Alessandro Jedlowski

Small screen cinema: Informality and remediation in Nollywood

Analyzing the Nigerian video industry through the lens of new media theory, this article proposes a genealogy of the Nollywood media format to identify and define its specificities. The films that the industry produces are often referred to as cinema but, compared to the output of other film industries around the world, Nollywood produces something that can be located in between cinema and television. The informality of Nigerian videos’ production and distribution has in fact allowed for the articulation of complex processes of remediation, which have participated in creating an original product, something that I would like to call “small screen cinema.” This media format has had a determinant role in Nollywood’s popular success and its definition is thus important for a general understanding of the industry’s social, economic, and cultural relevance.

China–Africa media interactions: media and popular culture between business and state intervention

Following the exponential growth in China–Africa relationships over the past few years, African and Chinese media industries have developed new ties and increased their reciprocal relationships. For instance, Chinese state media corporations such as Xinhua News and China Central Television (CCTV) have significantly invested in developing their African chapters, private companies such as StarTimes acquired a leading role in the continent-wide satellite television market, and Chinese telecommunication firms such as Huawei and ZTE have transformed the African continent into their testing ground for new products and marketing strategies, to be later exported elsewhere around the world. These developments have confirmed emerging trends in the multipolarization of media transnational flows, which scholarship grounded on cultural imperialism theories had often overlooked (but see Larkin 1997; McNeely and Soysal 1989; Shohat and Stam 2003; Sreberny 1991). A growing number of studies addressed the increasing China–Africa media interactions over the past few years. Some of these studies made an attempt at interpreting the consequences of these interactions on the African mediascape, often connecting them to the wider debate about the transformations of Chinese soft power strategies (cf. Banda 2009; Gagliardone 2013; Gagliardone, Stremlau, and Nkrumah 2012; Harber 2013; Li and Rønning 2013; Rønning 2014; Wu 2012; Xin 2009; Zhang, Wasserman, and Mano 2016; see also Kurlantzick 2007; Li 2009). Others investigated African audiences’ reception of Chinese media and popular culture, and analysed African media coverage of Chinarelated news and African visual representations of China (cf. Gorfinkel, Joffe, and van Staden 2014; Joseph 1999; Simbao 2012; Stern 2009; Wasserman 2012, 2013; Wekesa 2013). A relatively smaller number of studies explored also the activity of African media entrepreneurs in China and questioned the representation of Africa and of Africarelated news in Chinese media (cf. Castillo 2016; Ferry 2012; Saavedra 2009; Shen 2009; Strauss 2009; Zheng 2010; Zheng 2014). Within this landscape, scholars have tended to prioritize methodological and theoretical approaches grounded in political economy and international relations, aimed at understanding the macro-implications of growing China–Africa media connections. Against the background of this still limited but rapidly expanding literature, this special issue proposes

Representing ‘otherness’ in African popular media: Chinese characters in Ethiopian video-films

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the recent phenomenon of Ethiopian films that prominently feature Chinese characters. As the success of these films relies on representing a stereotypical Chinese ‘Other’, and in reference to China’s ever-growing presence in African countries, we pose broader questions relating to the place of ethnicity, race and national identity in popular cultural productions emerging from the continent. Through an analysis which caters for multiple and at times oppositional interpretations, we argue that the representation of the ‘Chinese Other’ constructed by these films at times criticizes and at times reasserts existing stereotypes and prejudices. The overriding view and intent of the filmmakers to use Chinese characters mainly as narrative devices is often functional in the development of specific, inward-looking social and political criticisms. But this attitude inevitably forces the films to overlook the key issue underlying discourses about otherness in Ethiopian popular media – namely the issue of how to deal with racial multiplicity in a society that defines belonging along rigid and exclusionary terms.

On the Periphery of Nollywood

The Nigerian video industry, internationally known as Nollywood,1 has rapidly developed in the past few years becoming, according to the survey published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics in April 2009, the second largest film industry in the world in terms of the sheer number of films produced.2 As Jonathan Haynes has underscored (“The Nollywood Diaspora”), after the broad popular success achieved by video films such as Osuofia in London (2003) and Dangerous Twins (2004), videos shot in a foreign context (and therefore able to appeal to a particular kind of exoticism) and dealing with the experience of migration (an experience lived or dreamed about by many Nigerians), started to become very popular in Nigeria. As a consequence of this popularity, while many Nollywood production companies based in Nigeria began to finance film projects set in the diaspora, Nigerian expatriates began to see the economic potential of investing in filmmaking and started to set up their own production companies abroad. Among these ventures, two video production companies, directly connected to the Nigerian system of production and distribution, emerged in northern Italy: IGB Film and Music Industry based in Brescia and GVK (Giving Vividly with Kindness) based in Turin.

Post-imperial affinities and neoliberal convergences: discourses and practices of collaboration between the Nigerian and the Indian film industries:

Over the past three decades, South-South economic interactions have multiplied. Within this landscape, media industries have come to occupy a relevant position, at the crossroad between soft power and hard economic interests. Numerous studies analysed the South-South circulation of media products, but many aspects of the ongoing interactions remain under-researched. This article contributes to this emerging field of scholarship by analysing the discourses and practices of collaboration that have emerged between the Indian and the Nigerian film industries over the past few years. By analysing the experiences of a few southern Nigerian and Indian film professionals who attempted to develop transnational collaborations, this article investigates the ambiguities of the affinities existing between Nollywood and Bollywood and interrogates the prospects for the creation of effective interactions between them.

Nollywood e l'esplosione della produzione video «made in Nigeria»

New technologies and the growing liberalization of film and video industries radically transformed the African audiovisual landscape, mainly because of a recent real explosion of film and video production. Nigeria emerged as the biggest player in the continental audiovisual production - and one of the bigger in the world - gaining to its film industry the nickname of Nollywood. This paper recalls the role of the «marketers», at first and for long film distributors trading also videorecorders, television sets, videotapes, etc., who became successful producers funding new films and video, and the development and evolution of Nigerian and African cinema markets - a «new frontier» of the global economic growth where even new aesthetic and narrative forms as well as economic experiences are emerging. The new technologies ambivalent impact in the African audiovisual landscape is clearly showed by the fact that after the analogical and digital technologies made it possible the Nollywood birth and development, the transition to the technologies of satellite television, Internet and cinema multiplex weakened the African industry big players, exposing them to the intangible forms of the global and local competition by some new giants like Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon.

Exporting Nollywood: Nigerian Video Filmmaking in Europe

When Kenneth Nnebue, a Nigerian electronics dealer, produced the film Living in Bondage in 1992, he probably had no idea of what its release would represent 20 years later. But today, among Africans of all nationalities, the title of this film is synonymous with the birth of the largest entertainment industry in Africa.’ The Nigerian video film industry, commonly referred to as Nollywood, is indeed considered to be one of the largest film industries in the world.2 The films produced there circulate all over Africa and throughout the African diaspora in Europe and elsewhere.3 To many, the emergence of the Nigerian video industry represents the most important event in the recent history of African media. The video industry has managed to develop autonomously without any support from the government. It created independent and informal systems of production, distribution, and exhibition, which enabled the production of low-budget films that were released straight to video and watched in most cases at home or in informal neighborhood screening venues.4