Abstract :
[en] Nigerian video films are widely consumed among Africans leaving in Italy, but their impact on the Italian society is not limited to their consumption. Two Nigerian video production companies, directly connected to the Nigerian system of production and distribution, have emerged in Northern Italy over the past few years, the IGB Film and Music Industry based in Brescia and the GVK (Giving Vividly with Kindness) based in Turin. These production companies shoot their films in Italy to sell them mainly within the Nigerian diaspora in Italy and on the Nigerian video market, metaphorically locating Italy on the periphery of the Nigerian production system. This article discusses the results of a research about these production companies through two main sections that focus on two different aspects of the phenomenon.
The first section presents an analysis of the films produced by these companies, connecting it to the production strategies that they developed in order to be able to find a place within the Italian economic system. The two companies took very different marketing choices. On one hand, the IGB has oriented its production mainly toward a Nigerian audience, maintaining very specific aesthetic and narrative attributes, directly connected to Nollywood's cinematic style. On the other hand the GVK, after its first release in 2005, decided to change strategy, starting a partnership with an Italian director and trying to produce an intercultural product that could ideally work for both Nigerian and Italian audiences. Comparing these two strategies of production and the aesthetic choices that originated from them this article explores the process of construction of intercultural aesthetics in these videos. The second section presents an analysis of the contents of the video films produced by these companies, and analyzes the particular perspective on the experience of migration that they propose. These video films locate themselves at the point of convergence between the emergence of a migrant cinema in Italy and a specific phase of development of the Nigerian video film industry, characterized by a significant focus on the diaspora in terms both of production and marketing. As a consequence of it, the Nigerian videos produced in Italy, as other films recently produced in Italy by migrant directors, are able to represent the experience of migration from an internal perspective, but they do it by adopting the commercial film genres that characterize Nollywood films, in opposition to the more artistic and intellectually oriented style of other migrant films. The conjuncture of these two trends determines a very original representation of migration, which this article analyzes and interprets.
