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NIGERIAN VIDEO MOVIES This case displays Nigerian video movies purchased in Enugu video stores. Until recently, African cinema was synonymous with films from Francophone Africa. Aspiring to the French "art film" tradition, these projects were primarily produced by European trained filmmakers funded by European granting agencies, and targeted toward a largely non-African film-festival audience. All this has now changed. In the past few years, a booming Nigerian movie industry has produced thousands of low-budget video movies. Made for an African audience, these dramas combine B-movie sensationalism with indigenous cultural narratives to produce cinematic parables set in the morally ambivalent landscape of post-colonial Nigeria. The grassroots Nigerian video movie industry is an unprecedented phenomenon that points toward unforeseen potential in African mass media. Many of the motifs found in the movies are similar to those found in the popular posters. These include political corruption, religious fundamentalism, the evils of excessive wealth, secret cults, human to animal transmutation, and the trade in human body parts to foreigners.
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