THE GOOD OLD NOLLYWOOD DAYS

I am not a movie critic or at least I don’t make my bread from it but I have seen my fair share of Nollywood movies recent and not so recent and I must applaud the industry for coming this far. Many 80’s babies would always argue that the movies of the 90’s and early  2000’s were and still are the pure breed classic movies of all time in Nollywood and with the micro infiltration by the Ghanaian movie industry would say has the industry is worse off than it was. I have seen quite a few movies of late and so I base my assessment on not solely on what i have seen but also onhearsay and well professional movie critics. and the assessment of the new movies hitting the market is far from impressive.
Going back to the good days of “living in bondage” , “igodo”, “blood money” , “the oracle”, “raging storm”, "rattle snake", "Nneka the pretty serpent" and many other classic movies of the 90s, where the special effects were not so special, the industry flooded the movies produced with content;  Loads of moral content and fewer sequels. Now we have more movies with little or no content, no special effects, profanity and lewd behavior bordering on soft porn and horrible acting.
What is to blame for this decline? Is it the marketers? I’m sure you would say piracy, but the ‘alaba boys' have helped the industry but have actually done more harm to the art itself. New producers like Desmond Elliot, Stephanie Okereke, Geneviève Nnaji and the likes have found a way of shunting alaba out of the picture at least up until they have made their through cinema views before they release on DVDs. You will agree that the movies worthy of cinema in Nollywood are not as many as the daily release in alaba but the difference in quality is massive and that is enough evidence that alaba is not really interested in quality but in making millions off the same movie by branding it different names and giving it numerous sequels that overlap each other in content and duration.
However, I must acknowledge the efforts of the private corporate bodies and some state governments who have identified the importance of this sector and supported it in various ways. The Nollywood studio in calabar is a very vivid example. Hopefully in the near future, we would have our cinemas flooded with Nollywood movies of international standard and the writers and movie makers can reap the fruit of their creativity.