Nigeria’s Nollywood surpasses Hollywood as world’s second largest film producer-UNESCO

By David Ajiboye.

The Nigeria film industry otherwise known as Nollywood has overtaken Hollywood and closed the gap on India, the global leader in the number of movies produced each year, according to a new United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released today.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics  (UIS) survey, Bollywood, as the Mumbai based film industry is known, produced 1,091 feature-length films in 2006. In comparison, Nigeria’s moviemakers, commonly known as Nollywood, came out with 872 productions, all in video format, while the United States produced 485 major films.

“Film  and video productions are shining examples of how cultural industries, as vehicles of identity, values and meanings, can open the door to dialogue and understanding between peoples, but also to economic growth and developement,” said UNECO Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura.

“This new data on film and video production provides yet more proof of the need to rethink the place of culture on the international political agenda,” he added.

The three cinema heavyweights were followed by eight countries that produced more than 100 films: Japan  (417), China (330), France (203), Germany (174), Spain (150), Italy (116), South Korea (110), and the United Kingdom (104).

Key to Nigeria’s explosive success is Nigerian  Filmmakers’ reliance on video instead of film, reducing production costs, and, as the survey points out, the West African country has virtually no formal cinemas, with about 99 percent of screenings in informal settings such as home theatres.

The survey also revealed that about 56 per cent of Nollywood films are made in local languages, while  english remains a prominent language accounting for 44 per cent, which may contribute to Nigeria’s success in  exporting its films .

According to the study, US movies continue to dominate cinema admissions around the world, and all of the top ten films seen in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Namibia, Romania and Slovinia were US made.

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