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Pulse Opinion: We need to apologize to the Nollywood home video generation

Forgotten by time, it is time we appreciate the innovators of the home video era for curating Nigerian culture.

Movies like Karishika were based on the end time fears that were present in Nigeria during the millennium (Zikoko)

We have been unfair to the Nollywood era of old.

The directors, movie producers, editors, costumiers and stars that made this period of Nollywood flourish with little or no financial investment and structure deserve an apology from those who criticized their art form, including myself.

The first Nigerian home video that was ever slotted into our top-loading VHS player at home was 'Aje ni Iya Mi' (My Mother is a Witch) circa 1992 starring the legendary Ishola Ogunsola.

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I watched a lot of home videos after that, from 'Sakobi' to 'Vuga' to unforgettable ones like 'Beast 2000' to 'Piccadilly Circus'. My consumption of home videos was partly due to my curiosity and my mother raiding video clubs for the latest Nollywood releases.

During the time of the Y2K paranoia, teenage angst would get the better of me and I would start rebelling against mainstream Nigerian movies and dived deep into Hip-Hop.

The gloss and sheen of American pop culture made me balk at the low production quality of home videos. Further into the new millennium, when Nollywood marketers overused formulas and tacky posters, I stopped watching home videos.

And it wasn't only me. Our generation grew (or thought we grew) beyond the cliche Nollywood stories of the broke man selling his soul to the devil for riches or the mysterious light-skinned woman sent by the devil to destroy a morally upright man.

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We were consumed with the 'Matrix' sequels and other gigantic Hollywood releases. We didn't hold back with the criticisms. Even though some were correct, many of them were ignorant of the conditions these auteurs and visionaries had to work in.

By the late 00s, home videos were out of vogue. Nollywood had gone bigger and there was a creative hunger to get Nigerian movies back on the big screen.

Now, cinema releases are the in-thing, with glitzy and glamorous red carpets accompanying them. With the big bucks movie producers are making, and the high production quality, Nollywood is having an upswing.

Things go round and there is nothing new under the sun. These days, the generation of younger generations are channeling the aesthetics of the 90s. It is a worldwide phenomenon that is also relevant to Nigeria.

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Championed by the alte group (young avant-garde Nigerians who subscribe to an alternative lifestyle), the aesthetics of the 90s and the home video era are back as a sub-culture.

Looking back at the home videos of the 90s and 2000s with a more contextual lens, I can't help but appreciate the beauty of this era now.

It was a beautiful period that celebrated the never-say-die attitude of Nigerians and entrepreneurial spirit. It was a glorious display of hustle and the do-it-yourself approach.

What the home video era should mostly be celebrated for is the look, feel and texture of their movies as well as the authenticity of their stories. I used to think their story lines were corny and not realistic until adulthood.

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Tales of blood money, witches and difficult mothers-in-law, are more common than you think. Flip through the metro section of any Nigerian news website and you are bound to find stories that are eerily similar to the plot lines of many home videos.

These stories are uniquely Nigerian and this era curated them in the rawest and most honest way possible. The technical aspects might have sucked but the authenticity of the stories was spot on.

It is the 'relatability', this familiarity that made the home video industry a big hit. It mirrored Nigerian society down to the last filtered frame.

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The fashion of the home video era, bandanas, baseball caps turned backwards, spyder sunglasses, leggings, spaghetti strap tops, baggy pants, immortalized the 90s and 00s.

Watching these home videos brings back a wave of welcome nostalgia and appreciation for these times.

The tons of VHS tapes, VCDs that featured household names of the 90s and early 00s essentially recorded the life and times, the creative and adventurous spirit of this generation.

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As we applaud the present crop of filmmakers now, we should pay special recognition to the home video innovators whose claim to immortality is that they accurately curated the lifestyle of a generation.

They gave us stark portrayals of Nigerian-ess using rectangular black VHS tapes and compact discs as mediums.

Transactional relationships, materialism and the rise of televangelists, obsession with Pentecostalism, black magic, infertility, confraternities, secret societies, were common tropes of home video films.

These motifs which are still common in Nigeria, resonated with the home video generation because they reflected how Nigerians lived in an era of instability trying to make sense of the world governed by military dictators and the careful optimism during the return of democracy.

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Today, what might be left of the Nollywood is the Asaba bloc of movie producers who have failed to move with the times of high production quality.

While the Nigerian film industry is making more strides to establish a renaissance of the golden cinema era, we should ll give a standing ovation to the men and women who created gold from dust.

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