Nollywood Needs More Films About Older Women – Shaffy Bello

Shaffy Bello

Veteran Nollywood actress Shaffy Bello has said that there should be more movies about older women. She recently had her say during an interview with media personality VJ Adams on his show Off The Top, and fans have been reacting.

According to her, if she were to executive-produce a movie, she would focus on telling a modern story about women from an older generation, a demographic she believes is largely underrepresented in cinema.

Shaffy added that she is particularly drawn to stories that explore the deeper layers of womanhood.

Her words, “If I were to executive-produce a movie, I would tell a modern story about a woman and show her resilience. We don’t tell enough stories about older women—what we go through, who we are, and how beautiful we are.

I want to tell the story of what it took for a woman to become who she is.

The story connected with so many women. Even women in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, and those in their 60s reached out to say, ‘We don’t tell these stories enough.’

Love, for me, is the ultimate emotion. We use the word loosely. We confuse love with romance and all that stuff, but love is actually different. It has depth, and it is spiritual.

I believe that if you are not a late person, people take you more seriously.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.