Is Nollywood a genre? Can the same be asked and said of Hollywood and Bollywood?

The first question to answer is: What is genre?

A genre is a style of storytelling based on certain formal components geared at creating intended results. The result is twofold: the ultimate form of the work and impact on an audience.

Style, formal components, and intended results. These 3 things interact to define genre.

A horror film has components such as shock, violence, grotesqueness. A comedy has components such as odd circumstances, silly characters, playfulness. So on & so forth for every genre. The WAY those components are executed with respect to twofold intended results specifies genre.

Consider the conceptual premise for BRUCE ALMIGHTY: A man gets bestowed with the powers of God.

While this premise is suggestive of certain formal components (e.g odd circumstances and playfulness) what would define it as a type/genre is the way those components are executed.

And, the intended result of the execution. The premise can be developed such that BRUCE ALMIGHTY becomes a horror (a man is bestowed with the powers of God and reigns grotesque doom on the human race) or a drama (a man is bestowed with the powers of God but he struggles with the

weight of supreme existence) or a fantasy (a man bestowed with the powers of God sets out to create a new race on Mars), so on and so forth.

BRUCE ALMIGHTY develops its conceptual premise in a STYLE whose INTENDED RESULT is a humorous and heartfelt story. Thus, the movie's genre is:

The i) way in and ii) purpose for which iii) formal components are developed = genre.

The key: genre is the outcome of ALL 3 factors in interaction.

All 3 have to be present and DEVELOPED in order for a genre to manifest.

That's why a drama can be funny but not be a comedy. That's why THE WINTER SOLDIER is not a 70s paranoia spy thriller but THE IRON GIANT is a 50s paranoia sci fi. Then you have the issue of genre overlaps and genre transcension. But these are fries, let's stick to the burger.

We return to the question: Is Nollywood a genre? Can the same be asked & said of Hollywood & Bollywood?

None of these are genres.

Rather, they are referential terms which label or identify stylistic and formal features that are recognized trademarks of the industries/systems.

They are the cookbook while genre is the recipe.

A "Nollywood/Hollywood/Bollywood film" speaks to the range of stylistic and formal features noted in certain types of Nigerian/American/Indian films but they do not speak to the specifics of storytelling style.

That's why we can further qualify them by specifying a Nollywood comedy, a Hollywood action film, a Bollywood romance.

Another significant difference is that the terms Nollywood, Hollywood, and Bollywood do not speak to intended results while genre does so inherently.

"Let's make a Nollywood film" = undefined.

"Let's make a comedy" = defined.

"Let's make a slapstick comedy = further defined (extra detail of style, form, and intention).

"Let's make a Nollywood comedy" = industry trademark + defined style, form and intention of story.

"What's the film?"

"It's a Nollywood film" = undefined, you now know where the film's from & what it could feature but you still don't know WHAT TYPE of film it is

"It's a comedy" = defined

"It's a slapstick comedy = further defined

"It's a Nollywood comedy" = further defined

And that's how the cookie bakes. Long live Halle Berry.

Addendum (I should've put this in the main thread ): The confusion stems from the overlapping meaning of the word "style". Style expresses:

i) method and features of a filmmaking industry/era etc

and

ii) a type of storytelling.

A word that has multiple meanings morphs in macro or micro extents to accommodate contexts specific to each one of its different meanings.

In case i style accommodates the context of industry, production, output.

In case ii style accommodates the context of story form.

In essence, Nollywood and genre both refer to styles but styles of two distinct things.

Nollywood = a style of filmmaking, methods and resulting features.

Genre = a style of story form, a type of story.

Methods and features.

Home video movies have distinct methods & features that define them, e.g:

Domesticity (F)
Limited camera movement (M)
Observationalism (F)
TV-esque visual language (M)

These and others create a result that tells you the type of film you are watching but

not the type of story that the film is. The genre of the film could be comedy, drama, horror, thriller etc while employing and having the methods and features of a home video film.

Now check this: films from the mainstream new Nollywood era have largely maintained the feature of domesticity (or insularity of location) a major way they have differentiated themselves from home video movies is in dynamic camera movement.

New Nolly films are also closer to exhibitionalism unlike home vids which are closer to observationalism. New Nolly films are also closer to climactic structures unlike home vids which are closer to episodic structures (this is greatly influenced by the pseudo sequel phenomenon)

New Nollywood films also break away, or are deliberate about attempts to break away, from TV-esque language.

So while we debate if there are differences between Nollywood & new wave/'elitist'* films, there are already clear differences between old & new Nollywood.

*As someone who works in both mainstream and new wave brackets I pray the "elitist" tag and the ideas behind it die a quick death. It is an unhelpful categorization that turns natural and symbiotic divisions into something antagonistic, distracts from growth and feeds bad habits.

Anyway, a parallel that can help with the grasp of all this is classical Hollywood cinema. CHC is a style of filmmaking that dominated US cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s.

It developed certain methods/techniques that came to define a STYLE OF FILMMAKING under which any TYPE OF STORY could be told. (However, the era had its preferences and, as with anywhere in the world, these were shaped by features of the filmmaking style.)

Parallel: the use of "Hollywood" in the name of the filmmaking style does not turn Hollywood into a genre. The presence of clearly identifiable features unique to the style does not Hollywood into a genre.

A producer who wanted or wants to make a classical Hollywood film still has to define what TYPE OF FILM (i.e genre) he or she wants to make.

View it from the perspective of the audience and you see that it still holds. If you walked up to a movie playing on the tele but

didn't know anything about the story or see any recognizable names, based on the look and feel (both of which result from methods and features) you can clearly tell if you are looking at an old Nollywood or new Nollywood film. However, you would have to let the film play out for

a bit before you can tell what type of story the film is. The reason you can experience these distinct layers is the difference between Nollywood and genre.

Intersection ≠ sameness.

Long live Nicole Beharie.