‘Make it for $15,000. Sell it for $20,000. Repeat.’

Samir Mallal, co-director of Nollywood Babylon, is describing the business strategy of the filmmakers in his documentary. The film, one of two Canadian titles in the World Documentary Competition at Sundance 2009, explores the world’s third-largest film industry — by volume, at least — in Nigeria. The west African nation pumps out more than 2,000 titles annually, nearly all of them distributed via video CD, many of which find their way into the broader continent.

Co-director Ben Addelman says anyone can learn from the Nollywood approach. ‘It defines guerilla grassroots filmmaking. It’s only about 15 years old, it started from scratch… with jobless men with VHS cameras. There were no training schools. You learn on the job, you just go out and do it. There was a vacuum and it was filled by industriousness and an entrepreneurial spirit.’

That’s what attracted the duo, friends since high school, contemporaries at Concordia University, to documentaries in the first place: a couple of guys with a camera. They started their first film, 2004’s Discordia, while still in school — Mallal was an intern at the National Film Board in Montreal. Their second, Bombay Calling, premiered at Hot Docs in 2006 and was broadcast in 150 countries on National Geographic International. Nollywood Babylon is their first as producers through their Montreal production company AM Pictures. They’re credited alongside the NFB’s Adam Symansky.

Mallal says Nollywood is the efflorescence of digital technology. Cameras, editing equipment: ‘It’s cheap and yet the quality goes up and up. It doesn’t take much to make the product and sell it in a form that everyone can consume in their home.’

The notion of a film as ‘product’ may be scorned by western artists, but in this case it is more than apt. One of the film’s subjects is Lancelot Idowu Imasuen, who at age 36, has made more than 150 films. His crew members call him the Guv’nor. He begins his shooting day with an incantation. Touching the camera, he says, ‘You will function above your limit in the name of our Lord God Jesus Christ.’

Apart from God, says Addelman, ‘They don’t wait for anybody. When we went for our first development shoot it took us six months to get our funding. Lancelot makes five or six a year. He said, ‘What are you waiting for? You don’t wait for funding.’

‘Make it for $15,000. Sell it for $20,000. Repeat.’

Denis Seguin previews Canada’s banner year at Sundance all this week, continuing Thursday with a closer look at Prom Night in Mississippi.