Purple Hibiscus Research: Nollywood

Nigerians have been making movies since the Sixties after gaining their independence from Britain, but this only started to take off in the Seventies and early Eighties creating Nollywood. At its start, many high quality films were made in Nollywood. Thirty-six films were made between 1970 and 1983 in Nigeria. 

The Yoruba people played a vital role in the making of Nollywood. The Yoruba is a group made up of  African people that  live in western Nigeria. They have a tradition of traveling around and putting on performances and plays as they go from village to village. The Yoruba started to film their performances and turn them into VHS movies that they would sell. This was a cheap and easy way for them to share their story and plays. This also proved that anyone could start making low budget movies on their own, so that's what they did. Common people with no experience began to film their own movies. While this resulted in a ton of  bad quality and low budget movies, these movies were a hit in Nigeria due to the fact that anyone could come up with an idea and make a movie. This type of creativity and freedom is what set these movies apart from high quality and big budget Hollywood movies. 

Nollywood produces about 2,500 movies a year, but some of the older movies from Nigeria carry more history with them. 1984's Papa Ajasco was the first blockbuster to come out of Nigeria and is still one of the biggest cinematic events to happen in Nigeria. 1957’s Fincho was the first Nigerian movie to ever be filmed in color as opposed to black and white. This was much later than when the first colored films were produced in other places such as Hollywood; however, it shows that even though Nollywood movies are typically low budget and quickly produced, they are catching up to other film industries in terms of the technology that goes into their movies.