Last week, Moviedom joined some leading practitioners in Nollywood to take stock of how moviedom faired in 2022 and their expectations for 2023. Here are the views of the last set of practitioners interviewed Filmmaker, Administrator and Festival Organiser Mykel Parish Ajaere Award Winning Actor Segun Arinze: ‘Nollywood economic scale was expanded in 2022’. The…practitioners in Nollywood to take stock of how moviedom faired in 2022 and their expectations for 2023.
The last year 2022, many high-budget and brilliant movies were produced and released in Nigeria, most by young emerging filmmakers, thereby expanding Nollywood’s economic scale. Several streaming platforms gave the film industry commercial value and made good money for producers and distributors. The year 2022 was perfect for Nollywood; filmmakers made real deals, actors earned more and local crew worked in collaboration on various productions on a larger scale.
Nollywood fared quite well in 2022 in my opinion. We witnessed better production quality, great story telling and more global recognition. There was also very good female representation and female authorship which I am very proud of. In 2023, I see Nollywood fully exerting a sort of imperialist influence on African local filmmaking. I also see an upsurge of indigenous films in African oral and cultural stories told more with better production values.
I believe that Nollywood fared well in the year 2022, despite the effects of the global meltdown, post-COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. Yes, the volume of production dropped but the quality of production also improved in 2022. In 2023, I expect to see more professionalism in the industry in terms of the modus operandi of associations, guilds and individual practitioners.