The African Hulu

September 19, 2011 6:09 AM

Reel African is a new video-streaming site showing licensed African productions, films, series and documentaries, including The XYZ Show, the African Spitting Image. Also some MTV. Free to watch, with adverts inserted in the content. Promo trailer. Variety write-up. Via.
posted by criticalbill (11 comments total)

African 'Hulu' is reel good for country's diaspora

Uhh.... I suppose it's possible they mean "The African Diaspora in the U.S" or something, and the author of the article seems to understand that there are different countries in Africa, but headlines are typically written by someone else -- perhaps Sarah Palin in this case.
posted by delmoi at 6:18 AM on September 19, 2011

Sorry, Hulu, inside US, bleah bleah blah.
posted by signal at 6:25 AM on September 19, 2011

This is cool. There doesn't seem to be a ton of content yet, but I was just thinking the other day of how little I know about actual indigenous African pop culture. I love internet.
posted by Think_Long at 6:39 AM on September 19, 2011

Neat, I hope to find more cool videos (and musicians) like Just a Band's Ha-He or Usinibore.
posted by dabitch at 7:08 AM on September 19, 2011

From Nollywood with love - How NollywoodLove, a movie-streaming website, is starting to revolutionise the Nigerian film industry.
posted by infini at 7:09 AM on September 19, 2011

From ReelAfrican's About page:

Currently, only viewers in the US are able to access the content due to restrictions on licensing deals, though plans are underway to roll out our offering to other countries by 2012.

Pity that, thought it would be of great help in Africa itself, especially as bandwidth costs decrease due to the undersea cables and internet enabled handsets become more affordable.
posted by infini at 7:37 AM on September 19, 2011

Well they say the content is restricted, but I was able to watch it in the UK without using a proxy or IP spoofing or whatever it is
posted by criticalbill at 8:43 AM on September 19, 2011

Pity that, thought it would be of great help in Africa itself, especially as bandwidth costs decrease due to the undersea cables and internet enabled handsets become more affordable.

Well, there will probably be African streaming sites. But the situation here is likely that content companies are making lots of money in Africa, but hardly any money in the U.S market. So dumping the movies on this streaming site is a nice way to make a little extra money.
posted by delmoi at 8:53 AM on September 19, 2011

Earlier this year, in an article about the Nigerian film industry Nollywood (the world’s largest in terms of volume put out, though the quality might be crap) The Economist magazine gave us a clue about how regional integration forces are happening in Africa.

It said that the amazing thing about Nollywood (Ki-Nigeria as Ugandans call it) is that it has grown in Nigeria, West Africa, Africa, and lately the world, with little to no marketing money spent on it. In fact, there are many things that would make it impossible for Nollywood to spread. The lousy technical quality, the juju-dripping monotonous plot, the flat story lines and mostly the nasty producers and directors who use deadly methods that include metal bars, baseball bats, guns, and all forms of torture against illegal distributors.

However, the ingenuity of the West African pirates and smugglers has overcome dangerous producers, border police and customs, the lack of roads and electricity, and put a bootleg copy of a Nollywood CD in every African home where there is interest in the Ki-Nigeria. Now a few shrewd Nollywood producers, who didn’t invest a penny in marketing, are cashing in on the market created by pirates and becoming fabulously wealthy via
posted by infini at 11:57 PM on September 20, 2011

The Economist article mentioned above. Worth a read.
posted by infini at 12:03 AM on September 21, 2011

But the situation here is likely that content companies are making lots of money in Africa, but hardly any money in the U.S market.

Apparently not as The Economist found out:

As soon as a film is released, copyright thieves rip it off. It takes the pirates just two weeks to copy a new film and distribute it across Africa. The merchants must take their money during that fortnight, known as the “mating season”, before their discs become commodities. As soon as the mating season is over they start thinking about the next film.
[...]
Several things have aided Nollywood’s growth. Atrocious state-run television and slow internet connections mean there is little competition for entertainment. A steady decline in the price of digital cameras and a rise in average incomes makes for healthy profit margins. Yet the same conditions exist in many developing-world countries that have not created vibrant film industries. Three other ingredients are crucial to Nollywood’s formula: language, casting and plotting.
posted by infini at 12:05 AM on September 21, 2011