Nollywood stars turn to pornographic roles

Nollywood stars appear to be seeking out more daring roles in pornography, an investigation by Saturday Beats has revealed.

Perhaps, unfulfilled about the soft porn displayed in Nigerian home movies, which has attracted widespread condemnation, a number of Nollywood stars are venturing into hard core pornographic roles.

And they are being helped by smart producers and marketers, who use the internet to ensure such movies reach as wide an audience as possible.

The main platform is YouTube, where there is a growing number of pornographic movies featuring Nollywood actors and actresses. Some of the films run full-length while cuts have been taken from some of them and pasted on YouTube as trailers.

When someone clicks on the short flicks, a notice immediately pops up that the full version, with all the parts, is available.

Another interesting thing is that these films enjoy adverts from reputable Nigerian banks and companies. A one-minute video advert usually precedes such pornographic movies.

Some even have as much as five adverts.

Nollywood English movies like Room 027, Bold 5 Babes, Bedroom Assassin and Taboo! Pastor fornicates in the office are among such pornographic films.

It is also mind-boggling how the industry has sunk in depravity, by even churning out gay movies.

Two examples are Pregnant Hawkers and Sinful Act 1&2 as well as a Yoruba movie, Lesbian.

They all feature known and upcoming Nollywood figures, who engage in pornographic roles with little care in the world.

There are also short flicks with top Nigerian and foreign actors and actresses in steamy scenes.

It all seemed like a joke when sometime last year American-based Nigerian actress, Judith Opara Mazagwu, popularly known as AfroCandy, called for actors and actresses who could fit into nude roles.

On April 19, 2012, AfroCandy posted a message on her Facebook wall, where she wrote, “It takes a lot of guts to get naked in front of the camera. In a couple of my concluded up-coming movies, there’s a lot of nudity in them.

“I also have scripts lined up for production and there will also be nudity in most of them. So if you are an aspiring actor/actress, you have the passion and you will like to get naked, send in your info/contacts for casting and I look forward to meeting and working with you.”

This call got mixed reactions from the public but it did not stop the producers of movies like Room 027 and Bold 5 Babes.

Fans of controversial actress, Tonto Dikeh, showed their disdain when they saw her in two different soft pornography movies. But the actress defended herself in an online interview, where she said, “Only the ignorant and pretentious souls would criticise this lovely movie. It is a film, it’s a job that has to be done. I accepted the script because when I see a good film in the making, I appreciate it.

“What everyone has seen is just a trailer and we all know trailers are supposed to be fun-filled so as to attract viewers. So, it’s allowed to be called a soft porn at this stage. That movie is the deepest story line I’ve ever read. It’s a movie most people can identify with: I love and appreciate all the hype around this movie.”

Ordinarily, such movies would not find their way into Nigerian homes, thanks to the Nigerian Films and Video Censors Board. But it seems their producers usually submit the edited versions to the NFVCB and go on YouTube to post the raw movies.

In the absence of clear-cut regulation of the internet, it seems the NFVCB can do little or nothing to stop these movies from being posted on the internet.

There are some websites calling for subscription to such raunchy movies.

The Deputy Director (Corporate Affairs), NFVCB, Yunusa Tanko Abdulahi, told Saturday Beats that the agency was not aware of the existence of such movies on the internet.

He also said none of them was submitted to the board for censorship and classification.

He said, “We are not aware of such because they have not come to us. As far as they have not come to us, we do not know about it. After production, a movie has to come to us for censoring and classification before it gets to the market, be it a foreign or local film. Any movie that doesn’t come to us before going to the market is illegal.”

The NFVCB official stated that some producers try to play smart by sending edited copies of movies to the agency instead of the master version.

“They ought to send the master copy but some send an edited copy to us while sending what they want to the market. When we see the edited copy, we tell them to make corrections, but it doesn’t matter as they have done what they want to.

“Normally we get tip-offs or raid some markets and when we find these people out, we get them arrested and prosecuted,” he said.

He, however, stressed that the agency only censors video CDs and content on television and satellite but does not have power over what is posted on the web.