best described as the “Nigerian Film Industry” to recognize the various tendencies and language orientations within this context of practice.

Q: Is it true that Nigerians will sometimes watch three and four films a day? So there is massive consumption of movies in the country

NF: Yes. Nollywood and other aspects of the Nigerian film industry enjoy very popular support among Nigerians and other African peoples in Africa and the African Diaspora. Nigerians watch many Nollywood movies frequently and the same practice applies even among Nigerians abroad. There is massive movie consumption in the country and a rise in the number of Video stores where these movies are sold and where they are also sometimes screened for mass audience consumption. Nollywood movies are now frequently aired on television across the continent and on some international cable channels.

Given the large population of Nigeria (circa 140 million people), there is a sustainable indigenous market for these movies and this is reflected in the overall success of Nollywood as a context of filmmaking and social life.

Q: What is different about Nollywood compared with the world's other big film industries, Hollywood and Bollywood?

NF: Film is a global mass medium. Nollywood is the first pan-African mass medium of the modern age. Hollywood is obviously the bid dog in the global film market, with Bollywood recently mounting a credible challenge to Hollywood’s dominance, at least in Asia and non-Western (South South) countries. I think what’s different about Nollywood is that it is the first film industry in the world that is completely owned and operated by Africans (or black people in general), which speaks to African concerns and afford Africans an opportunity to see themselves represented in ways that go beyond the notorious black stereotypes of Hollywood. If one surmises that the primary focus of Hollywood is visual effects (the dream machine as it were), and that Bollywood focuses on performance (the ubiquitous dance sequences of Bollywood are about pure performance), then we can say that Nollywood’s great strength lies in narrative: the medium extends the African predilection for complex narratives into the contemporary world of film. Of course, narrative is a part of all film cultures but in Nollywood, it is placed above all else. The films tell stories that use structures familiar to most Africans from their oral traditions of storytelling, which is why the films resonate with all peoples of African descent across the world.

Q: Is it true to say that in Nigeria while there is a huge culture of movie watching, there is NOT a culture of going to the cinema? Is this the same in Africa in general or a particular part of Africa or purely restricted to Nigeria?

NF: There WAS a huge culture of going to the cinema in Nigeria prior to the economic meltdown of the 1980s. Nollywood emerged precisely in response to the demise of this cinema culture and has done very well by targeting its movies directly to an audience geared toward home entertainment. There is an ongoing effort to revive the cinema chains but I don’t think this will create enough platforms for movie lovers as the home-entertainment platform Nollywood already enjoys.

Across Africa, there seems to be a new development in terms of audiences for Nollywood movies. These movies are frequently shown in video clubs and bars where people congregate to watch them. At the ongoing Los Angeles Film Festival, the Nollywood Foundation (in collaboration with South African Airways) co-hosted a film by Jean-Marie Teno titled Sacred Places (Lieux Saints). The film looked into a Burkina Faso practice of showing movies in “cine clubs”, which are basically micro-film theaters where people pay very little sums of money to watch movies. We are hearing of similar practices across Africa.

In sum, Africans are very interested in movies and in Nollywood movies in particular. The economics of everyday life means that people with limited resources find ways to create new audiences for these films and filmmakers are increasingly interested in these new audiences.

Q: How is the industry changing currently?

NF: There is a generational change going on. The first generation of Nollywood actors, directors and producers tend to be those present at the founding of the industry in the early 1990s. Younger directors, actors and producers are emerging with new ideas and new orientations, which suggests that the structure of the industry may confront rapid change soon, along with the kinds of movies made. Ancillary industries are thriving and there is a growth of celebrity culture-related economics.

The Nigerian government has recently moved aggressively to formalize the Nollywood industry, especially through the activities of the Nigeria Film and Video Censors Board led by Emeka Mba who is doing a fantastic job in this regard. Formal guilds and associations are active and very involved in global filmmaking issues worldwide (Nollywood personnel are frequent visitors to Cannes for example).

Q: How popular is Nollywood outside of Nigeria? There is talk of the industry gaining a foothold outside of Nigeria. Is this true? and if so, could you give me some examples.

NF: Nollywood is massively popular outside Nigeria and across Africa, the fame of Nollywood stars approaches mythic proportions. Nollywood films played a major role in the social and economic recovery of Liberia after its recent civil war, and the Nollywood model of filmmaking and economics is being exported to other African countries where efforts are underway to replicate its success. Nollywood films are used in some African countries to teach English (apparently, Africans learn English and French better from other African speakers due to shared grammatical and syntactic references). Finally, Nollywood is the first global pan-African film medium to cut across social, cultural, economic and national boundaries. It is enjoyed in Africa, in the Caribbean, and even in Latin America where Telenovela culture finds important correlations in Nollywood films.

