Matthias Krings
University of Mainz
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Featured researches published by Matthias Krings.
Journal of African Cultural Studies | 2010
Matthias Krings
This article interrogates the history of the photo novel in Africa with particular reference to African Film, a magazine of almost pan-African circulation, published between 1968 and 1972 in South Africa. Featuring the adventures of Lance Spearman, an African crime fighter, the magazine was read widely across Anglophone Africa, from Nigeria and Ghana to South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. After a brief introduction to the history of the photo novel, the author discusses the production, content, reception, and legacy of the Lance Spearman photo novels. It is argued that Lance Spearman may be understood as a crossover of James Bond and Philip Marlowe, and several influences from contemporary Western popular culture are traced. Contemporary readers cherished the visual modernity of the photo novels and readily identified with their stylish and street-wise main character. It is argued that African Film magazine played an important (today almost forgotten) role within the history of visual media in Africa. It was instrumental in spreading the new format of the photo novel to many Anglophone post-colonies, where it subsequently was ‘vernacularized’. Photo novels served as surrogates for films, as a means to tell almost film-like stories, at a time when commercial African cinema was not yet invented. In terms of its commercial orientation, its readiness to borrow from Western popular culture, its transportability, and its almost pan-African circulation, African Film magazine may be called a distant forerunner of the current commercial video film industry of Nigeria.
Archive | 2013
Matthias Krings; Onookome Okome
Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds | 2007
Matthias Krings
Africa Today | 2008
Matthias Krings
Archive | 2015
Matthias Krings
Intermédialités : Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques / Intermediality : History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies | 2012
Matthias Krings
Archive | 2004
Matthias Krings; Editha Platte
Archive | 2013
Karl N. Renner; Dagmar von Hoff; Matthias Krings
Sociologus | 2005
Matthias Krings
Archive | 2017
Matthias Krings