Nigeria's Nollywood eclipsing Hollywood in Africa

As cinemas close across Africa, homegrown blockbusters are actually eclipsing Hollywood on the African market as for the first time in 13 years an African feature competes for the top award at Cannes.

This weekend, "A Screaming Man" by Chad director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun joins 18 other movies selected to contend for the prestigious Palme d'Or, awarded May 23 at the close of the 12-day film festival.

Yet cinemas across the continent are pulling down screens, converted to pentecostal churches, night clubs or warehouses.

The average rate of closure is estimated at one a month - an endemic trend blamed on ticket prices too high for the average African as well as on the proliferation of cheap pirated DVDs at any street corner.

Around 50 cinemas remain in business - most in South Africa and Kenya with a few in Nigeria - thanks to mushrooming city shopping malls.

In Ivory Coast, west Africa's cultural crossroads, "cinema is dying, if it is not dead already", said award-winning producer Roger Gnoan M'Bala.

BlackBerry Babes or BBB

“Why can’t you understand that without you buying me a blackberry phone there is no basis for this relationship? Why must I be embarrassed in front of my friends?”, is how Keisha dumps Daniel. That sentence sumerize the spirit of this comedy from nigerian Nollywood director Sylvester Obadigie. BlackBerry Babes or BBB, is  about a group of girls that love BlackBerrys' phones so much that they will only date guys that will buy them one. For those ladies it equals fashion and style and it defines the kind of friends or circle you belong to in the society. For the Men who understand that,  it's a means to an end. The girls are constantly on the hunt for new models and will do whatever it takes to get one...