Quick. Name the countries with the world’s largest film industries.

Easy points for picking the United States as the No. 1 big dog, and kudos for ranking India’s glamorous Bollywood in the second position. But who pulls the third spot? To find the third largest film industry in the world one must travel to Africa, specifically to Nigeria.

Nicknamed Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry churns out 2,500 films per year — most at budgets under $15,000. Quick-dash, self-financed B-movie affairs primarily shot on video, the productions have created a booming insulated economy for the poverty-stricken nation. The themes are insular, as well, eschewing stories and narratives popularized by cinematic imports in favor of relatable themes. In short, Nollywood creates African films for Africans.

The Chicago Cultural Center spotlights these films in “Movie Mojo: Hand-Painted Posters from Ghana,” a multi-media experience running through September 4 in the center’s fourth floor exhibit hall. The main attraction is a staggering collection of posters made to adorn the walls of ramshackle movie houses in Ghana, with particular focus on those created for Nollywood features — with a few choice interpretations of American, Bollywood and kung-fu offerings thrown in, as well.

The films advertised cover a variety of genres, but most come from a category unique to Nollywood — a genre that reflects the country’s deep religiosity which combines Western Christianity with indigenous tribal religions. Witches, demons and ghosts are very real both in reality and in these films and they’re quick to escort straight to a hell those who turn away from God. And they do so in an extravagant, Grand Guignol fashion — the depictions of which are guaranteed to catch the eyes of curious passersby.

Blood, gore, violence, torture and other over-the-top natural and unnatural acts scream loud from these striking posters, all of which are colorfully hand-painted with acrylics on simple flour sack canvases. A preacher exorcises the demons from a horned child with his lightning bolt fingers in the poster for End Time, a ghost chops the head from his killer’s body in Axe of Vengeance, decapitated heads sit below an anthropomorphized bloody tree in Evil Tree, a priest holds up a Bible in defense against a firebreathing dinosaur in Mark of the Beast 666, goat and man switch heads in Ogbooi, zombies crunch on human flesh in Dead Mary. These are some of the tamer selections.

In a brilliant move, the Cultural Center has constructed an approximation of a Ghanaian movie house to screen 30-minute loops of several films whose posters are featured in the exhibit. Besides being absolutely bonkers, the clips from Married to a Witch, Axe of Vengeance and Onyame Ahuwo present an incredible glimpse at a vibrant national cinema divorced from Western influence.

Movie Mojo is rounded out with two bonuses that provide added context to the posters: gallery talks with Chicago educator Kweku Embil and Chief Curator of Exhibitions Lanny Silverman on Thursday, June 16 and Thursday, June 21 (each at 12:15 p.m.), and August screenings in the Claudia Cassidy Theater of three non-African genre films that receive poster re-interpretations — The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) on Friday, August 5, 6:30 p.m.; Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) on Friday, August 12, 6:30 p.m.; and King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962) on Friday, August 19, 6:30 p.m.