Jakob Boeskov's

SCANDINAVIAN ARTIST MAKES TERRORIST-CHIC NOLLYWOOD FILM:
SHOT ON LOCATION IN NIGERIA AND SCREENING IN NYC, MAY 6 2010 at 310 BOWERY
Screening and remarks with Jakob Boeskov and Teco Benson 7:00
Followed by DJ Brother Bruno and DJ Amo

Creative Time is pleased to announce the world premiere of Jakob Boeskov’s Dr. Cruel. Inspired by the fast-paced action films of Nollywood, Boeskov traveled to Lagos, Nigeria with Creative Time’s support to shoot this short, art-action video in collaboration with legendary Nollywood personality Teco Benson.

Written by and starring Boeskov, the film begins with a press conference featuring the sinister character Dr. Cruel, head of the Afro-Icelandic Liberation Front based in Lagos, who. holds a kidnapped oil executive for ransom while preaching a message of non- violence. All goes awry, however, when the Nigerian police surround his hideout and he makes a mad dash with his crew to escape. “It’s a mix between the Beastie Boys and an Al-Qaeda kidnapping video gone haywire,” says Boeskov.

“The future of cinema belongs to the people,” Boeskov said. “The urge to democratize cinema—to make it cheap and fast—has been with us for some time (as with the traditions of New Wave and Dogma 95), but the only place where a true democratic cinema has been completely implemented is Nigeria. With Dr. Cruel, we created a symbolic piece of Afro-Scandinavian cinema, told in the international language of violence and action."

Nollywood, as the Nigerian film industry is called, is an operation almost the scale of
Bollywood—churning out what is estimated at over 1,000 movies per year. A typical
Nollywood film is shot with handheld cameras on extremely low budgets and is
distributed on DVD throughout Africa. In contrast to big-budget studio pictures,
Nollywood films are made by individual directors and producers, shot on location in
rented domestic and professional spaces, and shot and edited using the latest common, consumer technologies. This democratized process has produced meaningful cinema for large portions of the African continent, and has become a major source for new representations of Nigeria.

“Boeskov collaborated with Teco Benson to create a sort of John Waters-esque
extended music video that borrows from the Nollywood slapstick and melodramatic
traditions,” said Nato Thompson, Chief Curator at Creative Time. “Or, more specifically, a film that is as exciting as the Nollywood film market demands. There are no heroes: The Nigerian police are corrupt. The revolutionaries are diabolical. What remains is a fast-paced, short film that owes its underlying ethos to a new, global kind of cinema arising out of digital technology, that has found its strongest commercial foothold in a post-colonial Nigeria.”

Boeskov wrote Dr. Cruel in New York City, and hired Teco Benson to direct the project. Benson is a key player in African action movies and has produced and directed more than 20 feature films, among them Mission to Nowhere 1 and 2, Explosion: Now or Never 2 and 3, Born 2 Suffer, and many more.

Jakob Boeskov’s Dr. Cruel is one of Creative Time’s new international initiatives.
Beginning this year, the organization will work around the world, sending artists abroad to experiment with new models of making art in a global community. Other international initiatives include the Creative Time Global Residency—in which 6 artists will immerse themselves in a specific local or international social issue, collaborate with the communities they encounter, and then bring their experiences back home to the people of New York City—and more to be announced.