A Chinese in Nollywood of Nigeria
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The 25-year-old Sun Guangtian thought his film career was over when he quit as a scriptwriter in 2006. The prospect had been by no means promising. A direction major from Beijing Film Academy, he worked for a Beijing-based film studio. Though a scriptwriter, all he did was to follow the instructions and modify lines at locations. Sun thought directors became monsters when they came to location. Whenever he dared to voice his opinions, directors lost temper easily and often cursed vehemently.
After two years as a scriptwriter, Sun quit his job and went to Nigeria to visit Ma Jun, a very good friend who was at that time working for PetroChian’s branch in Nigeria.
This trip changed Sun’s life forever.
After a flight of about 20 hours, Sun arrived at Lagos, the capital of the oil-rich African country. The country has a booming oil industry and chinese companies have a high profile presence in the country’s oil industry. As more and more Chinese are coming to Nigeria, supermarkets, shopping malls and hotels have mushroomed. It is estimated that there are more than 10,000 Chinese in Lagos alone. Sun Guangtian got to know a Chinese restaurateur named Hong Jian who runs a four-story-villa-turned restaurant. The classy restaurant is a hangout for many Nigerian government officials and business people in the capital and the restaurateur has a wide circle of friends from top echelons. Some friends are prominent directors of nollywood in nigeria. The restaurateur himself is a shareholder of a film production company.
Sun Guangtian was surprised to learn about Nollywood, the world’s third largest dream factory after Hollywood in USA and Bollywood in India. After learning that Sun Guangtian was a graduate from Beijing Film Studio and had worked as a scriptwriter, Hong Jian noted that professionals like Sun Guangtian were most welcome in Nigeria. Hong predicted that Sun could easily obtain a long-term residence visa if he stayed and worked as a film producer.
Sun was all agog for the prospects, but he did not have big money to invest into a film. The restaurateur chuckled, saying “You don’t need big money. 25,000 US dollars will be okay. I will invest the rest and if the investment does not work, the loss can be debited to my account.”
This was most incredible. But he trusted Hong and raised money through friends. Hong made a few calls and Sun Guangtian met with a native producer. This is how Sun became a producer and an honorary investor.
Nollywood is situated in a valley in Lagos. The 10-some km2 valley is home to thousands of film studios large and small as well as numerous video rentals. Though there are no high-rises, the valley becomes a world of neon lights at night. Ads are everywhere for actors. People wait in front of film companies for cast directors to offer jobs.
Sun’s first movie was a romance called “Heaven and Hell”. The producer spoke aloud and soon a group of eager people gathered around him. They were paid about 20 yuan a day, but they were passionate. They did pretty well as actors and the shooting went most smoothly. Though it took only ten days to finish the shooting, Sun was surprised to see that the film told a good story and offered unique regional features. More surprisingly, the film was not distributed through companies. The film was made into VCD. They were distributed throughout Nigeria and even to other African countries such as South Africa, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Before long, more than 60,000 VCD sets were sold at 2 US dollars per set. Sun received 53,000 US dollars in return on his investment. After deducting the investment, the profit amounted to 28,000 dollars. Sun Guangtian realized that the return on investment was better than speculating in a stock market.
His next film became a blockbuster by the standard of Nollywood and sold 140,000 VCD sets. He learned the trade fast. A movie usually needs an investment of only 20,000 to 30,000 US dollars. Two or three hand-held cameras and some basic lighting and props are all the equipment needed. For Hollywood professionals, these devices are just good for an assignment of a film college student. The people at Nollywood can produce a film from a few days up to two weeks. Low cost and high output make Nollywood stand out most competitively. Yet, the business mode is hard to copy anywhere else. Nollywood has very good scriptwriters and has a lot of attractive stories to offer to its audiences. As the official language of the country is English, Nollywood films present no language barriers for international audiences. Sun Guangtian adjusted himself fast to the business and his assets increased fast.
In the spring of 2009, Sun made his biggest investment: he bought a high-definition Japanese camera for 2 million yuan. In order to ensure high quality, the post production was handled in Beijing. In May 2009, Sun Guangtian made a film about environmental protection in Africa. More than 430,000 DVD sets were sold across the world.
Sun says some films such as Hotel Rwanda, Black Hawk Down and Blood Diamond made in the west have prejudices against African people. These films create an impression that Africa is full of poverty, famine, barbarity, violence, AIDS and war and that only Westerns can help Africa. Sun points out that Africans feel happy about their lives. You may hear Japanese and Americans commit suicide under the pressure of life, but African people don’t commit suicide.
Now a multimillionaire after four years in Nollywood, Sun Guangtian founded his own film studio in May 2010 and partnered with a friend to operate a distribution company in London. These days, he is shooting a documentary about Nigerian business people in Guangzhou, a metropolis in southern China where about 5,000 Nigerian business people live and seek fortunes. Sun Guangtian observes that these Nigerian business people work very hard and some of them have got married in China. He believes this documentary set in China will find large audiences in Africa.