Fofana Kadyja browses at African Movies Mall in the Bronx. (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter/CNS)

The first scene of “This America,” a 2005 Nollywood movie filmed in New York, opens with two African immigrants hawking pirated CDs.  Suddenly, a police car screeches into the frame, its siren blaring. The Africans skedaddle, pursued by an overweight cop. The vignette feels appropriate. Nollywood, an umbrella term for Nigerian-made movies, has always had an uneasy, albeit symbiotic, relationship with piracy.

For New York’s African-born immigrant community – a 2009 survey, the most recent available, counted nearly 125,000 – Nollywood’s gritty, against-all-odds story lines provide a comforting slice of home. But it’s not just Africans.

“I started watching these movies two years ago,” said Lorraine Farrell, a 65-year old from the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, browsing one February morning at the African Movies Mall in the Bronx. “I don’t even watch American movies any more. I even know the actor’s names. They’re my people now.”

The Bronx store is one of New York’s largest African cinema retailers. Business is brisk. Sharp discounts encourage bulk buying. Mohammed Nabiye, a Ghanaian salesman, estimated that he sold 300 DVDs a day. None are counterfeit, he said.

But despite the movies’ fervent followings, the industry itself, particularly for U.S.-based African filmmakers, finds itself in a state of transition that will dictate the genre’s reach on U.S. soil. While some harbor hopes of breaking into domestic theater chains, piracy, a persistently pernicious problem, poses new and complex challenges.

Yet it’s not all bad; piracy has also been a boon to Nollywood. The pirates spread the gospel of Nollywood internationally, even as they cause hemorrhaging of producer’s profits. In Nigeria, filmmakers have two weeks to recoup their investment before pirates distribute the films across Africa, a period referred to as the “mating season.” In response, producers churn out films at a dizzying rate. Nollywood now counts as the world’s second-most-prolific film industry after India’s Bollywood – anywhere between 1000 to 2000 movies appear each year, often made in less than a week with budgets ranging from $5,000 to $100,000.

In his Carteret, N.J., home, which occasionally doubles as a film set, Oliver Mbamara, one of America’s top Nigerian filmmakers, explained some of the issues affecting his industry and the historical roots of the genre. “Our drive is not initially for the money,” he said. “It’s to tell our stories. The African immigrant doesn’t have mainstream Hollywood movies telling their stories.”

Fofana Kadyja from the Ivory Coast, also browsing in African Movies Mall, agreed. “You miss home,” she said.

In 2005, Mbamara, who also works as a lawyer, produced and starred in “This America.” Back then, Mbamara could hope to make a modest profit. Now, because of piracy, he’s lucky to break even. “You can lose 50, 60, 70 percent of your costs in some cases,” he said.

Piracy also affects distribution. Before Mbamara would distribute 5,000 copies, but now, it makes little sense to produce more than 1,000. Even by that stage, the movies have already leaked on the Internet. And to make matters worse, said Mbamara, “now the bootlegs are done so well it’s hard to tell the difference.” In a perverse inversion of the basic economic principle, demand was up, but filmmakers, desperate to capitalize on the upswing, were left short.

Oji Idak, a computer consultant by day, who runs Nollywood NYC, an industry networking group, also bemoaned the curse of piracy but pointed to a number of recent successes. In late 2010,  law enforcement officials seized more than 10,000 counterfeit Nollywood DVDs at nine Brooklyn stores.

Idak and other industry figures have concocted what he called “a game-changing initiative,” to attract a new breed of investor to African cinema. The goal? An initial six-city distribution deal with a national theater chain, followed, depending on the success, by a coast-to-coast rollout.  Idak said he was in preliminary discussions with AMC, the second largest movie theater chain in North America.

Now, they’re just waiting for the right movie.

Previous efforts to break into the mainstream American market had failed, but Idak said efforts were under way to slow down the punishing production schedule, up the quality and increase marketing spend. New regulatory bodies were also springing up.

“We have announced ourselves as an industry to reckon with,” said Mbamara. “People are starting to listen, but we need to go into more substantive areas. We have to establish that we are here to stay.”

The experiences of African-American filmmakers provided Mbamara with a heartening example, but only, he said, if filmmakers could exercise a change in African viewing habits. “When Tyler Perry started, he had these problems, but he was able to get an audience,” Mbamara said. “We don’t have a movie-going culture as it’s defined here in America.” The American market, as in Nigeria, is straight to DVD.

Not all, however, are convinced. Awam Amkpa, a Nigerian and the director of Africana studies at New York University, noted that Nollywood developed out of Nigeria’s television industry, which, he said, “created a sense of national community and identity,” often in opposition to the government. It was, almost by definition, a countercultural phenomenon, and couldn’t possibly fit into the canon of Western filmmaking.

Little chance, then, of making the leap to U.S. theater chains. “It’s unlikely,” said Amkpa.

But with a growing African and Caribbean audience and a bullish U.S. industry keen to consolidate its gains, the genre’s future could be worse.

Back at African Movies Mall, Kadyja joined Farrell to discuss the merits of a new release. Kadyja, displeased with some recent purchases that, in her opinion, teetered on the scurrilous, demanded that Farrell tailor her suggestions accordingly. For her part, Farrell seemed less concerned with sex and drugs; instead, she just wanted her fix.

“I used to be in here every day,” said Farrell, who boasts a 500-title collection. “I might as well be African.”

Email: gts2109@columbia.edu