Women in Film Forum : Nollywood and the Dynamics of Representation

Nollywood and the Dynamics of Representation
African Women in Film Forum, Nigeria
16-17 June 2010

There is a noticeable trend in the Nigerian film industry (popularly called Nollywood). The women in the film come as wicked, manipulative, loose in morals, diabolic and inferior to the men. It is a familiar pattern: the women are hardly ever their own person; they are there to serve the men and their lives revolve round their marriage and children. If they head corporations, they either inherit it or stole it from someone. Generally, the roles of women in films are hardly ever psychologically empowering.

To correct certain negative impression created in our movies on the womenfolk, a two-day forum tagged, "Nollywood and the Dynamics of Representation" holds at the Colonades Hotel, Ikoyi.

The event which begins on June 16th and ends on the 17th 2010, is packaged to facilitate a gender dialogue geared to telling more empowering and inspiring stories about African women, as opposed to one or two dimensional portraits that trail our movies, said the organisers.

Mrs Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, Executive Director of the African Women's Development Fund (AWDP), organisers of the event, said the forum which is being put together in collaboration with Lufodo Productions, owned by veteran actor, Olu Jacobs and his wife, Joke Silva, will bring together industry practitioners at home and in the diaspora, including executive producers, directors, actors, scriptwriters, scholars, public intellectuals, culture and gender activists, amongst others.

The ADWF group said that from their experience of working on women's rights issues on the African continent, it is becoming clear that there is a need to start thinking of new ways of changing behaviours and attitudes that undermine women's rights, and which inhibit women from achieving their full potential: "It is recognised that one of the critical sites of oppression and violence against women in Africa is that of popular culture, expressed through popular music and film."