A story from the burgeoning video industry of Nigeria combines melodrama and issues of ethnicity, gender, culture and identity in post-colonial Africa. Thunderbolt will come as a bolt out of the blue to most Americans, even aficionados of African cinema. It is one of the best examples of the little-known but burgeoning video industry of Nigeria. Most films in this Library of African Cinema catalog ironically are seen more in the West than in Africa itself. Produced with European government grants and television subsidies, they function as an "art house" cinema independent of any marketplace. Nigerian video, in contrast, is wholly intended for and financed by a mass market. It is estimated that last year alone over 600 feature length videos were produced in Nigeria; one distributor reports selling over 500,000 tapes a year. The new Nigerian video industry is without doubt one of the most vibrant new developments in the world cinema today. Videos are cheap to produce; with budgets as small as $4,000, shooting rarely lasts more than ten days or two weeks. The break-even point is 10,000 units sold and a successful title can sell over 100,000 copies. Videos sell for between 300 and 400 Naira (US$2.25 - US$3.00). There are over 30 stalls in the Lagos central market devoted to video. The majority of cassettes reportedly are bought by "housewives" affluent enough to afford a VCR. The poorer majority of Nigerians sees these productions in video theatres, originally little more than a spare room in someone's house but with the advent of video projection, discrete facilities. Given the conditions of their production, it is hardly surprising that what results is hastily produced, inexpensive popular entertainment rather than art films. Most titles are heavily influenced by soap opera and focus on the Lagos elite, simultaneously ogling their material success while deploring their corruption. Infidelity and magic figure prominently often together. Thunderbolt rises above these by attempting to treat a political theme - national unity -important unfinished business for Nigeria in the aftermath of the brutal Civil War of the 1960s. The first half of the film is in a sense a retelling of the Othello story - except the protagonists are not Abyssinian and Venetian but Yoruba and Ibo. Yinka and Ngozi met in the National Youth Service Corps; Ngozi is finishing her stint as a teacher in a village while Yinka already works as a construction engineer in a nearby city. The seeds of jealousy are planted when a friend of Yinka, like Iago in the Shakespeare play, suggests that Ngozi is having a secret affair because "Ibo are untrustworthy." Adding to Yinka's suspicions, Ngozi has recently inherited some money and so is a financially independent woman. In this half, as in the Shakespeare play or any standard Western melodrama, the action is propelled entirely by psychological motivations. In the second half of the film a distinctly West African emphasis on the supernatural comes to the fore; curses and ritual cleansing take the place of psychological explanations. An old man (possibly the spirit of her grandmother) warns Ngozi that her death is imminent and will strike her like a thunderbolt. We later learn that Yinka has placed the curse of magun upon her, a curse reserved for those suspected of infidelity. Magun is described as "African AIDS"; any man who has sex with a woman infected with it will die - but not before crowing like a rooster, doing somersaults or vomiting blood. On the other hand if the woman does not have sex within nine weeks she will die. It is interesting how some knowledge of AIDS transmission seems to have been appropriated into popular folk beliefs. Despite her skepticism Ngozi undergoes a long and painful treatment by a herbalist. This introduces a subsidiary theme in the film - the efficacy of traditional African medicine. A scene is interposed where a doctor scandalizes his colleagues by suggesting that the West has been arrogant in rejecting the wisdom of traditional healers. As the time for Ngozi's death approaches, neither her husband nor an old lover can be induced to have sex with her. She finally convinces Dimeji, a doctor who had previously offended her with his advances. He is immediately stricken and only saved by the herbalist. Ngozi and Dimeji are reconciled and will apparently become a couple and live happily ever after - despite her former antipathy and marriage. Ironically the curse has forced Ngozi to become what she was falsely accused of being - an adulteress - yet this is certainly poetic justice for the perfidious Yinka. Dimeji says he hopes Ngozi will not think all Yoruba men are cads; she replies with the moral of the story: "there are only two tribes, good and bad people." The emergence of a vital and prolific popular cinema in Nigeria could be regarded as an important African response to the encroachment of Western pop culture in this age of global information flows. On the other hand Nigerian video films, perhaps inevitably, reflect some of the less attractive features of post-colonial society. There is a fetishism of material prosperity often in imitation of Europe and America; Westernization seen through African eyes. And one can't help wondering what the public health impact of validating traditional over Western medicine might be in a continent fighting the AIDS epidemic. An indigenous popular cinema will inevitably transmit and reinforce the priorities and beliefs of the society that finances it. An art cinema based in essentially non-profit filmmaking, on the other hand, can risk interrogating that society's values and suggesting alternatives. Nigerian cinema may soon face the same problem confronted by the U.S.: how to nurture and finance a non-commercial cinema, which can act as a critique and complement to its commercial counterpart. "What come through in this truly remarkable Pan-Nigerian film engaging issues of ethnicity, gender, culture and identity are, Kelani's faith in humanity, a pluralistic view of 'nation' and sensitivity to areas of ambiguity around the existing paradigm of 'scientific' knowledge." - Jude G. Akudinobi, University of California, Santa Barbara. "A simple and edifying story immersing us in a culture of strong values, hard realities and contradictions. Truly epitomizes the new African videos - the "first cinema' of the anglophone region." - N. Frank Ukadike, Tulane University. "If the continuous laughter and cheering of our diverse New York audiences is any indication, this film has true international appeal." - Mahen Bonetti, New York African Film Festival. "Interweaving inter-ethnic romance with betrayal, magic and traditional medicine, Thunderbolt combines the cultural pride of classic African cinema with the melodrama of popular Nigerian video. Kelani, one of Nigeria's best known directors, has brought the technical quality of African cinema to Nigerian video." - Brian Larkin, Barnard College.

