NIGERIAN LITERATURE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NIGERIAN FILM INDUSTRY

Abstract

Let us begin by immediately disposing of some red herrings. Literature is not film: film is not literature. Their differing economics and technology, with their equally differing modes and relations of production, ensure a substantial difference between these two modes of narrativity. We are here dealing with two different entities as far apart as Mars and Venus. Literature often expresses a purely personal universe, presented from the individual author's viewpoint. Film does not, and cannot. For, it takes some 253 different trades and professions to accomplish the move from script to screen. Critics may single out a predominating signature in any film and go on to assert the auteur theory principle - but this privileging of one professional in a long chain of trades and professions does not in any way shrink the universe expressed in the film. Conversely, no film industry anywhere in the world has had the likes of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Van Gough, etc. writers/artists whose works are ahead of their time. By its very nature, and the topicality of issues often treated, a film is normally made for immediate consumption, unlike literature, which can afford to wait on the shelf for the right audience to emerge. Hence, the film classic is differently defined from literary classic. Also, in copyright terms, the film comes much quicker into the public domain than does literature.