Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Are Africans Clever Enough to Do Sci-Fi?



Should Africans do sci-fi? I always get surprised and angry when I hear or see that question. This is especially so when it comes from Africans ourselves. I’m Nigerian and my studio is based in Abuja, Nigeria so you could say my experience of this debate has mostly within the Nigerian sphere.
The Nigerian movie industry, or Nollywood, is now world famous. Last year saw the release of the sci-fi Nollywood flick Kajola. I personally was looking forward to seeing this film. I had seen the trailer and thought the visual FX seemed below the ‘amazing’ VFX the producers promised, I still wanted to go and see it to show support. But unfortunately due to the fact that the majority of audiences really hated the movie, it was pulled out of the cinemas within 1-2 weeks of release, I didn’t get a chance to see it.

Yes the acting could have been better and VFX by all accounts and based on the clips I saw was not the best,