Between Hollywood and Nollywood: Filmmaker Vigil Chime

She was introduced to me by a friend in his popular New York store where he distributes Nigerian and African movies. I was going to say hello and mentally dismiss her as someone I wasn’t likely to ever meet again. Then my friend said she had come to supply his store with another consignment of her movies. A filmmaker! Ah…
This interview for and NollywoodNOW! magazine is the outcome of that meeting with Vigil Chime, the writer and director of digital video films like “African Dilemma”, “African Youth” and “Manchester Bound”.

How young where you when your parents relocated to the US in 1978? Did the move impact on you in any obvious way?
Vigil Chime: We arrived to Houston, Texas in August 1978. I was 10, going on 11. The move to America was so traumatic for me I literally did not leave our home. I found the American landscape so utterly foreign in its practicality; it was a shock to my eyes. I mean, the roads were so straight, the lawns so tidy and tended in rows, the cars parked neatly on driveways. And the most shocking aspect of all, no one was walking on the streets - unlike Lagos where we had just left.
To recover from all that I saw from the drive from the airport to our new home, I stayed in the house for much of my childhood. I read every book I could get my hands on - yes, my love of story/literature resulted. I left the house only to go to a local primary school, and ran home almost immediately because my four younger brothers and I were constantly chased by our African-American neighbors who assailed us with unprintable words about being Africans.
The home was the safest place for me, and I took my adventures in the pages of the books I consumed. When I looked up again, I was 24 and ready to move out of my cocoon to travel alone to graduate school in New York City. New York City fostered the "no-fear" attitude which makes up much of my character today.