The industry’s global footprint is increasingly significant. There is a major buzz about Nollywood in Hollywood where most of the people I am in contact with for my Nollywood Foundation program know of Nollywood. There are many collaborative projects emerging, with Nollywood filmmakers working in Europe and the USA. Above all, the industry is poised for significant expansion is its global audience.

Q: What are the challenges that face the industry? What is being done to try to overcome these challenges?

NF: Nollywood is a young industry, barely two decades old. Some major problems include:
• lack of credible financing for film projects
• Need for increased technical competence among filmmakers
• Need for greater government support for the industry
• Lack of credible distribution and rights management protocols
• Lack of access to international travel emerging from the constant refusal by Western embassies to grant visas to Nollywood personnel to participate in global forums.
• The repetitive nature of many Nollywood films (which is compounded by shoddy technical handling of the medium)
• PIRACY (see more on this below).

Q: Nollywood producer Lancelot talks about being invited to come to Hollywood to direct a movie in 2006 called Close Enemies. A Hollywood producer wanted to experiment with Nollywood in Hollywood. Was that a success? Are there other examples of this crossover?

NF: The production of Close Enemies is a first of such collaborations and it was successfully completed. The movie screened in the Nigerian pavilion at Cannes this year. I am tracking many new projects of this nature but cannot divulge information about them.

Q: Has the global financial downturn affected Nollywood?

NF: Yes. The existing anemic financing of Nollywood films has been further reduced which means that many films are not being made. This has the impact of sidelining work in the industry. However, Nollywood personnel are optimistic this situation will soon improve.

Q: How much of an issue is piracy? What is the Nigerian government doing to solve this problem? What are producers doing to solve these problems?

NF: Piracy is a global issue for all industries and Nollywood is not exempt though it is seriously affected. In fact, Piracy robs Nollywood of close to 50% of its profits. Nollywood movies are freely pirated and sold, even on the streets of Lagos. During my most recent trip in March, I noticed a new format for pirated movies that uses video compression digital technology to compress 5-20 movies (both Nollywood and Hollywood movies) into one single disc that is then sold on the streets for very little sums. This new development in piracy has the potential to kill off the industry completely.

The Nigerian government is unfortunately not capable of solving any problems for Nollywood, mainly because they won’t enforce existing laws. In a country where the government cannot even guarantee a steady power supply, I’m afraid people no longer look to the government for any solutions. Nevertheless, the government has great power and in cases where relevant ministries are staffed by ethical administrators, credible efforts can be made to curb piracy and other social ills. In this regard, the able administrator of the Nigeria Film and Video Censors Board (NFCVB), Mr. Emeka Mba, deserves great commendation for his ongoing efforts to attend to piracy and other ills that plague Nollywood.

Q: In 10 years where would you hope to see the industry?

NF: Hopefully doing very well and with a significant global footprint. The Nollywood Foundation was set up precisely to assist Nollywood create global awareness and direct attention and resources to its endeavors. We are however worried about the Nigerian penchant for being disorganized. You need a basic level of structure to profit from the global economy, actualize the promise of one’s products and above all, manage ancillary benefits arising from such products and commodities. Right now, the Nollywood Foundation thinks that in 10 years, Nollywood can become a major player in the global film industry. It represents a very clear example of an industry developing mainly through the model of the free market. Since the industry emerged IN SPITE of acute social and economic problems in Nigeria, one is wary of recommending the usual solutions to its problems. Nollywood will survive and as it grows, needed structures will develop and enable further growth. I think its future is very bright (no pun intended).

CNN Report on Nollywood cites Nollywod Foundation

The following report on CNN cites the Nollywood Foundation:

Nollywood loses half of film profits to piracy, say producers
by Mairi Mackay

Nigeria's huge film industry, Nollywood may have overtaken Hollywood as the world's second largest producer of films, but piracy is threatening to cut the industry off in its prime. Nollywood insiders estimate that up to 50 percent of the industry's profits are currently being lost to Nigeria's endemic piracy and corruption problems...

4th Nollywood Foundation Convention 2009

The 4th Nollywood Foundation Convention 2009 took place last weekend in Los Angeles and was a very successful event. Held in conjunction with the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Nollywood Convention has Actor Celebrity Hakeem Kae-Kazim as its special guest of honor and was attended by a large number of Hollywood celebrities. The Nollywood Convention, in collaboration with South African airways, also hosted a film (Jean-Marie Teno's Sacred Spaces) for the Los Angeles Film Festival. Teno's film, which played as a documentary, reflects on the development of new audiences for African cinema in Ouagadogou (Burkina Faso) as an investigation into the director's engagement with African cinema in general. Click here for pictures from the event and to join the Nollywood Foundation.

Below, some pictures from the event. From top:
Caroline Chikezie with special guest of honor Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Bill Wynn (center) with friends
Rob Aft and Jennifer Frederick
With my wife, Nancy Ogbechie
Hakeem-Kae Kazim with Raz Adoti and host.