ABSTRACT

One of the most recent notable shifts in the Nollywood industry is segmentation. This allows for higher level grade productions of films addressing metropolitan audiences at home and abroad, films referred to as New Nollywood productions.1NollywoodUSA is considered a subcategory of New Nollywood. Theoretically, NollywoodUSA has an opportunity to contemplate and contribute to conversations on Pan-African identities as well as the notions of being African in the world. Given recent theorizations on what it means to be African in the world, how might NollywoodUSA connect the black immigrant and the African-American experience thematically and cinematically? How does NollywoodUSA detract from, complement, and or distinguish itself from the existing collection of Black media as a reference for the Black experience in the United States? The study asserts that Afropolitanism tends to be the prevailing Afro-diasporic identity in the ‘New Nollywood’ movies represented in NollywoodUSA. Nevertheless, the current segmentation in the industry allows for both an Afropolitan outlook on being African and a Pan-African outlook. Both perspectives serve to affirm the universality of being an African and the particularity of being an African in the world. NollywoodUSA is a great addition to the niche-market independent Black filmmaking in the United States because it provides an additional voice in the telling of universal stories from the perspectives of people of African descent.