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Filmmaker Kunle Afolayan is looking to push the boundaries of moviemaking in Nigeria—but it’s still too early to know whether the audiences can support a film with even a $500,000 budget:

Twenty years after bursting from the grungy street markets of Lagos, the $500 million Nigerian movie business churns out more than a thousand titles a year on average, and trails only Hollywood and Bollywood in terms of revenues. The films are hastily shot and then burned onto video CDs, a cheap alternative to DVDs. They are seldom seen in the developed world, but all over Africa consumers snap up the latest releases from video peddlers for a dollar or two. And so while Afolayan’s name is unknown outside Africa, at home, the actor-director is one of the most famous faces in the exploding entertainment scene known — inevitably — as “Nollywood.”

On a continent where economies usually depend on extracting natural resources or on charity, moviemaking is now one of Nigeria’s largest sources of private-sector employment.

“A Scorsese in Lagos: The Making of Nigeria’s Film Industry.” — Andrew Rice, New York Times Magazine

More film #longreads: “I Watched Every Steven Soderbergh Movie.” — Dan Kois, Slate, Sept. 14, 2011

Featured Longreader: Sara Blask, communications manager for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. See her story picks from Texas Monthly, Smithsonian magazine, plus more on her #longreads page.

More than 100 police officers from 18 different agencies accessed the driver’s license records of Rasmussen, a former officer. She’s now suing for invasion of privacy:

Rasmusson’s lawsuit, which will be filed in the coming weeks, alleges that not only was her privacy compromised, but that her story is merely a symptom of a larger culture of data abuse by police. Her attorneys charge that while police are trained to use the driver’s license database for official purposes only, in reality it’s more like a Facebook for cops.

The agencies involved have maintained that this is an isolated incident. But one officer, who would not use his name for fear of further discipline, says that the practice is commonplace.

“I get Anne’s side of it,” he says. “But every single cop in the state has done this. Chiefs on down.”

“Is Anne Marie Rasmusson Too Hot to Have a Driver’s License?” — Jessica Lussenhop, City Pages

See also: “The Web Means the End of Forgetting.” — Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times, July 21, 2010

Featured Longreader: Jonah Ogles, an associate editor at Cincinnati magazine. See his story picks from the magazine, plus more from The New York Review of Books, Outside magazine, plus more on his #longreads page.

Featured Longreader: Writer Eva Holland. See her story picks from Vela Magazine, Outside magazine, Esquire, plus more on her #longreads page.

Ex-president and CEO Michael Woodford says he tried to blow the whistle on fraudulent accounting related to $1.6 billion in transactions. He was then fired:

Woodford, 51, recounted how he had just returned from Hong Kong, having fled Tokyo after a board meeting in which Olympus Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa had fired him. The cause for dismissal, according to Woodford: his insistence that Olympus officials come clean about a series of questionable purchases dating to 2006, totaling $1.6 billion, none of which had been adequately reported in the company’s consolidated financial statements. The deals had been approved by Kikukawa and the Olympus board, yet in several cases the parties receiving the sums were not even clearly identified in Olympus’s books. (At least one Japanese magazine had strongly hinted that the Yakuza were beneficiaries of some of these shady deals.) Woodford, frustrated by the board’s stonewalling, had hired the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an independent audit of the suspicious transactions. For several weeks leading up to his dismissal, he had been calling the board to account for these transactions, and eventually demanded the board’s resignation. Instead, Woodford was purged. And now he was running for his life.

“The Story Behind the Olympus Scandal.” — Karl Taro Greenfeld, Bloomberg Businessweek

More from Taro Greenfeld

The Story Behind the Olympus Scandal

Longreads Pick

Ex-president and CEO Michael Woodford says he tried to blow the whistle on fraudulent accounting related to $1.6 billion in transactions. He was then fired:

“Woodford, 51, recounted how he had just returned from Hong Kong, having fled Tokyo after a board meeting in which Olympus Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa had fired him. The cause for dismissal, according to Woodford: his insistence that Olympus officials come clean about a series of questionable purchases dating to 2006, totaling $1.6 billion, none of which had been adequately reported in the company’s consolidated financial statements. The deals had been approved by Kikukawa and the Olympus board, yet in several cases the parties receiving the sums were not even clearly identified in Olympus’s books. (At least one Japanese magazine had strongly hinted that the Yakuza were beneficiaries of some of these shady deals.) Woodford, frustrated by the board’s stonewalling, had hired the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an independent audit of the suspicious transactions. For several weeks leading up to his dismissal, he had been calling the board to account for these transactions, and eventually demanded the board’s resignation. Instead, Woodford was purged. And now he was running for his life.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Feb 18, 2012
Length: 17 minutes (4,489 words)

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, The Millions, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Alexandra Jaffe.

Featured Longreader: James daSilva, senior editor at SmartBrief. See his story picks from River Avenue Blues, Connecticut Magazine, Christie Aschwanden, plus more on his #longreads page.

Featured Longreader: Leo Lincourt’s #longreads page. Leo is a woefully under-published nonfiction writer, and technologist, who enjoys investigating eclectic arcana, time travel, and a good scientific street brawl. See his story picks from CBS News, Chicago Magazine, Dissent Magazine, plus more.