Nigerian Video FilmsJonathan Haynes Nigerian video films--dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes--are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry. The contributors to this volume, who include film and television directors, an anthropologist, and scholars of film studies and literature, take a variety of approaches to this flourishing popular art. Topics include aesthetic forms and distribution; the configurations of various ethnic audiences; the new media environment dominated by cassette technology; the video's materialism in a period of economic collapse; transformation of the traditional Yoruba traveling theater; individualism and the moral crisis in Igbo society; Hausa cultural values; the negotiation of gender roles, and the genre of Christian videos. |
Contents
Ch 1Introduction | 1 |
Ch 2From Film to Video | 37 |
Nigerian Video Films | 51 |
Improvisations and Transformations in Yoruba Popular Theater | 89 |
A Glimpse in the Cult of the Individual | 131 |
Ethnicity Class Gender | 148 |
A Feminist Reading of Hostages Dust to Dust and True Confessions | 165 |
The War Paradigm of The Great Mistake | 192 |
Ch 9Culture and Art in Hausa Video Films | 200 |
Ch 10Hausa Dramas and the Rise of Video Culture in Nigeria | 209 |
243 | |
Contributors | 259 |
261 | |
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Common terms and phrases
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