- A devil woman of 666
Last week the Logan Theatre screened the 2007 Nigerian feature 666 in its Wednesday Night Rewind series, a weekly celebration of direct-to-video kitsch. It was the first Nollywood film I’ve seen in its entirety, so I can’t say how it compares with others. But based on the pieces of other movies I’ve seen, it seemed to reflect the norm in its amateurish production values and general enthusiasm. After India, Nigeria has the second-largest movie industry in the world in terms of output, releasing literally hundreds of titles per month. Most of them are shot and edited hastily on consumer-grade equipment (according to some reports, the average production lasts about a week), then sold in stores for a couple dollars per disc. Much like Internet culture, Nollywood cinema is teeming with junk, yet it’s a rather democratic junk heap—nearly anyone, it seems, has the chance to contribute to it.
