Yes, It’s One Nollywood, But What Happened to the Era When the Craft Came First?

Before Nollywood Became Nollywood

One problem with the “Old Nollywood versus New Nollywood” argument is that it starts the history too late. Nollywood did not begin with Living in Bondage in 1992. Long before the home-video boom turned filmmaking into a mass industry, Nigeria already had a serious performance and filmmaking tradition built around theatre, television and celluloid. Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Adeyemi Afolayan (Ade Love), Moses Olaiya (Baba Sala), Ola Balogun, Eddie Ugbomah and the actors who worked within those traditions were already developing distinctly Nigerian ways of telling stories on stage and screen. Ogunde’s travelling theatre tradition, which began decades before the video-film era, eventually moved into cinema; his Aiye, Jaiyesimi, Aropin N’Tenia and Ayanmo were rooted in stage productions before becoming films.   That history matters because it changes how we understand “Old Nollywood.” These filmmakers were not simply making movies because the technology had become available. They were coming from a performance tradition. They understood character, rhythm, dialogue, music, movement, audience response and the responsibility of telling stories that belonged to their people. This is where I think something important happened in Nigerian cinema: the craft came before the industry. The business eventually became bigger, but the artistic impulse was already there. Ogunde even sold some of his properties to finance Aiye, a reminder that filmmaking was not always about waiting for a brand, streamer or investor to arrive with a cheque.   The film itself emerged from a successful stage play, showing the direct relationship between performance and cinema at the time.   That foundation deserves to be part of this conversation whenever we compare what came before with what we have today.

The Actors Were Trained by the Stage

The actors of that earlier generation benefited from something that is increasingly difficult to find in contemporary Nollywood: a culture of performance before celebrity. Many came through theatre, where an actor had to understand voice, movement, timing, projection and character before a camera was placed in front of them. Hubert Ogunde’s company, Ade Love’s troupe, Baba Sala’s theatre and other travelling theatre traditions were not merely talent pools; they were schools of performance. Their performers had to hold an audience in a room before they ever had the luxury of a close-up. That matters. A close-up can magnify a performance, but it cannot manufacture one. You can put a mediocre actor in a beautiful frame and you still have a mediocre performance, just in 4K. The great performers of the older generation understood theatrical presence, but the best of them also understood how to adapt that presence for the screen. They could communicate through dialogue, gesture, silence and expression. This tradition eventually fed the generation most Nigerians associate with classic Nollywood: Olu Jacobs, Pete Edochie, Liz Benson, Joke Silva, Sola Sobowale, Nkem Owoh, Sam Loco Efe, Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Ramsey Nouah and many others. The point is not that every old actor was brilliant or that contemporary actors are inferior. That would be lazy criticism. The point is that acting once sat much closer to the centre of the industry. Today, celebrity can arrive before craft. An actor can become famous through social media, build a following and then become commercially attractive to producers before the industry has seriously tested the person’s range. There are excellent new-generation actors who prove that this is not inevitable. But the system increasingly rewards visibility alongside ability. Old Nollywood, particularly at its best, seemed more interested in whether you could make an audience believe you.

The VHS Revolution Was Crude, But It Was Hungry

Then came the era that most people actually mean when they say “Old Nollywood”: the explosion of Nigerian home-video filmmaking in the 1990s. Living in Bondage became a landmark, and the model that followed transformed Nigerian cinema into a remarkably productive popular industry. The films were often technically rough because the circumstances demanded speed and low budgets. But there was an extraordinary hunger behind them. Filmmakers were making films for people who desperately wanted to see themselves represented on screen. The BFI has described early Nollywood as a boom built from scrappy filmmakers telling relatable stories of love, loss and deception, with audiences embracing the films despite their technical deficiencies.   This is important because it explains why the films connected. They were not necessarily trying to demonstrate technical mastery. They were trying to communicate. The melodrama could be excessive, the morality could be blunt and the supernatural could appear with the confidence of a Lagos bus conductor changing lanes, but the films understood their audience. They knew the Nigerian household. They understood family politics, money, marriage, class, religion, betrayal, ambition and the consequences of bad decisions. And because the production machinery was comparatively limited, the filmmakers had to depend heavily on the screenplay and the actors. Of course, this period also produced enormous amounts of formulaic and poorly made work. We should not pretend otherwise. But even the weaknesses are instructive. The industry was producing too much, too quickly and sometimes too cheaply, but it had an unmistakable relationship with its audience. That relationship is one of the things contemporary Nollywood must be careful not to lose while becoming more sophisticated.

