Susannah.
As a child, I always wondered why we never had a television at home.
I thought it was because we were poor. But we were not that poor.
I soon realized owning or watching TV was forbidden by our church — Deeper Life Bible Church.
They called it the Devil’s Box.
In school, my friends would banter about cool cartoons, kid programs and soap operas I had never seen. Because the only source of entertainment in my household was a radio set that played a lot of Jim Reeves and Pastor Kumuyi’s sermons.
So, if I was ever going to keep up with pop culture, I was left with two options: sneaking into our neighbour’s apartment or waiting for a visit to my Baptist grandmother, Iya Shed’s house.
The latter was how I remember watching my first Nigerian film.
Iya Shed’s house was a depot of home videos. Every home video available on the market was somewhere there — in her store, guest room, drum containers and under her bed.
My aunt - Iya Shed’s first daughter, Oluremi Ijirigho (nee Ogunsile) was a quintessential TV girl in the early 1980s, appearing in television commercials and the popular NTA sitcom, Koko Close as Floxy.
Understanding this, it became apparent that Iya Shed’s obsession with film and television was sparked by her daughter’s career path, a meaningful way to show support that I truly respected.
Every visit to her house was a movie marathon. I watched classics like Owo Blow, Oleku, Taxi Driver, Saworoide, Agogo Ewo, Koto Aiye, Eran Iya Oshogbo, Asewo to re Mecca, Ogidan, Diamond Ring and a number of others. I dreaded whenever it was time to leave.
At the time, films were released biweekly in Ogunpa market — a booming nuisance that served as the nerve of film distribution in Ibadan, South West Nigeria. In that rollout ecosystem, everyone knew who my grandmother was. She was the ultimate customer, and because of her, film marketers like Epsalum, Toymax, Olasco, and Corporate Pictures thrived.
Simpler times.
Many years later, I’m an executive in film, technology has evolved, my grandmother is close to 90, and all of the videotapes in her custody are nowhere to be found.
What happened?
Her children built her a new house, and she was not going to move with all that ‘junk’ that had grown to become thousands of videotapes. After all, she can now watch films on Africa Magic. Her mobile device had become her new source of amusement, with WhatsApp (or Wozzop) and other apps offering endless entertainment options.
So, she instructed her help to pack them up, got on the road to her country home in Iragberi, Osun State, and threw them all down a well.
It was too late when I found out, and years of film history was gone.
For someone who treasured even the most mundane items, like a 50-year-old silverware or souvenirs from her daughter’s wedding, I never thought there would be a reason to worry about the preservation of her beloved films.
Age probably has a way of redefining our priorities. Needless to say, I was heartbroken.
Stepping into my collector era, I had banked on moving these items from her. But life’s unpredictable turns sometimes distract us, giving us a false sense of time. And here I was, wallowing in my woes of procrastination.
I could either linger in my deep regret or put my foot on the gas and accelerate my efforts to preserve what is left of film history in Nigeria.
That was an easy choice, and it became my unwavering mission.
So, I started this endeavour called Losing Daylight. A term I first heard during my early days as a talent manager.
I was visiting my oldest client Nse Ikpe-Etim on a film set, and I heard one of the crew members yell continuously, “We are losing daylight o”. I wasn’t a filmmaker, but the urgency in her voice made it self-explanatory. It was an exterior day scene, setup was taking longer than expected, and they couldn’t risk natural light going out before they got what they wanted.
Losing daylight for them would mean expending more artificial lighting resources to convert night into day scenes - which implies additional costs and a delay in the production timeline. However, despite the challenge, solutions exist.
What cannot be remedied is lost history.
The film industry of Nigeria, Nollywood is currently the second largest film industry on earth – in terms of output, and is also the second largest employer in Nigeria, after agriculture, making up roughly 5% of the country’s GDP.
These statistics sound glossy. But statistics without context is just simply a vanity metric. It means nothing.
If you’re looking for a repository of film history anywhere in Nigeria today, you will not find one. There is nowhere to go to discover and learn the 100+ years of history of film in Nigeria, dating back to Colonial Nigeria from the mid-nineteenth century.
Here’s a crash course you didn’t ask for.
Film in Nigeria is as old as film in the world.
The first public screening of a film in Nigeria was hosted at the Glover Memorial Hall in present-day Custom Street, Marina Lagos in 1903. Keep this venue in mind.
