Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire

Nollywood
The Making of a Film Empire

How did Nigeria create the second largest movie industry in the world?

[Emily Witt is] one of America's foremost prose stylists under the age of forty." —Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine

#Nollywood began in Nigeria in the 1990s and has grown into one of the most recognized cultural industries of the world, producing more movies every year than Hollywood and almost as many as Bollywood. Emily Witt travels to Nigeria to offer a vivid, rollicking tour of Nollywood today, from the back alleys of the marketplaces of Lagos to the glamour of a red-carpet premiere, from startups trying to digitize what has been largely an economy based on piracy to the shooting of a historic epic in the northern city of Jos.

Amid electricity cuts, fuel scarcity, and countless other obstacles, Nigerians are pursuing the very real possibility that Nollywood dramas could become a global brand, as recognizable as the Bollywood musical, the Hong Kong kung fu flick, or the Hollywood blockbuster.
Early praise for Nollywood:
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About the author
© Noah Kalina

Emily Witt is a writer in New York City. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, n+1, the London Review of Books, and many other places. She has degrees from Brown University, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Cambridge University, and was a Fulbright scholar in Mozambique. Her first book, Future Sex, was published in 2016 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Upcoming Event
'Nollywood' NYC Book Launch at McNally Jackson Books

Tuesday, October 17, 2017
7:00pm — 8:00pm

McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince St
New York, NY 10012

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Upcoming Event
Nollywood panel with Emily Witt, Daniel Oriahi, and Brian Larkin

Wednesday, November 8, 2017
6:00pm — 7:00pm

Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism
2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

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