360 ° – Geo Reportage
Video Factory Nigeria

TV reportage

Production
Medienkontor für Arte/WDR/NDR/Discovery Channel
2002

Directed by
Matthias Heeder

Format
SD PAL 16:9

Length
28 Min.

Tech specs
Sony DVW 790 DigiBeta
Sony VX 2000 DVCam

The young film producer Kabat Esosa Egbon is fighting on many fronts. He has to tap friends and family for money, persuade actors to take part in his film, and placate camera-rental companies over long-overdue payments. Time is short – in the countless bars of Lagos, audiences are already impatiently waiting for his new video film.​

The actors perform in a rather amateurish way, the technology works miserably, and the sets often consist of repurposed junk. Only the team’s commitment and improvisational talent are unbeatable. For Kabat Esosa Egbon, that is enough. He wants to tell stories and make money doing it – that is his profession, he comes from an acting family. He is one of the young film producers trying to establish themselves in the Nigerian video market. Despite poverty and mismanagement, the industry is booming. Every year, 600 feature-length videos are produced and distributed through countless small retailers.​

There are no large cinemas. Instead, people gather in front of televisions: in small shacks in backyards, on street corners, or in one of the countless bars in the slums. There, around the clock, the films produced at record speed are shown. Nigerians’ enthusiasm for these homegrown movies, full of myths and legends in which they recognize their own culture, turns imported blockbusters from Brazil and the USA into nothing more than dust collectors on the shelves.​

360° – GEO Reportage observes filmmaker Kabat Esosa Egbon creating his new video project, which is soon set to captivate audiences all over Nigeria.