Hellloooooo!!

Hello movie lovers,

This site is devoted to documenting the very best of African cinema. It is true that if you pick an African movie at random, you are likely to end up with junk, be traumatized and never watch another one. However, there is a large minority of moviemakers and actors who have over the years and in a variety of languages distinguished themselves. They have created art that is entertaining and educative, provoking and stimulating. Despite bad infrastructure and poor budgets, they have made movies that have made us want more. This site is devoted to them.

If you are new to African movies, you are about to be introduced to an experience quite unlike anything else that you have ever seen. Popular African movies from Nigeria and Ghana do not in any way, shape or form compare to Hollywood, or even to Bollywood. If you have that level of expectation, you are likely to be disappointed. They are very dialogue driven, and utilize very basic technologies. However, many times they depict life in Africa as we remember it, and very realistically too. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and they make us nostalgic. For this reason, we and millions of other diasporeans love them.

Even if you are a veteran movie watcher, I am sure that you have picked up quite a bit of junk (if you are buyer). This site and several others like it that we will point you to will help you to make more informed choices and also let you know how to purchase movies in such a way that you are helping the movie maker, and not some blood sucking pirate.

The name of this website is rather ambitious. If it takes off the way we hope, then every movie worth watching will be properly documented, information about the best actors out of Africa will be available at your fingertips, and you will be well aware of which producers and directors works you should eagerly purchase and which you should avoid.

There are other sites that will give you reviews for almost every Nigerian and Ghanaian movie out there: Nollywood forever is one, Miss T-i-l-i-i is another, and we also have naijarules - the home of all things Nollywood. If you are an experienced African movie watcher, those may be better sites for you. However, if you are new to the experience and you don’t want to wade through loads of information, then you are at the right place. Every movie that is reviewed on this site will be logical, entertaining and therefore eminently watchable.

For now, the movies profiled here will be mostly from Ghana and Nigeria. There are bustling movie industries in Eastern and Southern Africa, we are told, but we really have no access to those movies beyond the ones that are hyped up by oscar committees (e.g Yesterday, Tsotsi). Therefore if anyone knows how to get original copies of movies from other parts of Africa, please email at moviemadam@gmail.com. We would love to start to profile those movies as well.

In addition, if you have a (good) movie you really want profiled and we have not gotten to it yet, please email us. Once we are sure that the movie is really that good, we will give you the go ahead to write up a review. The movie does not have to be out of Nigeria or Ghana. The more diverse the movies we can cover, the happier we are. We just ask that the movie meets certain minimum standards of filmmaking, which is why we may ask you to vigorously defend your choice. Having said that, please know that your input on quality filmmaking out of Africa would be much appreciated and actually, greatly desired.

I sincerely hope that this site is able to fulfill its mission of heralding good African cinema, and bringing much deserved publicity to those who so expertly entertain us despite all the constraints they face.

Sincerely,

Movie reviews team