Bollywood, Nollywood, Hollywood

     Hollywood is the movie capital of the world but it is not the movie production capital of the world.  It's actually third.  Number one is Bollywood, the Indian film industry which produces multiple thousands of films annually.  The name "Bollywood" is Hollywood with a "B" because the actual name of India is Bharat.

     Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, produces thirty to fifty low-budget films a week.  Since the industry was virtually non-existent before the 1992 release of Living in Bondage by Kenneth Nnebue, this explosive growth is extraordinary.

     Most of the films are produced for about $15,000 and filmed in three to five days.  The DVD's sell for $2.00 and earn their producers huge returns.  The reason they are being discussed here is that a great many them are based on Pentecostal Christianity, even, or especially, the ones we in America would recognize as gore and violence filled horror films.  These films are on the level of the Christian Hell House phenomena.  

     The 1992 Igbo language film, Living in Bondage, started it all.  The plot goes like this: a group of men sacrifice their wives and drink their blood in a pagan ceremony which causes them to become rich.  The trouble is that their wives won't leave and continue to torment them as ghosts.  The men are saved when they beg forgiveness and accept Jesus Christ into their hearts.  The film almost immediately sold over seven hundred fifty thousand copies.

     The larger Christian ministries in Nigeria have their own production facilities and their films feature gore, witchcraft, cannibalism, violence, exorcisms, and Pentecostalism. 

"About Nollywood," http://nollywood.com/

"Cinema of Nigeria," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollywood

Lapeyre, Jason, "Nollywood Nightmares. Inside Nigeria's Homegrown Horror Industry," Rue Morgue, Toronto, #92, 2009.