Western Influence on African Arts - Film

As mentioned last week, the Nigerian Film Industry still faces a lot of challenges, and is still mediocre; apart from the improvement of technology in the industry, the birth of creative minds has also helped the industry. These creative minds definitely have western influence, from the content of the work produced; it is hard to not notice that the producers have exposure.
With most past productions, it is noted that it doesn’t take the producers very long to complete their productions. The production of an average movie will take about 1-2days, had no concrete scripts and people were allowed to freestyle. This is very risky as it could create inconsistencies when one is trying to watch the episodes again to create a correlation and understanding. Now, producers are doing better. The writings are now good, not excellent; there is obviously still room for improvement.
The past productions usually shot movies that had to deal with gods, spirits and tradition. Nowadays only people that haven’t been exposed to the modern world will watch and believe those shows. The emergence of religion has saturated the continent and people are more obliged to watch shows that center around that.
The African media industry has and is still frowning at the idea of sexuality. If there are to be any portrayal of kissing or any sexual movements, it is done quickly and the next scene is shown immediately. The modern directors and producers with western influence aren’t frowning at it though. They are daring and taking the risks by infusing more sexual elements into their productions. Most Ghanaian movies these days are very sexual in content and even in their names such as “Untouchables” “Turn me on” “Pleasure and Crime”. The industry is even beginning to embrace homosexuality; a recent movie showcased 2 same sex individuals kissing.

Cover of Ghanian Movie - Turn Me On


Clip of Nigerian TV Series - Tinsel