“Illuminates the enduring importance of political and economic dynamics not yet fully explored in the study of African cinema.” —Africa Cinema and Development in West Africa shows how the film industry in Francophone West African countries played an important role in executing strategies of nation building during the transition from French rule to the early postcolonial period. James E. Genova sees the construction of African identities and economic development as the major themes in the political literature and cultural production of the time. Focusing on film both as industry and aesthetic genre, he demonstrates its unique place in economic development and provides a comprehensive history of filmmaking in the region during the transition from colonies to sovereign states.

Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century brings together a set of fascinating essays by international scholars on these contrasting cinema forms.

This book considers the current state and status of the video film in different parts of Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Lesotho, and Congo Kinshasa. It addresses technological, ethical and gender considerations, and issues of language and ethnicity, suggesting in the concluding chapters that the video film in Africa has become an art form that crosses borders, and an important means of communication within the continent. The editor thus argues it must be treated seriously as an art form and cultural industry in its own right, and as worthy of the scholarship such that this volume is conceived to encourage.

An authoritative guide to African cinema with contributions from a team of experts on the topic A Companion to African Cinema offers an overview of critical approaches to African cinema. With contributions from an international panel of experts, the Companion approaches the topic through the lens of cultural studies, contemporary transformations in the world order, the rise of globalization, film production, distribution, and exhibition. This volume represents a new approach to African cinema criticism that once stressed the sociological and sociopolitical aspects of a film. The text explores a wide range of broad topics including: cinematic economics, video movies, life in cinematic urban Africa, reframing human rights, as well as more targeted topics such as the linguistic domestication of Indian films in the Hausa language and the importance of female African filmmakers and their successes in overcoming limitations caused by gender inequality. The book also highlights a comparative perspective of African videoscapes of Southern Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Côte d’Ivoire and explores the rise of Nairobi-based Female Filmmakers. This important resource: Puts the focus on critical analyses that take into account manifestations of the political changes brought by neocolonialism and the waning of the cold war Explores Examines the urgent questions raised by commercial video about globalization Addresses issues such as funding, the acquisition of adequate production technologies and apparatuses, and the development of adequately trained actors Written for film students and scholars, A Companion to African Cinema offers a look at new critical approaches to African cinema.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, grade: 1,0, University of Bayreuth, course: Religion and Media in selected West-African Countries, language: English, abstract: Since the 1990's West-African video films enjoy increasing popularity, especially those produced in Ghana and Nigeria. They are an important part of modern African popular culture and have often displaced Hollywood films. These films cover a wide spectrum of different genres. They range from comedy, romance and horror to religious films. Often the various genres are mixed but all of the films got something in common: They reflect the modern urban life in contemporary western Africa and are an account of the current process of social change in many societies. This paper mainly concentrates on religious films, especially those produced by charismatic Pentecostal Churches.

Many studies focus on film in Africa. Few, however, study cinema as a leisure activity: one that has influenced several generations and opened up spaces to dream, discuss or contest. Movie theatres offered a break from the daily routine, as places of escape and of education. Cinema was also potentially subversive, offering an alternative to colonial discourse. Tropical Dream Palaces seeks to trace this history in a West African context: of broadening horizons on the one hand, and of censorship and control on the other. It fills a historiographic void, following cinema's arrival in the region in the early twentieth century up until the Independence era, and also looking further afield to Central Africa and its different models. Goerg addresses questions of film distribution in colonial times; of screening venues, their implantation, spread and different categories; while also focusing on audiences, their gender or age; the acquisition of a film culture; and the impact of screening foreign images. Her book draws on extremely varied sources to paint a broad picture of this cinematographic landscape: archives, the accounts of African and European spectators or administrators, novels, autobiographies, the local press, interviews and iconography.