Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017 / This thesis explores the contribution and significance of Multichoice Nigeria and its Africa Magic channels in the development of the Nigerian film industry. The main objective of the study is an interrogation of the terms of Multichoice contracts with Nollywood content producers as well as a review of the effect of the programmes of Multichoice on content producers. The second key objective is to examine the development impacts of these initiatives on the Nigerian film industry. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with industry practitioners, representatives of the Multichoice and officials of government agencies in Nigeria in addition to analysis of policy documents. The thesis is influenced by critical political economy and the critical media industry studies approach developed by Haves, Lotz and Tinic (2009) whose study of creative and entertainment industries focuses on content producers and cultures of production in media corporations. The study examines Multichoice’s production initiatives as perceived by Nollywood content producers, and provides situated accounts of Nollywood filmmakers’ experiences, encounters, pressures and tensions which undermine Multichoice’s apparent social objectives. It modifies the production culture to the culture of business in the media industry and exposes the need for industry practitioners to engage intellectual property lawyers in their business dealings with Multichoice and other corporate agencies in order to forestall exploitation. While highlighting the complexities, contradictions and ambiguities in the Multichoice-Nollywood relationship, as well as the challenges confronting Nollywood, I argue that contrary to the reservations of the content producers, the industry has benefited from Multichoice in direct and indirect ways. These include improved quality of film production, the increased online presence of Nollywood films, enhancing the local tourism and hospitality industry and promoting professionalism. The study therefore recommends government intervention to address the existing mistrust between Multichoice and Nollywood. The study inspires the “early bird theory” to interpret the Multichoice-Nollywood relationship and experience; studying similar relationships between media corporations and the local film industries in Third World nations. This thesis makes original contribution to knowledge by providing resource material to the scarce literature in critical media industry studies with particular regard to the African film industry. / XL2018

The increasing popularity of Nigerian video-film, defined as the ‘Nollywood phenomenon’ (Barrot 2008, Haynes 2010, Adesokan 2011), has attracted recent interdisciplinary academic attention, now known as ‘Nollywood Studies’. The aesthetics and ideological approach of Nollywood video-film are often differentiated from those of the long-established and illustrious African Cinema. Films of Africa are, however, generally characterised by seemingly unique forms of the fantastic – an uneasy theme in scholarship on Nollywood. Although Nollywood video-film is commended by some scholars, its representation of the supernatural and the fantastic is often perceived to be demeaning. Considering the complexity of fantastic themes in creative arts of Africa, this study contributes to this field of study by positioning Nollywood as an interventionist artistic practice that subverts the division between art and popular culture. Further, it considers how this positioning could shift our thinking about what constitutes art and creative practice in Africa. The distinctions between art and popular culture have been inherited from particularly Western disciplines. A critical analysis of the fantastic in Nollywood could expand interpretations of the broader uses of new media and appropriation and develop the discourse on contemporary creative practices of Africa and the parameters of the art history discipline. I interrogate the visual language of the video-film medium through a discussion of other forms of artistic media such as photography, video art, and performance art. The fantastic themes, such as ‘magic’, ‘fetishism’ and violence, conveyed through new media open up a field of questions regarding contemporary social-political dynamics. The cultural value of Nollywood video-film is often based on who makes it. As a proletarian product, Nollywood has been underestimated as a ‘low’ form of culture. Its use of appropriated material connotes the complex dialectics that formulate class difference. I consider how a positioning of video-film as a creative practice could be complicated by the fact that it also operates as a theocentric implement that is used by churches to evangelise. Moreover, I examine how ‘epic’ films construct idyllic notions of ‘ethnicity’ based on dialectics of rational/irrational or real/fantastic. Nollywood video-film also creates images of fantastic spaces. In this thesis, I address concepts of space in Nollywood from which fantastic desire is constructed.