Zamiatou is the mother of two quarrelsome boys and a depressed teenage girl. She is also the wife of a man arrested for political reasons who returned from prison mentally and physically destroyed. She struggles hard to survive in a poor and desolate area. She is ready to face anything to keep the family alive except prostituting her beautiful daughter.

This program teaches highlighting the good parts and trouble spots, research, visualizing and dramatization, non-fiction vs. fiction, the echo effect, online reasearch vs. physical, changing directions, genre material, staying fresh and externalizing characters' thoughts. Subjects covered include:--What to include. --How to avoid the 200 page screenplay. --How faithful should you be to the original? --Is it easier to adapt fiction or non-fiction, trash or art? --Which books, plays and stories will make good movies. --How to rectify problems without alienating a book's fans?

Based on the play written by August Strindberg on 1912, and filmed in New York's Central Park. Two actresses, one a wife and mother, the other living alone, meet in a cafe. While the wife talks, the other is silent. But the wife must finally face the truth: the silent woman is her husband's mistress. Still, their agonizing confrontation, as well as the relief that follows, binds them together: the battle is over and it becomes irrelevant which one is the stronger. Each woman has come to a deeper knowledge of herself through the other.

Michael Haneke's adaptation of Franz Kafka's The castle is an ingenious, faithful interpretation evoking Kafka's vision of a dystopian society hobbled by paperwork and bled dry by conformism and convolution.

Based on the play by Bertolt Brecht (originally translated by Charles Laughton), Galileo explores not merely the infamous historical figure, but the philosophical concepts for which he was both celebrated and condemned.

Based on the classic lesbian play, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, the gorgeous drama Liz in September stars Latina lesbian supermodel Patricia Velasquez as Liz, a hardcore party girl and womanizer. Liz (who is ill) and her friends are at a beach resort celebrating what they don't realize could be her last birthday. When an outsider joins the party, Liz's friends dare her to seduce the newcomer - and nothing turns out as expected.

The women of defeated Troy are at the mercy of the Greeks in this adaption of Euripedes' tragic anti-war play. The unbeatable cast is lead by Katharine Hepburn, Irene Papas, Genevieve Bujold and Vanessa Redgrave.

Jarman presents Shakespeare's intricate comedy of magic and revenge in a form that is at once faithful to the spirit of the play and a dazzling spectacle mixing Hollywood high camp and gothic horror. His film recalls the innocent homoeroticism of Pasolini's versions of the classics while its lush sense of décor and color is worthy of Minnelli.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a village woman is given the grueling task of looking after (and fulfilling the sexual needs of) her quadruple-amputee husband, a decorated solider tortured by memories of his war crimes. Based on a short story by Edogawa Rampo, Koji Wakamatsu's film is a fascinating, deeply affecting indictment of right-wing militarist-nationalism, a partner-piece to the left-wing extremism of United Red Army.

When Alice follows the white rabbit into Wonderland, so begins this dream expedition into the astonishing landscape of childhood, through many dangerous adventures, and ultimately to Alice's trial before the King and Queen of Hearts. Czech animator Jan Svankmajer has created a masterpiece of cinema, a strikingly original interpretation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale. Svankmajer's Alice remains true to the absurdity of Carroll's original, but bears the stamp of his own distinctive style and obsessions. Combining techniques of animation and live action, he gives a new and fascinating dimension to the classic tale of childhood fantasies.

John Osborne's play is a fascinating and powerful psychological study of the Augustinian monk Martin Luther, examining his central role in the birth of Protestantism and revolt against the Roman Catholic Church.