Female filmakers: Towards reconstructing women's images in Nollywood films
The last five years have produced a steady increase of women in creative and technical roles in Nollywood. Against the backdrop that women have mostly been portrayed in demeaning ways in a male-dominated industry, this research explores the films of four contemporary female filmmakers, and pays critical attention to the advancement of women’s on-screen images and their narratives. Through the textual analysis of films by four female filmmakers, namely Rukky Sanda, Michelle Bello, Stephanie Okereke-Linus and Omoni Oboli, whose films were produced between 2013 and 2016, I critically analyse their diverse stories, genres, themes and narrative styles, all of which are, however, centred on Nigerian women’s contemporary experiences. I approach this research with the aim of seeking African feminist ways of reading the texts, since African feminists have questioned and challenged Western ideologies and called for African solutions to Africa’s problems. Modupe Kolawole, for example, refutes the claim that African women’s ideas about gender were learnt from the “global movement”; rather, some are inspired by accounts of African women’s mobilization in the pre-colonial past, “individual women giants who transformed their societies in pre-colonial times, such as Nehanda of Zimbabwe, Nzinga of Angola, Nana Asantewa of Ghana” (2015:252). I approach the films using Catherine Acholunu’s Motherism and Nnaemeka Obioma’s Nego-feminism as conceptual frameworks. With key attention paid to women’s representation, I argue that representations of women in films, whether the product of male or female directors, are a construct of a larger cultural situation which cannot be dismissed, even though women are making efforts to use films as a tool for activism. However, for there to be an effective paradigm shift, patriarchy and traditions that oppress women are among the societal norms that must be addressed.
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