When it No Longer Matters Where You Live": Nollywood Movie Audiences in the United Kingdom and the Declining Fears

Abstract

The decline of production of movies on celluloid owes much to a lot of factors. Primarily among these factors are the challenges associated with exhibition of finished movie beyond the locality where the movies were produced, particularly beyond the shores of Nigeria. The production of movies on videos adopted by Nollywood expunged one of these niggling problems that crippled production of celluloid movies in Nigeria. The 'global village' popularised by Marshall Mcluhan's theory found footing in Nollywood ingenuity in adopting the low budget production format which catered for reception problems experienced in the diaspora during the days of Nigerian celluloid movies. With a growing reception and yearning for Nollywood movies in the diaspora, the morale of Nollywood was boosted increasing its confidence against decline forecast and inferiority as decried by critics.

What with parallel production of Nollywood movies in the diaspora; creation of huge earnings to movie makers (at home and in the diaspora), marketers and bootleggers; and the opportunity to tell and showcase our own story? Thanks to a diasporic desire created by nostalgia driving people to want to acquaint and refresh their memories with an imagined culture, distant from them. Nollywood has created such enormous cross-cultural influence amongst Nigerian and Africans in the diaspora, making it easy for particularly Nigerians in the diaspora to get acquainted with images and the changing socio-political culture back home. The multifaceted purpose of the movies in a subtle manner has not only helped to change the erroneous perception of used to groom children born to parents from Nigeria, and to them, it does not bother them where they dwell anymore due to the accessibility to constant movie images of the distant culture they have left behind.