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Nollywood Babylon Finds A Home For Their DVD With Lorber Films

Mubi, for the non-cinephile, is nothing more than either a word that your neice or nephew made up, or for the geography geek out there, it’s a city in Nigeria.

However, that is hopefully going to change with both the recent name change of the website formerly known as The Auteurs, and now according to a press release, a brand new release from Lorber Films is going to have Nigeria’s film culture on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

The distributor is set to release the ‘buoyant and energetic expose’ on the booming Nigerian film industry, a documentary called Nollywood Babylon, on DVD. The film began playing the festival circuit in 2008, and hit US theaters last year, now getting its first release on DVD.

Nigeria currently boasts the fastest growing cinema industry in the world and this documentary hopes to enlighten those of us who haven’t had the pleasure of digging into the culture, particularly its ever growing world of B-movie, which has voodoo and magic inspired tales, just set in Nigeria’s urban landscape. This is definitely a film that I’m more than interested in checking out. It has an interesting story behind it, and the great thing with documentaries is that it enlightens the viewers into a world they may not have known.

The film hits July 20.


Source: Press Release

 

Lorber Films Releases Doc About Nigeria’s Film Industry, Nollywood Babylon (2009), on DVD

New York, NY – June 3, 2010 – Lorber Films is proud to release the feature documentary Nollywood Babylon (2009) on DVD.

This buoyant and energetic exposé on Nigeria’s booming movie industry, the world’s fastest-growing national cinema, was an official selection at the Sundance and Edinburgh International film festivals in 2008, and opened in select US markets during the summer and fall of 2009.

Nollywood Babylon 1

Available on DVD with an exclusive director’s commentary and optional English and French subtitles, Nollywood Babylon is slated to prebook on June 22, 2010, with a SRP of $29.95.

NolllNollywood Babylon Posterywood Babylon will become available to the general public on July 20.

Dropping its viewers into the chaos of Lagos’ Idumota market, where films are sold and unlikely stars are born, Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal’s third film chronicles the world’s only industry that devotes as much time to Jesus as it does to voodoo.

Unfazed by low budgets, Nigerian filmmakers have created an inventive and wildly popular form of B-Movie, where voodoo and magic infuse urban stories – reflecting the collision of traditional mysticism and modern culture that Nigerians experience every day.

Creating stories that explore the battle between traditional mysticism and modern culture, good versus evil, witchcraft versus Christianity, Nollywood auteurs have mastered a down-and-dirty, straight-to-video formula that has become industry standard in a country plagued by poverty. In the process, this unique film industry is also becoming a site of reflection about Nigerian’s own identity, allowing Africans to tell and create their own culture and narratives.

Nollywood Still #2

“An intriguing primer … The film profiles the explosive success of this truly populist cinema.”

– Nathan Lee, The New York Times.

Director’s Bio: 

Directors Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal’s first film, Discordia (2004), screened at festivals and universities around the world.

Hailed by The Globe as “the newest wave in documentary filmmaking,” Discordia won a Gold award at the New York Festival and Best Socio-Political Documentary at the Columbus International Film Festival.

Mallal and Addelman’s second feature, Bombay Calling (2006), was nominated for a Canadian Gemini award for Best Socio-Political documentary.

It won the Grand Jury prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and premiered at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto. Bombay Calling was also broadcast in over 150 countries on National Geographic International.

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.