In the 1900s, during the colonial era, our colonial masters introduced us to the Kinetoscope, a fascinating peep-in-the-hole equipment that allowed people to queue and watch motion pictures individually. Geoffrey Barkas’ 1926 feature, ‘Palaver,’ later became the first feature film made in Nigeria.
After Nigeria gained independence from British rule, the golden era of cinema emerged, led by Hubert Ogunde, Isola Ogunsola, Ola Balogun, Ladi Ladebo, Adeyemi Afolayan, Eddie Ugbomah, Segun Olusola, Moses Olaiya and a few others. The first fully commercial Nigerian films, shot on celluloid, were also made by these filmmakers in the 1960s.
This was followed by the home video boom, pioneered by Ade Ajiboye’s “Soso Meji” in 1988, and by Kenneth Nnebue’s groundbreaking Igbo film “Living in Bondage” in 1992. This era changed the way films were made and distributed.
The new Nigerian cinema unfolded in the early 2000s – birthing the name Nollywood, as coined by a Japanese Canadian journalist, Norimitsu Onishi, in his New York Times article.
I’ll pause the history lesson here.
This year, I started the painstaking process of collecting an extensive range of memorabilia that authentically represents these different eras of film in Nigeria. This journey is merely at its inception, and the ultimate goal is to utilize tangible history as a means to combat the misinformation that has long plagued this industry.
One of the items currently in my possession is an original copy of the New York Times publication where the term ‘Nollywood’ was coined. Reading it made me realize that much of what is in circulation about this story is inaccurate.
This is just one example of the consequences of relying on assumptions, hearsay, inadequate context, and limited historical evidence to fill gaps – the issue this project aims to manage.
Losing Daylight is for people who don’t know enough about where this industry came from. It is also for people who know, but have never seen or touched any tangible evidence.
It is a meticulous curation, restoration, preservation and exhibition of all the history we can lay our hands on; analogue and digital; film posters, costumes, scripts, footage, equipment, props, publications, and other relics; from the first time a film was made and played in this country, till present-day. And then making it accessible to everyone as an art form, entertainment, education, cultural heritage and social documentation.
It is a film museum, addressing Nollywood’s placelessness.
It may seem appropriate here to claim that we are assembling the most extensive, richest (and other worthy superlatives) collection of Nigeria’s film history. But these claims are only right if there were comparables.
What we’re envisioning doesn’t exist yet, which makes the task ahead significantly more challenging. Demanding a lot of money, energy, and morale, none of which I have enough of.
So, we are breaking it down into smaller, more manageable phases, to avoid overwhelming ourselves.
We are currently in the first phase, which involves researching, finding and collecting these historical items from various sources. This phase will continue until November 2023, involving several trips around Nigeria and taking delivery of items from different parts of the world.
The logistics for this phase will cost us about $20,000. That’s just $100 from 200 people.
You can also be of value here if you have access to any of these items that played a significant role in Nigeria’s film history.
The second phase is the event phase.
In December 2023, we want to host a captivating one-week multisensory exhibition at the Ecobank Pan African Centre and Glover Memorial Hall — remember? Welcoming visitors from Nigeria and all around the world to witness the remarkable collection of items in our possession.
Alongside the main exhibition, we have a lineup of classic film viewings, film fashion installations, engaging talks with legendary and contemporary filmmakers, an enthralling soundtrack concert, and a few more surprises. This experience promises to be truly special, and I can assure you of that.
Soup wey sweet, na money kill am abi?
We are working with a $50,000 budget for this event, and I am happy to share a deck if you know anyone or organizations I should be speaking to. Please hit me up.
As you may have anticipated, these artefacts must find a permanent home after the exhibition is concluded, leading us to the third and last phase of this project in 2024 — the film museum. A sanctuary for our vast collection and the cinematic memory of Nigeria.
I’ll end here for now, by urging you to be a part of this important work. No matter the size, every support and contribution, just like every frame of film, plays a vital role in creating the bigger picture we hope to create.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please share it as far as you can, and I’ll be glad you did. You can also leave your email here if you’d like to keep track of our progress.
— — —
To the people that made this article easier to write.
Jay Yang, for preaching the gospel of setting a public mission.
Fu’ad, for insisting that there’s nothing like too much information.
Oyinbo, for being my resident English tutor.
Iya Shed, for inspiring it all.