New Nollywood Has Solved the Problems of Old Nollywood

Now, this is where I would refuse to romanticise the past. New Nollywood is objectively better equipped to make films. The technical leap is enormous. Contemporary filmmakers have access to digital cinema cameras, sophisticated lighting, better sound recording, production design, colour grading, visual effects, professional post-production and crews with increasingly specialised expertise. More importantly, the economics of distribution have changed. Nigerian films can now have proper theatrical releases, participate in international festivals and reach global audiences through streaming platforms. The old filmmakers simply did not have this kind of infrastructure. New Nollywood has also demonstrated that Nigerian cinema can become commercially powerful. Producers now think about financing, marketing, release strategies, audience segmentation and international distribution in ways that were impossible during the VHS era. This is progress, and anyone arguing otherwise is confusing nostalgia with criticism. The problem is that industrial sophistication and artistic sophistication are not the same thing. We have improved dramatically at producing films, but that does not automatically mean we have improved at telling stories. In fact, having more resources can sometimes make a filmmaker less disciplined. When you have no money, you have to solve problems creatively. When you have money, you can sometimes spend your way around them. A weak location can be changed. A bad costume can be replaced. A poor shot can be reshot. A visual-effects problem can be fixed in post. But if the character has no depth and the screenplay has nowhere interesting to go, no amount of money will solve the fundamental problem. New Nollywood has finally got the toys. The question is whether we are always using them to make better films.

The Beautiful Film Is Not Always the Better Film

This is where my criticism of contemporary Nollywood becomes sharper. We have become very good at creating the appearance of cinema. There is a difference. Cinematic-looking images are not cinema by themselves. A drone shot is not a story. A beautiful mansion is not character development. A famous actor is not a screenplay. A sophisticated colour grade cannot repair a structural problem in the script. Yet some contemporary Nigerian films receive enormous praise simply because they look expensive. I worry that we have developed a culture where production value can distract us from weaknesses that previous generations could not hide. There is nothing wrong with wanting Nigerian films to look world-class. In fact, we should demand it. But the goal should be world-class storytelling delivered through world-class filmmaking, not world-class packaging wrapped around an ordinary story. The irony is that some of our older films, despite their technical shortcomings, remain more memorable because they created characters and situations that stayed with audiences. You may laugh at the picture quality today, but you remember what happened. You remember the betrayal. You remember the character. You remember the line. You remember how you felt. That is a far more difficult achievement than producing a beautiful frame. And this is where I think New Nollywood needs to become more self-critical. The industry has become very good at asking whether a film can sell. It needs to ask with equal seriousness whether the film deserves to be remembered. Box office is a measurement of commercial success; it is not a certificate of artistic excellence. A film can make a fortune and still be poorly written. A film can win awards and still be emotionally hollow. A film can trend for two weeks and disappear from cultural memory. The responsibility of the critic is to separate those things.

Perhaps We Need to Stop Choosing Between Old and New

So, I do not want Old Nollywood back. I want what was best about it to survive. And I certainly do not want New Nollywood to stop evolving. I want better cameras, better sound, bigger budgets, stronger crews, international distribution and ambitious filmmakers. But I want all of that progress to be accompanied by an equal obsession with writing, acting, directing and character. The real tragedy would be if Nollywood became an increasingly sophisticated industry that gradually forgot why audiences cared about it in the first place. There is a lesson in the journey from Ogunde’s theatre to the celluloid pioneers, from the Yoruba travelling theatre tradition to the VHS explosion, and from there to today’s cinema and streaming ecosystem. Nigerian filmmaking has always evolved by adapting to new technology and new economic realities. But the strongest work has usually emerged when technology serves the story rather than replacing it. Hubert Ogunde, Ade Love, Moses Olaiya, Ola Balogun and their contemporaries were working within limitations that would horrify a modern production crew, yet they established traditions of performance and storytelling that remain part of Nigerian cinema’s DNA.   New Nollywood now has access to resources those filmmakers could barely imagine. That should not make us less demanding; it should make us more demanding. Give today’s filmmakers the resources of today and the storytelling discipline of the best filmmakers who came before. Give actors the training and respect the craft deserves. Give writers enough authority to build characters rather than simply fill scenes. And allow Nigerian stories to be Nigerian without constantly sanding away their edges for international consumption. There is only one Nollywood. But it has passed through different eras, and somewhere between becoming bigger, richer and more technically accomplished, we should make sure it does not become less interested in being great.Because ultimately, the best Nollywood will not be the one with the biggest budget or the most beautiful frame. It will be the one that gives us a story we cannot stop thinking about after the screen goes black.